The Marriage Portrait by Maggie OFarrell

The Marriage Portrait, a riveting historical fiction novel, plunges us into the 16th-century world of Lucrezia de’ Medici whose parents have forced her to wed Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. He has taken her to his isolated hunting lodge and she becomes aware of the fact that he means to murder her there. As the novel skips around in chronology we learn about Lucrezia’s conception, birth, and childhood that brought her to this moment. She is a sensitive, artistic, and misunderstood youngest daughter. We hang on by our fingernails to see how her story ends.