Renaissance Rivals, the long-awaited sequel to the global bestseller Leonardo’s Swans, brings to life the brutal rivalry between two of history’s most fascinating women: Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, celebrated in her own lifetime as “The First Lady of the World,” and Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara, daughter of the infamous Pope Alexander VI and one of the most maligned women in history.

Before the doomed duchess of Maggie O’Farrel’s The Marriage Portrait, there were women who built the courts, forged the alliances, and turned power into art. Renaissance Rivalsinvites readers to step back one generation into the glittering, dangerous world that shaped the Italy of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Niccolò Machiavelli.

Pitted against each other by the ruthless political landscape and by the men they loved, Isabella and Lucrezia must learn how to survive in a world where women are treated as prizes, pawns, and weapons. Their battle is intimate, brilliant, and borders on the fatal, a war fought with jewels, letters, seduction, betrayal, and the strategic intelligence of women who refuse to disappear.

Excerpt: “The pope sweeps his eyes over his daughter from head to toe, sighing. “Why have you done this to yourself, darling? You are thin, your hair has grown dim, and the light has gone out of your eyes. Thank God you are back now where I can take care of you. I will have the doctors mix elixirs to restore you, Lucrezia. Within a few days, you will be yourself again.”

The concern in her father’s voice is a balm to her indignation. A tiny bud of joy begins to open inside her as she feels the familiar relief of being in his care. What incurable weakness does she possess that he has this power over her? She has told herself a hundred times that she is a new woman, yet the words of recrimination she’d practiced on the route home to say to him slowly recede. The little speeches she invented when she couldn’t sleep at night, so diligently rehearsed, dissipate now as he strokes her hand and searches her face for what he wants to see. She knows exactly what it takes, and it is so easy to deliver that it would be unkind to withhold it. She lets her father’s eyes question her for just a little longer, and then she smiles.”