A great read about an important incident in French history, the trail and execution of the last king of France.

A mute radical. A brutal queen. A quest through a deadly maze. Yosyph fences his heart and keeps his mouth shut. Posing as a mute tavern-hand, he gathers information on his bigoted queen and silently seeks to raise a rebellion. But when he discovers the monarch’s scheme to enslave thousands, he fears leading a revolt now would only end in a massacre. Desperate for allies in the coming war, Yosyph travels through a deadly desert in search of his kin. But he’s shocked to discover his only option to defeat the queen’s vast military is an ancient magic that will consume him–unless he opens himself to the voice of his god. Will Yosyph’s unexpected answers to his prayers stop his realm from descending into bloody darkness? 2019 Whitney Awards Nominee

In a land where stories of the Shadow Demon keep children shivering in bed and tales of the Yorel bring hope to the commoner, Yosyph is both the reason for their fear and their hope. By day Yosyph appears nothing more than a mute tavern-hand. By night he plans a revolution and slips through shadow, rescuing those marked for death by the xenophobic queen. When he learns that thousands of his people will be sent as slaves to the mines, he must choose-fight the royal army with an ill-prepared rebellion or journey to the land of his ancestors through the deadly King's Trial. If he succeeds, he'll win his kins' loyalty and their help. His journey grows complicated when he rescues a maiden and enrages a prince, but if he doesn't return with help in time, the people he's loved and secretly served will be gone.

"Political trials take issues of responsibility, conscience, representation, and legitimacy, which are tied in tight political and legal knots, and force us to face questions about our public identity, our standards for public policy, and our sense of history. Ron Christenson explores how political trials, especially those within the rule of law, engage society's conflicting values and loyalties. He examines numerous political trials throughout history, bringing into question basic foundations of law, politics, and society. Christenson classifies political trials according to the issues they generate in the political sphere: partisan trials are spurious legal proceedings but politically expedient; trials of corruption and insanity raise questions of public and personal responsibility; trials of dissenters involve problems of conscience; trials of nationalists highlight the nature of representation and the relationship of the part to the whole; and trials of regimes engage the most fundamental concept of both law and politics--legitimacy. Political Trials brings these considerations to bear on some of the best-known cases in history, including the Gunpowder Plot; the Spanish Inquisition; the Dreyfus affair; the Nuremburg trials; trials of dissenters such as Socrates, Thomas More, Roger Williams, and the Berrigan brothers; and trials of nationalists such as Joan of Arc, Gandhi, Knut Hamsun, and the Irish republicans. Since the first edition appeared, a number of notable political trials have raised critical issues for society. Shocking public exposures about the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 trials shook the British criminal justice establishment, while in the United States trials concerning the beating of Rodney King led up to the O.J. Simpson spectacle and a host of parallel questions. The trials of right-wing terrorists such as Paul Hill, found guilty of murdering an abortion doctor, and Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, parallel "