India, Dec. 19 -- In a year crowded with historical fiction, few novels make a bigger impact than Philippa Gregory's Boleyn Traitor. Marking her return to the Tudor court after a seven-year pause, Gregory resurrects one of English history's most misrepresented women: Jane Boleyn. For centuries, Jane has been reduced to a footnote as the treacherous sister-in-law who allegedly helped destroy Anne and George Boleyn. Yet, to Gregory, as to all of us, Jane remains "an enigma, right in the middle of the story, who against all the odds, survives the fall of the Boleyns".

The novel opens with a glittering masque at Greenwich Palace, where Jane appears in a gold falcon mask that looks "as if a free bird has been cursed into gold by Midas". The l...