Download Sisi: Empress on Her Own: A Novel AudioBook Free
For readers of Philippa Gregory, Paula McLain, and Daisy Goodwin comes a sweeping and powerful book by New York Times best-selling writer Allison Pataki. Sisi says the little-known story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, the Princess Diana of her time, in an enthralling work of historical fiction that is also a gripping pause resister. Married to Emperor Franz Joseph, Elisabeth - fondly known as Sisi - catches the hearts of her people as their "fairy queen", but beneath that stunning persona lives a far more complex physique. In middle-19th-century Vienna, the halls of the Hofburg Palace hype not only with imperial waltzes and champagne but with temptations, rivals, and cutthroat intrigue. Sensing stifled by rigid protocols and a turbulent relationship, Sisi expands restless. A free-spirited wanderer, she sees solace at her estate outside Budapest. There she trips her favorite horses and relishes appointments from the Hungarian statesman Count up Andrássy, the person with whom she's unwittingly dropped in love. But tragic information brings Sisi out of her fragile seclusion, forcing her to return to her capital and an environment of gossip, envy, and sorrow where a dangerous fate lurks in the shadows. Through love affairs and damage, determination and defiance, Sisi battles against conflicting desires: to keep her family jointly or even to flee amid the collapse of her suffocating relationship and the gathering tumult of the First World War. In a day and time of crumbling monarchies, Sisi battles to assert her right to the throne beside her man, to succeed the love of her people and the entire world, and to save an empire. However in the finish, can she save herself? Featuring larger-than-life historic figures such as Bavaria's "Mad Ruler Ludwig" and the tragic Crown Prince Rudolf, and arranged against a lot of Europe's grandest sites - from Germany's storied Neuschwanstein Castle to England's lush shires - Sisi brings alive an extraordinary woman and the charming, volatile age over which she presided.
