Zombie Anne Boleyn seeks revenge in Rebecca Lehmann’s fantastic first novel.

On this special Debuts Episode of Fully Booked, Rebecca Lehmann joins us to discuss The Beheading Game(Crown, March 24), in celebration of the second annual Debuts Issue of Kirkus Reviews. “The further adventures of Anne Boleyn, post-decapitation,” Kirkus writes in a starred review ofLehmann’s stellar historical fantasy, calling it, “brilliantly imagined, stylishly written, satisfyingly plotted, full of delicious surprises: all in all, hella fun.”

Lehmann is an award-winning poet and essayist. She is the author of the poetry collections Between the Crackups, Ringer, andThe Sweating Sickness; her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, NPR’s The Slowdown, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. She’s an associate professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College, and lives in Indiana with her family.

Here’s a bit more from our starred review of The Beheading Game: “The version of Anne that Lehmann has created is both familiar and novel: To the willful, passionate, ambitious character depicted in myriad historical and fictional accounts, she adds plenty of utterly original embroidery (this Anne is a bit of an intellectual, and also bi!). Fans of Wolf Hall will enjoy Lehmann’s versions of the many common characters, from Henry and Cromwell to Thomas Wyatt and Jane Seymour; though this book has a wild ghost-story premise, it ends up being just as convincing, and the prose has an ungaudy lyricism, a lucidity, and a timeless quality that stands up to Mantel’s.”

Lehmann tells me how she became mildly obsessed with the story of Anne Boleyn. We talk Tudor England, historical fantasy, the way the world treats powerful women, revenge plots, Lehmann’s extensive research process, and much more. And at the end of the interview, Lehmann recommends a recent novel she really loved. Follow @kirkus_reviews on Instagram, DM us the title of that book, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a $100 VISA gift card, courtesy of Kirkus.

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Killing Hope by Stephen H. Arnold

Secrets That Sparkle (and Secrets That Sting) by Joy Stephenson-Laws, illus. by Nzephany Madrigal Uzoka

The Hollywood Illusion by Allegra Pope

The Messy Years by Alexandra Slater

Fully Booked is produced by Jessica Lockhart and Megan Labrise.