The Black Tulip / Alexandre Dumas pere

Cornelius van Baerle, a respectable tulip-grower, lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win the magnificent prize for its creation. But after his powerful godfather is assassinated, the unwitting Cornelius becomes caught up in deadly political intrigue and is falsely accused of high treason by a bitter rival. Condemned to life imprisonment, his only comfort is Rosa, the jailer’s beautiful daughter, and together they concoct a plan to grow the black tulip in secret. Dumas’s last major historical novel is a tale of romantic love, jealousy and obsession, interweaving historical events surrounding the brutal murders of two Dutch statesmen in 1672 with the phenomenon of ‘Tulipomania’ that gripped seventeenth-century Holland.