The Beheading Game
The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously buried in an arrow chest, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for not being able to give him a male heir, reviled by Cromwell for being too smart for her own good, and executed based on trumped-up charges, Anne escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for vengeance.
Traveling in the guise of a commoner, with the help of a prostitute, Anne navigates the London streets she never before walked and soon realizes how little she knew about life in the real world. If Kelly Link had teamed up with Hilary Mantel, the result might be The Beheading Game. An epic journey through the wilds of British royal history and a prescient reminder that “mouthy” women have always been punished, The Beheading Game finally allows one of history’s most maligned women a chance to tell her side of the story.
Read a first chapter sneak peak in Entertainment Weekly.
“Anne Boleyn is dead; long live Anne Boleyn. In Lehmann’s playful revisionist history, Henry VIII’s second wife wakes up in a box after her execution, sews her head back on with a needle and thread and gets down to the business of assuring her daughter Elizabeth’s ascendance to the throne (or, if you want to put a finer point on it, revenge).”—The New York Times
“Half historical fiction, half ghost story, this [is a] jaw-dropping novel about Anne Boleyn. . . . If you loved Wolf Hall in print or on-screen, you’ll enjoy the rather different versions of Henry, Cromwell, Thomas Wyatt, and Jane we encounter here. And Lehmann’s writing is as lovely as her imagination is over the top.”—Oprah Daily
“Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it.”—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
“Magic, romance, revenge, and an utterly irresistible heroine—this book is an instant classic.”—Lev Grossman, author of The Bright Sword
“The Beheading Game is magical on every level. I was gripped from the first page. Lehmann does more than imagine—she rewrites a fascinating piece of history and in doing so claims a future in which anything is possible.”—Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
“In The Beheading Game, Rebecca Lehmann’s fierce and audacious imagination soars, bringing us Anne Boleyn as we have never dared to see or imagine her before. Sister, mother, wife, avenger: In Lehmann’s brilliant hands, ferocious, feminist Anne turns from hunted to hunter, from disdained to loved, a transformation that is pure poetry.”—V. V. Ganeshananthan, author of Brotherless Night and Love Marriage
“Lyrical and audacious, The Beheading Game pulls no punches in reimagining this well-known story. In turns vulnerable, furious, triumphant, and moving, I never wanted to let go of the deeply human Anne that Lehmann conjures.”—Kat Dunn, nationally bestselling author of Hungerstone
“This book is pure, stylish, audacious fun—the kind that makes you sit there thinking, ‘How is this working so well?’ . . . The premise is wild, but the writing is so confident and lucid that I never once questioned it. . . . not just clever, but genuinely moving in the way it looks at women’s survival, class, and loyalty.”—Bibliolifestyle
“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. . . . Brilliantly imagined, stylishly written, satisfyingly plotted, full of delicious surprises: all in all, hella fun.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Lehmann offers deep character work, portraying Anne’s early self-righteous naivete and discovery of her political savvy, and she successfully pairs a thrilling plot with a complex reflection on the limits of women’s power. Readers will be delighted.”—Publishers Weekly
The Sweating Sickness
Best Poetry of 2024/2025, Ms. Magazine.
“Lehmann draws on myths and fairy tales as touchstones in a book confronting both the Covid pandemic and the suicide of her abusive ex.” –New York Times Book Review
Praise for The Sweating Sickness
“Each intricate poem in The Sweating Sickness turns its faceted face to reflect memories cut so finely each has sharpened edges. The remarkable interlocking villanelle suites, meditations on mythology, and Anne Boleyn turn and churn in an acrobatic and exquisite display. And in the hazy rotation of the earth from one season to the next we observe the ache of Lehmann’s Autumnal poems as we’re confronted by urgent specters who refuse to be ignored by us. We witness a world attempting to move on while also seeing ourselves refuse to look away. These are breathtaking poems.” —Oliver de la Paz
“The Sweating Sickness is rich with layered secrets. Rebecca Lehmann’s painstakingly unswerving vision welds together gray Midwestern autumn and searing Orphic underworld. Winking out from below—intershot with grit and fancy, anger and awe—glint hidden contrapuntals, interlinked villanelles, reconnections, exultations. This is a book of chaotic love. You can dive into it anywhere. Count on its rich waters to hold you through your explorations.” —Annie Finch
“The Sweating Sickness is a dazzling collection of poems about the suicide of an abusive ex-lover, childrearing in a pandemic, Leda, Persephone, Anne Boleyn, and so much more. Lehmann combines fierce honesty about the experience of being a woman in an unforgiving patriarchy with flawless craft that takes the reader to places of pain, betrayal, and joy. These poems hold back just enough to get me to read and reread again. Personal history, inflected by trauma, is written in drafts, all of them equally in beauty: ‘The darkness is the first draft,’ she writes, ‘In the third draft, there’s a barn that’s been /bisected by a tornado, but still stands…’ From her villanelles to her elegies, Lehmann combines the political and the intimate to create an imaginative portrayal of how memory and the present coalesce to form a life.” —Sandra Simonds
“Rebecca Lehmann’s new collection sings from the absolute pivot-point of Ovidian metamorphosis yet refuses to be wiped out by the prerogatives of aftermath: ‘I will not howl and burn, as I burned, I will not splinter.’ These songs of experience insist that there is a reward for survival, beyond survival: not the end of pain, but a darklit song that travels with it.” —Joyelle McSweeney
Ringer
Selected by Ross Gay as the winner of the 2018 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Published by University of Pittsburgh Press. Order here.
Praise for Ringer
“Part eco-poetic, part confessional, [Ringer] transports the reader to landscapes internal and external with acerbic wit and renegade fury.”–Publishers Weekly
“Highly recommended; Lehmann’s talent for engaging outwardly will win her readers among poetry fans and newbies alike.”–Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal, starred review.
“Ringer teems with excellent poems…Lehmann, generously and gracefully, swings us through entire lives.”–Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions, “Must-Read Poetry: September, 2019”
“Rebecca Lehmann’s Ringer is a beautiful book. There’s something propulsive and yearning and broken with sadness in these poems. And ecstatic. And astonished. (‘His eyes / were four dozen Canadian geese lifting off a late summer river, all at once.’ God I love that!) And loving. And there is something that might put its foot up your ass. All made of a gorgeous racket that will probably make you gasp. By which I mean: be in the world anew. As poetry, if we’re lucky, sometimes helps us to be.” —Ross Gay
“What a great title! It’s perfectly true—the whole book rings with surprising images and zingy word-choices, all dedicated to presenting the most mundane things in their truly astonishing particularity. Sharply attuned to issues relating to women—and the ways they’ve intensified in the current political climate—the work speaks with a fierce and necessary determination infused with an energy not devoid of hope.” —Cole Swensen
“Ringer by Rebecca Lehmann is a voice-driven wonder that takes on Trump-era America–misogyny, white nationalism, alternative facts, and gun violence–against a backdrop of domesticity and personal loss. Lehmann combines dazzling figurative language with unrelenting imperative into nitro-fueled poems that plumb the tension between the personal and political, and create a wholly original tough-as-nails missive to female strength in the face of miscarriage, harassment, and the daily grind of motherhood.” —Erika Meitner
Between the Crackups
Between the Crackups won the Crashaw Prize and was published by Salt in 2011. You can order it here and here.
Praise for Between the Crackups
‘Rebecca Lehmann is an advance scout in the war between the heart and the intellect. The heart wants peace, but the mind wants to blow us all to kingdom come, because we are working in factories, we are lost in Detroit and Memphis, we are driving South. What can save us? she seems to be asking. Not God with his wafers and hymns. Not sex with its tricky ambushes. Not anger that is setting the world on fire. Maybe it’s love, she says, or maybe words with their euphoric brew. Or maybe not.’ —Barbara Hamby
‘These poems read like just-fashioned old-fashioned letters–not e-mails, not texts, not tweets–from one’s neglected, slightly pissed-off subterranean self. They are bold, agitated, self- and other-mocking, artfully raw, nonchalantly inventive, infused with necessity, and altogether stunning.’ —Mark Levine
“A glittering, furious book” — Melissa Ginsburg, The Rumpus
“Lehmann’s collection Between the Crackups puts my mind at ease, each poem reassures me that between the crackups, along the dirty seam that runs across our lives, is acumen, beauty and humor.” — Claire Nelson, The Southeast Review
“An often deliciously dark book” — Valerie Wetlaufer, Drunken Boat
Listen to Between the Crackups reviewed on Late Night Library