“This is surely the best historical novel in many years,­” wrote Peter S. Prescott in Newsweek about Death of the Fox, George Garrett’s unparalleled reentry, into the heart of the English Renaissance. His new novel, The Succession, is surely the finest since: a triumph of intellect and imagination that once more brilliantly re-­creates Elizabethan England.­After decades of rule, Elizabeth I lies dying. She has overcomes the Spanish, the Pope, power-­hungry noblemen, even her beloved Essex. England is prospering under her; she is, they say, married to it. Who will succeed her? Who can? To read The Succession is to be plunged into the last days of this great age, to experience its humanity, color, pageantry, and drama; its grandeur, squalor, splendor, and folly. And to better imagine the procession that came before us (in any land) and the succession to follow.