Rebecca Lehmann is an award-winning poet and essayist. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Between the Crackups; Ringer, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize (selected by Ross Gay); and The 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 lives in Indiana with her family, where she is an associate professor of English and Gender and Women's Studies at Saint Mary's College.

"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

"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. Anne's search for justice could awaken the dead and will awaken every reader from the very first page. If you have ever wanted better for Anne Boleyn, this unlikely love story is for you."--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

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)

Pub date: 2026-03-24

Length: 320 pages