Finished this today, 8/4/09:

ROYAL HARLOT by Susan Holloway Scott, 2007.
If you're into the Restoration period of English history, then this novel about Barbara Villiers and Charles II is a worthwhile read. Full of historical details, personalities of the age, and great events like the Great Plague and Great Fire of London, Scott knows how to hold a reader's interest. Smoothly written and moves at a good pace. Barbara, the main mistress of King Charles Stuart for a number of years, is the main focus of the story, from just before the Restoration until 1672, when the king makes his final break with her and she leaves for France. Scott manages to make a somewhat sympathetic character of a woman normally seen as vulgar, promiscuous, verbally abusive, arrogant, hugely ambitious and grasping. She was all those things, but much more.