The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, a novel by C.M. Mayo

C. M. MAYO
The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
A novel based on the true story

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A Library Journal Best Book

Now available in hardcover, paperback
and various ebook formats including
Kindle, Nook, and iBook

Click on the butterfly to view the trailer for the original hardcover edition (trailer by Julia Sussner).

Trailer for the Spanish translation by Agustin Cadena, El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano (Grijalbo Ramdon House Mondadori, 2010). Approximately 3 1/2 minutes.

"Mayo's reanimation of a crucial period in Mexican history should satisfy history buffs and those in the mood for an engaging story brimming with majestic ambition.
-- Publisher's Weekly

"a swashbuckling, riotous good time, befitting the fairy-tale promise of the opening sentence"
-- Austin American-Statesman

"Mayo’s cultural insights are first-rate, and the glittering, doomed regime comes to life"
-- Library Journal (Xpress Review)

"I have read a few sweeping historical novels that have remain inside of me forever. Tolstoy's War and Peace is one of those, Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities is another, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago is another, and now The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is another."
-- Mexico Connect

~ * ~

Praise for C.M. Mayo's Miraculous Air:
"With elegant prose and an artist's eye for detail, Mayo
may just have written one of the best books ever
about Baja California. Highly recommended"
Library Journal

"Ay, if only I had been at C.M. Mayo's side in her rendezvous through
Baja California... My recourse is her joyful, intellectually sparkling chronicle"
Ilan Stavans,
author of The Hispanic Condition

~ * ~
Praise for C.M. Mayo's Sky Over El Nido:
"some of the most exquisitely fashioned, perfectly
measured prose alive in the world today."
Naomi Shihab Nye

"The haywire circuits of our whole electrically but not ethically
connected global village stand exposed in Mayo's work.
Sky Over El Nido won the 1995 Flannery O'Connor Award for
Short Fiction. I am not suprised."
David Toolan, S.J., Commonweal

~ * ~
Praise for C.M. Mayo's
Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion:
"This delicious volume has lovingly gathered a banquet of pieces
that reveal Mexico in all its infinite variety, its splendid
geography, its luminous peoples. What a treat!"
Margaret Sayers Peden, editor, Mexican Writers on Writing

"It will open your eyes, fill you with pleasure
and render our perennial vecinos a little less distante."
Los Angeles Times Book Review

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THE LAST PRINCE OF THE MEXICAN EMPIRE
Unbridled Books Now available in paperback and e-book

A novel
based on the true story
Selected one of Library Journal's
Best Books of 2009

"a swashbuckling, riotous good time, befitting the fairy-tale promise of the opening sentence."
Austin American-Statesman

Who knew that Mexico once had a half-American prince? Or that this little boy’s future was hotly debated not just in Mexico but in Washington D.C. and in every court in Europe? Set in the mid-19th century when Maximilian von Habsburg was Emperor of Mexico, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is based on the true and never before completely told story about the little boy who, as in a fairytale, became a prince— and a pawn in the struggle-to-the-death over Mexico's destiny.

Click here for ordering information
(Now available in paperback and Kindle)

"A fascinating historical account delivered in such sweeping, compelling prose as to ring more like literature than fact—and, fundamentally, one could say that it’s both; it proves false that old Dorothy Parker adage about historical novels being neither novels nor history. This is an extensively researched and brilliantly organized book, combining geopolitics, international finance, military strategy, and, alas, the eternal struggle of a family, a child, and the human heart in the midst of it all... Mayo, who has lived in Mexico for many years and has written extensively about its history and culture, is the author of a travel memoir about Baja California, among other works. Her literary style is seasoned, intelligent, and wonderfully informed."
Himilce Novas, Multicultural Review

A fairytale based on the true but never before completely told story— the work of seven years of travel and research in archives as far flung as Vienna, Washington DC, and Mexico City— it begins, as it must, with, "Once upon a time..." read more