Cleopatra : A Life
by Stacy Schiff

She was not Egyptian, but Greek; murderers ran in her family; she was fluent in nine languages, took control of a country at the age of eighteen and ruled it for twenty-two years.
Twice, she was married; her spouses were her brothers. (Intermarriage among siblings was very popular with pharoahs.)
Nobody knows what she really looked like. What is considered authentic are her coin portraits.
All of these interesting tidbits about Cleopatra are found in the first chapter. If you can venture beyond it, then you are very brave. (I lasted until page 51.)
This book is dense with detail, very wordy and jumps all over the place. It doesn't belong in a public library. It's very academic and would be perfect for a student who is writing a thesis.
The author is a historian and doesn't know how to present material that is palatable to the layperson. Don't believe any of the reviewers on the back of the book: absorbing, illuminating, a writer of epic skill. Boring, dry, and tedious would be my terminology.
Not recommended.