In an era of superstition and fear, it’s dangerous to be a woman—and even more so to be a healer . . .Morgana Innocenti was born on the cusp of the 1600s, on the cursed ground inside the Grove. Deaf since the age of eight from a childhood illness, and able to see shadows where no shadow should be, she has learned to face any difficulty with strength and determination.But a three-hundred-year-old vow of revenge, and a terrible secret revealed on her grandmother’s deathbed, throw Morgana’s life in...
Following adventures she would sooner forget in the newly renamed New York, Mercia Blakewood is hopeful that she has gained the leverage with the king she needs to reclaim her family's home back in England. The breathtaking new world piques her curiosity and a burgeoning friendship with Clemency Carter, a local medicine woman, prompts Mercia to delay her return. Navigating an unknown landscape, the aftershocks still felt of revolution and restoration, and the uneasy relationship between the Puri...
Nothing scares men like witchcraft . . . 1589. Scottish housemaid Geillis and Danish courtier Margareta lead opposite lives, but they both know one thing: when a man cries “witch”, no woman is safe. Yet when the marriage of King James VI and Princess Anna of Denmark brings Geillis and Margareta together, everything they supposed about good, evil, men, and women, is cast in a strange and brilliant new light. For the first time in history, could black magic...
Lady Audley's Secret (Best Mary Elizabeth Braddon Books, #1) (Penguin Classic Romance Thillers)
by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
With an Introduction and Notes by Esther Saxey The flaxen-haired beauty of the childlike Lady Audley would suggest that she has no secrets. But M.E. Braddon's classic novel of sensation uncovers the truth about its heroine in a plot involving bigamy, arson and murder. It challenges assumptions about the nature of femininity and investigates the narrow divide between sanity and insanity, using as its focus one of the most fascinating of all Victorian heroines. Combining elements of the detective...
This fictional re-writing of the Hamlet story is set in a time somewhere between the Scandinavian Dark Ages (out of which the tale of Hamlet came), and the Renaissance society of Shakespeare's play. The novel "searches past and future", in T.S. Eliot phrase, "looking before and after". Beginning at the end of Shakespeare's play, where the Norweigian prince Fortinbras takes over the empty throne of Denmark, its then backtracks to the year of Hamlet's birth, and the great duel fought between his f...
Gyles Rawlings, a man determined to control his destiny, finds out what it means to become obsessed with the one thing he'd thought he would never want... his wife's heart. "If one is not marrying for love, one may as well marry for something else. My future countess has to be sufficiently docile and endowed with at least passable grace of form, deportment and address." Fate has made Gyles Rawlings a man determined to control his destiny. He has decided to wed a well-bred lad...
Malice in Milan is the third book in the Nico Argenti series. (May be read standalone) We are in Renaissance Italy. Rumors of a foreign threat against the Republic of Florence become real when a Florentine banker vanishes in Milan. Young Nico Argenti is waiting for his first position as a lawyer when he is appointed to a newly formed commission tasked with investigating and eliminating outside dangers to the republic. Nico’s assignment takes him, and his fellow commission members, to Milan to...
Beauty can be a gift...or a wicked temptation...So it is for Filippo Lippi, growing up in Renaissance Florence. He has a talent - not only can he see the beauty in everything, he can capture it, paint it. But while beauty can seduce you, and art can transport you - it cannot always feed you or protect you. To survive, Pippo Lippi, orphan, street urchin, budding rogue, must first become Fra Filippo Lippi: Carmelite friar, man of God. His life will take him down two paths at once. He will become a...
The third volume in the bestselling Wideacre Trilogy of novels. Set in the eighteenth century, they launched the career of Philippa Gregory, the bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl and Three Sisters, Three Queens. Meridon, a desolate Romany girl, is determined to escape the hard poverty of her childhood. Riding bareback in a travelling show, while her sister Dandy risks her life on the trapeze, Meridon dedicates herself to freeing them both from danger and want. But D...
The exquisitely-researched standalone prequel series to Dorothy Dunnett's revered Lymond Chronicles, following the ancestors of Francis Crawford of Lymond in Continental Europe.Spring of the Ram is Book Two in The House of Niccolo series.----------------------------- 'Catherine de Charetty, having chosen a lover just after the Feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross, was much put out to learn that, at nearly thirteen, she did not possess all the required qualifications . . .'Yet her secret suitor,...
'In Stockwin's hands the sea story will continue to entrance readers across the world' - GuardianWith Bonaparte held to a stalemate in Europe, the race to empire is now resumed. Britain's ambitions turn to the Spice Islands, the Dutch East Indies, where Admiral Pellew has been sent to confront the enemy's vastly rich holdings in these tropical islands. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd joins reinforcements to snatch these for the British Crown.The two colonial masters of India and the East Indies face eac...
In 1521, England is at peace under the magnificent Cardinal Wolsey, who rules the country while Henry VIII spends his time in masques, banquets and hunting, whether it be the fleet-footed deer or the even more delicious quarry of the silken-garbed ladies of the court.But Richard Falconer, chief secretary of the English embassy in Paris, has been found mysteriously murdered. Wolsey believes that Falconer's death is connected with the disturbing news that there is a spy in the English court, or in...
The new novel from the author of the much-loved Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels. The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries. Beautiful, intricate and expertly made, they are also mysterious in their origin and meaning. Tapestries give an appearance of order and continuity, as if designed and made by one person, belying the complicated process required to create them. Weavers, patrons, designers, artists, merchants and apprentices were involved in thei...
In 1506, Michelangelo—a young but already renowned sculptor—is invited by the sultan of Constantinople to design a bridge over the Golden Horn. The sultan has offered, along with an enormous payment, the promise of immortality, since Leonardo da Vinci’s design was rejected: “You will surpass him in glory if you accept, for you will succeed where he has failed, and you will give the world a monument without equal.” Michelangelo, after some hesitation, flees Rome and an irritated Pope Julius II—wh...