European

This quantity contains three old novels approximately Denmark:
THE WANDERER'S NECKLACE via H. RIDER HAGGARD
THE formative years OF KING ERIK MENVED via B. S. INGEMANN
KING ERIC AND THE OUTLAWS; (OR, THE THRONE, THE CHURCH, AND the folk, within the 13th CENTURY) by means of INGEMANN

From her earliest days, Genevieve Gravois has identified one truth specially: Francis I, king of France, is her enemy. Raised by way of her embittered aunt after her mom and dad' deaths, Genevieve has been schooled in issues no girl may still be aware of: easy methods to decipher codes, the way to use a dagger and a bow, and the way to kill. For Henry VIII has a future in brain for the younger girl--as his strongest and unsafe spy.

When the time is ripe, Genevieve enters the superb international of the French courtroom. With grace to compare her ambition, she turns into maid of honor to Anne de Pisseleau, King Francis's mistress. but neither the court--which teems with artistry and enlightenment in addition to intrigue--nor Francis himself are in any respect what Genevieve anticipated. And along with her project, her existence, and the destiny of 2 kingdoms at stake, she is going to be pressured to make lethal judgements approximately the place her middle and her final loyalties lie.

compliment for Donna Russo Morin's The Courtier's Secret

"As opulent and glowing as Louis XIV's court docket and as choked with intrigue, ardour and pleasure as a unique via Dumas. . .a ceremonial dinner for the senses." --Romantic instances (4 stars)

"Vivid, pleasant, lively. . .a page-turner as soft as superb cognac." –Steven Manchester, writer of The unforeseen Storm

"A splendidly spun gem of a story." --Armchair Reviews

Reading staff advisor Inside

Greece, 1940. within the port urban of Salonika, with its wharves and brothels, darkish alleys and Turkish mansions, a stressful political drama is being performed out. As Adolf Hitler plans to invade the Balkans, spies start to circle—and Costa Zannis, a senior police professional, needs to take care of all of them. he's quickly within the video game, operating to safe an break out path for fugitives from Nazi Berlin that's secure through German attorneys, Balkan detectives, and Hungarian gangsters—and hunted through the Gestapo. in the meantime, as struggle threatens, the erotic lifetime of the town grows passionate. For Zannis, that suggests a British expatriate who owns the neighborhood ballet academy, a girl from the darkish facet of Salonika society, and the spouse of a transport multi-millionaire. With impressive ancient aspect and a very good solid of characters, Spies of the Balkans is a beautiful novel a few guy who hazards every little thing to struggle again opposed to the world’s evil.

The Brus, Barbour's significant surviving paintings, is an extended narrative poem written whereas he used to be a member of the king's loved ones within the 1370s. Its topic is the last word luck of the prosecution of the 1st struggle of Scottish Independence. Its important concentration is Robert the Bruce and Sir James Douglas, however the moment half the poem additionally beneficial properties activities of Robert II's Stewart forebears within the conflict.

Barbour's objective within the poem used to be partially ancient and partially patriotic. He celebrates The Bruce (Robert I) and Douglas all through because the flora of Scottish chivalry. The poem opens with an outline of the nation of Scotland on the loss of life of Alexander III (1286) and concludes (more or much less) with the demise of Douglas and the burial of the Bruce's center (1332). Its valuable episode is the conflict of Bannockburn.

Patriotic because the sentiment is, this is often expressed in additional normal phrases than is located in later Scottish literature. within the poem, Robert I's personality is a hero of the chivalric style universal in modern romance, Freedom is a "noble factor" to be sought and received in any respect charges, and the rivals of such freedom are proven at the hours of darkness colors which historical past and poetic propriety require, yet there's not one of the complacency of the basically provincial behavior of mind.

Barbour's type within the poem is lively, his line commonly fluid and quickly, and there are passages of excessive benefit. the main quoted half is e-book 1, traces 225-228:

A! fredome is a noble thing!
Fredome mayss guy to haiff liking;
Fredome all solace to guy giffis:
He levys at ess that frely levys!

Source: Wikipedia.com

Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci - 1907 version illustrated

This publication incorporates a terrific number of uncomplicated recipes from reasonably cheap and reasonable items, with which the relations dinner party will develop into a cheerful tradition.

quickly to be an HBO sequence, publication 4 in the New York Times bestselling Neapolitan quartet approximately neighbors in post-war Italy is a wealthy, severe, and generous-hearted epic by way of one in every of present day so much liked and acclaimed writers, Elena Ferrante, “one of the nice novelists of our time.” (Roxana Robinson, The ny Times)
 
Here is the fantastic saga of 2 girls, the bright, bookish Elena and the fiery uncontainable Lila. during this ebook, life’s nice discoveries were made, its vagaries and losses were suffered. via all of it, the women’s friendship, tested in its each aspect over the process 4 books, is still the gravitational middle in their lives. either ladies as soon as fought to flee the local within which they grew up. Elena married, moved to Florence, begun a relatives, and released a number of well-received books. yet now, she has back to Naples to be with the guy she has consistently enjoyed. Lila, nonetheless, by no means succeeded in releasing herself from Naples. She has develop into a winning entrepreneur, yet her good fortune attracts her into nearer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and legal violence that infect her local. but in some way this proximity to an international she has continuously rejected purely brings her position as unacknowledged chief of that global into relief. 

Ferrante is likely one of the world’s nice storytellers. With the Neapolitan quartet she has given her readers an plentiful, beneficiant, and masterfully plotted page-turner that also is a trendy paintings of literary fiction destined to thrill readers for plenty of generations to come.
 

"A beneficial, vital e-book that reminds us, on the correct time, how demanding [European harmony] has been, and what sort of care has to be taken to prevent the negative outdated temptations." --Los Angeles Times

Dark Continent offers an alternate heritage of the 20th century, one within which the triumph of democracy used to be whatever yet a forgone end and fascism and communism supplied rival political ideas that battled and infrequently triumphed which will ensure the path the continent might take.

Mark Mazower strips away myths that experience comforted us considering that global struggle II, revealing Europe as an entity continually engaged in a bloody venture of self-invention.  Here is a background no longer of inevitable victories and ahead marches, yet of slim squeaks and unforeseen twists, the place townships boast a bronze of Mussolini on horseback one second, basically to soften it down and recast it as a couple of noble partisans the next.  Unflinching, clever, Dark Continent presents a provocative imaginative and prescient of Europe's earlier, current, and future-and confirms Mark Mazower as a historian of beneficial gifts.

From the alternate Paperback edition.