The story revolves round the angelic and mysterious hermaphrodite Seraphita who seems to inspire love in all she meets. One of Balzac's most unusual novels which will appeal to lovers of the mystical and the supernatural Seraphita will be my master stroke. One can create a Goriot every day but one creates a Seraphita only once in a lifetime. Honore de Balzac Never di Balzac approach the very ideal of Beauty as in this book. Theophile Gautier Honore Balzac (1799-1850) studied law but in 1819 he abandons his legal studies and begins writing . He was a prolific author and in 1839 he begins to think of La Comedie humaine, a grandiose structure which will bring together all the novels he has written and many which he is contemplating for the future. Dedalus published two of the most unusual books in La Comedie humaine, both written in 1834, Seraphita (which includes Louis Lambert and The Exiles) and The Quest of the Absolute. Mike Mitchell has been a freelance literary translator... Views: 36
This is the story of an Irish family from Cork Ireland. It documents how they survived in the 50's and 60's and will take you on a roller coaster ride of every emotion, sometimes all on the same page. Here you will read of an inspiring mother, always encouraging her six children to laugh at life, and believe in tomorrow. She did this inspiring while battling a domineering old grandmother, and an alcoholic husband, as her children drank tea from their jam jars, and read by a candle. Its a book filled with humor, drama, and dreams that come true, culminating in the author meeting his American dream. It's said the book is like, Irish Stew for the Soul. You will feel uplifted when you finish reading a book that seems to be everyone's story. Views: 36
When enemies marry...Constantine Sioulas was a man of primitive passions.... Jade knew that. But she couldn't believe it when, after a whirlwind courtship, he insisted that she marry him! Things like that simply didn't happen to girls like her...did they? And Constantine soon made it clear that, far from loving Jade, he despised her for her apparent betrayal. But, locked into this marriage of convenience, Jade was determined to enjoy her husband's special brand of savage seduction!"New author Sharon Kendrick makes a good first mark in the romance genre..."—Romantic Times on No Escaping Love Views: 36
Magic & Fire burn... The Serenity of the Land of Faerie is threatened as the Unseelie Queen Aveta rages war against the three remaining Seelie Realms of Faerie. As Shade's powers grow, she finds she is running out of time to keep the war from spilling into the human world. Views: 36
In 1960, Edna O'Brien published The Country Girls, her first novel, which so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien, married with two sons, was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. Country Girl brings us face to face with a life of high drama and contemplation. It is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that imprint upon and enliven one lifetime.Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as an acclaimed writer hosted by Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. Brilliant and sensuous, Country Girl is a book we are fortunate that Edna O'Brien decided to write.Review"Edna O'Brien has made of her memories something of both precision and depth, a book that, letting us see her as she was, jumps with an all-consuming curiosity from one lucidly narrated event to another, the scenes of disenchantment and bewilderment mingling with an assortment of surprises, traps, and ventures that are often, but not always, disastrous shocks. She is an observer of tears, including her own, and is able to differentiate what she calls the good tears from the bad. Only Colette is her equal as a student of the ardors of an independent woman who is also on her own as a writer." (Philip Roth) About the AuthorEdna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls Trilogy, A Fanatic Heart, The Light of Evening, Saints and Sinners, and many other books, is the recipient of the James Joyce Ulysses Medal and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in London. Views: 36
The Cottage at Glass BeachMarried to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts state history, Nora Cunningham is a picture-perfect political wife and a doting mother. But her carefully constructed life falls to pieces when she, along with the rest of the world, learns of the infidelity of her husband, Malcolm. Humiliated and hounded by the press, Nora packs up her daughters—Annie, seven; and Ella, twelve—and takes refuge on Burke's Island, a craggy spit of land off the coast of Maine. Settled by Irish immigrants, the island is a place where superstition and magic are carried on the ocean winds, and wishes and dreams wash ashore with the changing tides. Nora spent her first five years on the island but has not been back to the remote community for decades—not since that long ago summer when her mother disappeared at sea. One night while sitting alone on Glass Beach below the cottage where she spent her childhood, Nora succumbs to grief, her tears flowing into the ocean. Days later she finds an enigmatic fisherman named Owen Kavanagh shipwrecked on the rocks nearby. Is he, as her aunt's friend Polly suggests, a selkie—a mythical being of island legend—summoned by her heartbreak, or simply someone who, like Nora, is trying to find his way in the wake of his own personal struggles? Just as she begins to regain her balance, her daughters embark on a reckless odyssey of their own—a journey that will force Nora to find the courage to chart her own course and finally face the truth about her marriage, her mother, and her long-buried past. From BooklistStarred Review Nora Cunningham brings her daughters to Burke’s Island in New England to escape the scandal surrounding her politician husband’s affair. Her aunt Maire is thrilled, but not all of the residents are so welcoming. The silence surrounding the long-ago disappearance of Maeve, Nora’s mother, not to mention the sudden appearance of a shipwrecked man with no memory, is a dark current propelling the story forward. Ella, Nora’s 12-year-old, misses her father fiercely, but 7-year-old Annie is drawn to the sea and, especially, a strange young boy named Ronan. The writing elevates this story above the usual wronged-mother-finds-herself story, and the harsh and, in the right hands, productive island is a character in itself. Readers who require strict realism may be turned off by the touch of the paranormal, but Barbieri does such a wonderful job setting up the beauty and mystery of the island and its rich Gaelic roots that it is not a stretch to ask the reader to imagine that the place is also magical. A wonderful, subtle, transporting story. For readers who enjoyed Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells (2007) and Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader (2008). --Susan Maguire Review“Where Barbieri shines is in her depiction of the microcosm of the island and in the strong links between the generations. Nora discover that ‘Everything is connected. The geography of the island, of the soul,’ and Barbieri makes that connection real.” (Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times )“A must read for fans of Sarah Addison Allen’s Garden Spells.” (Tara Quinn, Cleveland Plain Dealer )“Barbieri’s mix of fairy tale and family drama in a picturesque seaside resort makes her third novel a terrific beach read.” (Library Journal )“Part seaside fairytale, part exploration of real-world tensions....Let yourself be transported to Burke’s Island, a salt-tinged place steeped in legends of selkies and shipwrecks, but also full of bruised and hopeful people making their wayward, human ways toward happiness.” (Marisa de los Santos, author of Falling Together and Belong to Me )“Heather Barbieri’s The Cottage at Glass Beach is a moving, heartfelt story told with vivid description. Open the book and listen—you’ll hear the waves crashing onto the shore.” (Sarah Jio, author of The Bungalow and The Violets of March )“Strikes the perfect balance between high lit and mainstream women’s fiction, infusing a potent and unforgettable love story with unforgettable characters that will remain with you long after the final chapter....[Barbieri’s narrative] will call out to readers of Joanne Harris, Alice Hoffman, and other modern masters of drama.” (Bookreporter.com )“The Cottage at Glass Beach, an enchanting novel about mothers and daughters on an isolated island, is a romantic, delicious read. Barbieri’s beautiful writing and beguiling world view revel in the realities and the mysteries of the sea and of life itself.” (Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of Heat Wave )“Barbieri does such a wonderful job setting up the beauty and mystery of the island and its rich Gaelic roots that it is not a stretch to ask the reader to imagine that the place is also magical. A wonderful, subtle, transporting story.” (Susan Maguire, Booklist, starred review )“In the enchanting world of Maine’s Burke’s Island, fanciful stories - of captured selkies becoming dutiful wives and tears cried in the sea beckoning lovers to shore - are gracefully woven into modern reality.” (Publishers Weekly )“Threads of magical realism throughout the book are quite appealing, and the seaside setting is enchanting.” (Melissa Parcel, Romantic Times Book Review )“Barbieri’s deft writing style is charmingly wry yet evocative, with details and descriptions both telling and vivid. . . . . A sweet summertime yarn [that] . . . provides a lovely, leisurely escape to the bucolic charms of the Emerald Isle.” (Karen Campbell, Boston Globe on The Lace Makers of Glenmara )“The Lace Makers of Glenmara is richly peopled and beguilingly charming but what ultimately makes it so moving is Heather Barbieri’s deep understanding that no life is immune from sorrow and difficulty. I read this wonderful novel with enormous pleasure.” (Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street on The Lace Makers of Glenmara )“Ms. Barbieri’s writerly sense of whimsy and retrospection implies that anyone can work through adversity to happiness - if only the volition is present.” (Nancy Carty Lepri, New York Journal of Books )“The Lace Makers of Glenmara is a charming, moving story, written with a delicate touch.” (Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat and The Girl with No Shadow, on The Lace Makers of Glenmara ) Views: 36
Desperate to free herself and her sister from their stepfather’s aggressive and irrational behavior, Katherine Stillwell is determined to find a sensible, dependable husband as quickly as possible. The Earl of Rudley is a widower. With a disastrous, unhappy marriage behind him he is not eager to marry again. But when he finds himself strongly drawn to Katherine, will he stand aside and watch her wed another? Regency Romance by Lois Menzel; originally published by Fawcett Views: 36
"The object arrived without warning, tearing a spiral path of devastation across the rural landscape. After the explotion, searchers sifted through the immense pile of debris ... to discover a fantastically instrumented capsule, and a strangely human pilot, stone dead. Bowden Karvel's theory, that the capsule's port of origin lay in the distant future, seemed a plausible explanation. But while investigating, the capsule was accidentally dispatched again through time ... only to reappear with an alien navigator, this time destroying a small French town. One thing seemed imperative: a human operator must man the intricate controls of the capsule, riding it forward to its mysterious point of origin. And Bowden Karvel seemed the perfect choice to make the trip..." Views: 36
It's been two years since the outbreak of a plague that turned New Yorkers into flesh-eating corpses. The city’s population has dwindled to three hundred refugees on Governors Island, a park and former military outpost. They struggle with supply shortages and flaring tempers, but the monsters they call ‘rotters’ can’t swim. The survivors aren’t comfortable, but they’re safe. That sense of safety is shattered when Sarge, a former cop and the island’s head of security, comes face to decomposing face with a rotter while on an early-morning patrol. The creature shouldn’t be on the island. What’s worse is that it has a stone-like skin that makes it tougher to kill. Faced with the prospect of an evolving enemy, and desperate to find antibiotics for his dying wife, Sarge has one option: Get into Manhattan, do some recon, forage for supplies, and get out—without drawing the attention of the millions of rotters that now roam the city. Views: 36
Trinity Lane Winslow feared everything and lived her life vicariously through others. She dreamed of the impossible, yearning to be the kind of woman men desired—especially Reid Addison.Reid Addison feared nothing, except how the mousey little blonde daughter of his housekeeper made him feel. Even though Trinity Winslow wasn’t his type, there was something intriguing about her.Lord Ashton Archer lived a fairy tale life with property all over the world, was heir to a ducal dynasty, and had women fawning all over him. Anything a man could want, he obtained by the snap of his fingers.By a twist of fate the three of them find their way into the same illicit world of the infamous Madam Jacqueline Claudette Rousseau. But will they find what each of them truly desires? Or will they always long for the forbidden?Review5 Stars and JERR Gold Star Award! "The Good Sister - Part One is an astronomical piece of contemporary erotic romance that will suck you in from page one and hold you there long after you should've turned the lights out for the evening." Review by: Silla Beaumont Views: 36
