The Man in the Iron Mask (Unabriged)

Alexandre Dumas

Maison d'édition: BookRix

Synopsis

The Man in the Iron Mask continues the tale of our four heroes from The Three Musketeers, Dumas's wildly popular introduction to the mischievous Musketeers – D'Artagnan, Aramis, Porthos, and Athos. In this dark sequel, we track their lives many years after the prodigious moment when D'Artagnan receives a commission to be a lieutenant in the Musketeers. We find in The Man in the Iron Mask that things have changed quite a bit from the seeming happy days of swashbuckling adventures.

The story opens at the famous French prison known as the Bastille. A priest named Aramis – a former Musketeer – is sitting in a cell with a prisoner. It seems that Aramis is at the prison to hear the man's confession. The prisoner, however, doesn't have anything to confess, because his only crime is being the King of France's twin brother. Aramis happens to be one of the few people in France who knows this secret. Aramis wastes no time in putting together a plan to free this prisoner and swap him for the legitimate king. Once the former prisoner becomes king, Aramis hopes to be rewarded by being appointed adviser to the King, prime minister, or even pope.

Meanwhile, let's get up to speed on the situation with the real King. We have a colorful cast of characters at court. There's King Louis's mother, Anne of Austria, his younger brother (known as Monsieur, with a capital 'M'), his wife Maria Theresa, and his mistress, a woman named La Valliere. Then there's the Superintendent of Finances, a man by the name of Fouquet, who's throwing a party at Vaux in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the King. Among those who would like to see Fouquet swimming with the fishes is a man named Colbert, the Minister of Finances. To round off courtly life, we have D'Artagnan, captain of the King's Musketeers.

Disponible depuis: 19/12/2023.

Longueur d'impression: 683 pages.

Fiction contemporaine

D'autres livres qui pourraient vous intéresser

Hogg

Samuel R. Delany

The narrator of Hogg is a Huck Finn–like youngster caught in society’s most sinister seams—but unlike Huck, he passes no moral judgments on the violence he takes part in . . .Hogg is the story of a man—a depraved trucker named Franklin Hargus, whom the people he works for call Hogg—and of the nameless boy who tells the story of three days of unspeakable sexual violence and devastation, which, together, they initiate in a small seaside American city in the middle of the last century. Hogg is a towering brute who makes his living as a rapist for hire. By the end of a series of vicious attacks, kidnappings, and mass murders, the reader will wonder who is more corrupt: the man or the boy.   Samuel R. Delany completed his first draft of Hogg within a day, if not within hours, of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City and revised it over the next four years, though it was not released until 1995.

Voir livre

Tender Betrayal

Rosanne Bittner

Stolen kisses and secret reunions lead to a passion that civil war cannot sever in this glorious historical romance from the bestselling author of Caress.   Beautiful, proud Audra Brennan feels like a stranger in a foreign land when she comes north from Louisiana to study music. But when she savors her first forbidden taste of desire in the arms of handsome lawyer Lee Jeffreys, his caresses spark a flame within her that burns away the differences between rebel and Yankee, all objections silenced by the fierce beating of two wild hearts falling impetuously, impossibly in love.   Suddenly cannon fire shatters the country. Principled, impassioned, and committed to a nation united, Lee answers the call to fight against the Confederacy, while Audra hurries home to a plantation shadowed by the darkening cloud of war. But in the most terrible of circumstances, can either afford to surrender their heart?   “Power, passion, tragedy and triumph are Rosanne Bittner’s hallmarks. Again and again, she brings readers to tears.” —RT Book Reviews

Voir livre