Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Bridemaker

  Rexanne Becnel

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  A devilish rake will do anything to learn the secret of a straitlaced schoolmarm in this Regency romance by the bestselling author of The Troublemaker. Word has it that every awkward young lady sent to Mrs. Hester Poitevant’s Mayfair Academy inevitably becomes marriage material. With her students going on to have any eligible bachelor they wish, Hester is able to live comfortably and in the background. And no one knows that under the guise of a stuffy widow, she is a beautiful woman who has never been married. Although Adrian Hawke is a dashing and successful businessman, his scandalous birth makes him a less-than-ideal candidate for a husband. When he draws attention from one of Hester’s favorite students, the prim Mrs. Poitevant forcefully puts a stop to it—and falls victim to his charms herself. Adrian, meanwhile, is not fooled by the feisty widow’s facade. Intrigued, the clever rogue is determined to uncover what Hester is hiding in more ways . . . than one. Perfect for fans of the Bridgerton series! “With this sparkling romance between a highly regarded widow and a thoroughly charming rake, Becnel . . . breathes life into the rigid Regency-era romance genre. . . . Hester’s spirited personality and Adrian's devil-may-care attitude will appeal to a broad readership. Playful in tone and rich in character, this book is fun, breezy entertainment.” —Publishers Weekly “A real treat.” —Booklist

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  Jerusalem Delivered

  Torquato Tasso

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  The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stories, some of which are complicated by differences in religion. The supernatural plays a major role in the action. Partly on this account, and partly because of the multilayered, intertwined plots, the poem met with considerable contemporary criticism, so Tasso revised it radically and published the revision under a new name, La Gerusalemme Conquistata, or "Jerusalem Conquered," which has remained virtually unread, a warning to authors who pay attention to the critics.The original poem influenced Edmund Spenser, whose unfinished epic, The Faerie Queene, is still more complicated in plot than Tasso's poem and, being an allegory, affords the supernatural an even greater share in the action. In Milton's Paradise Lost, the council in hell (first half of Book II) owes much to Tasso's similar scene in Book IV. (Someone with sufficient background in Old English might profitably compare the tirade of Satan in Book IV to the remarkably similar speech of Satan in the Anglo-Saxon Genesis.) Moreover, Milton's decision to write in English rather than in Latin, then the language of international discourse, was due in part to his visit to Tasso's patron, Giovanni Battista Manso, who advised him as he had advised Torquato Tasso before him, to dignify his native language by employing his talents in bold defiance of custom and precedent. Had Petrarch had the benefit of Manso's advice, his great epic, The Africa, might now eclipse his off-hour doodlings, the sonnets about Laura.The text is the Gutenberg Project's version, corrected in certain places by consulting editions, also in the public domain, published in 1749, 1844, 1845, and 1901; A Dictionary of the Italian and English Languages, by Joseph Baretti (Venice, 1795); The Oxford English Dictionary; and an edition of La Gerusaleme liberata itself (Paris: Victor Masson, 1836).(Summary by Thomas A. Copeland)

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  Waves and War - A Short Story

  Kevin Moore

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  September, 1813 
  The United States' second war with Great Britain has thus far been disheartening for the young country. The American invasion of Canada from New York has been thoroughly repelled. The U.S. Navy has suffered a string of embarrassing defeats along the Atlantic Seaboard. Entire swaths of the Northwest Territory are now under His Majesty’s control. But the Americans are not without hope. 
  Crewman Joshua Nelson is serving his country aboard the USS Niagara, the flagship of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. The American fleet has the dangerous yet pivotal opportunity to wrest Lake Erie from British hands and with it the supply line for their troops in the Northwest Territory.

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  The Bishop's Secret

  Fergus Hume

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  Bishop Pendle is the Church of England bishop in a small fictitious English cathedral town. Several years into his work, he receives a visit from a disreputable-looking visitor. The bishop is much upset. What transpired between them that has so upset the good churchman? And then there is the murder. Fergus Hume was one of the most prolific and most popular of 19th century novelists. "Mr. Hume won a reputation second to none for plot of the stirring, ingenious, misleading, and finally surprising kind, and for working out his plot in vigorous and picturesque English. In "The Bishop's Secret," while there is no falling off in plot and style, there is a welcome and marvelous broadening out as to the cast of characters, representing an unusually wide range of typical men and women. These are not laboriously described by the author, but are made to reveal themselves in action and speech in a way that has, for the reader, all the charm of personal intercourse with living people...."(Book Preface and david wales)

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  Compassion - A powerful tale...

  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez

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  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was born in Valencia, Spain on 29th January 1867.  
   
  At university, he studied law and graduated in 1888 but never felt the urgency to practice - he was more interested in politics, journalism, literature and women.   
   
  Politically he was a militant Republican partisan and, in his youth, founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (The People). The newspaper was taken to court many times and he made many enemies. In one incident he was shot and almost killed. In 1896, Ibáñez was arrested and sentenced to a few months in prison. 
   
  Despite this colourful background he found time to write novels. His first published work was ‘La Araña Negra’ (The Black Spider) in 1892, a work that he later repudiated although at the time it was a useful vehicle for him to express his anti-clerical views. 
   
  In 1894, he published ‘Arroz y Tartana’ (Airs and Graces), about a late 19th Century widow in Valencia trying to keep up appearances in order to marry her daughters well.   
   
  Ibáñez’s next sequence of books studied rural life in the farmlands of Valencia and failed to gain much of an audience.   
   
  His writing now took on a new direction with its now familiar sensational and melodramatic themes in 1908 with ‘Sangre y Arena’ (Blood and Sand), which follows the career of Juan Gallardo from his poor beginnings as a child in Seville, to his rise to becoming a famous matador in Madrid 
   
  However, his greatest success was ‘Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) in 1916, which tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian land-owner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides in the First World War.  It was a literary and commercial sensation and became the best-selling book of 1919.  It also propelled Rudolph Valentino to stardom in the 1921 film. 
   
  Ironically his fame in the English-speaking world has come not as a novelist but as the stories behind some of Hollywood’s greatest silent movies. 
   
  Vicente Blasco Ibáñez died in Menton, France on January 28th, 1928, the day before his 61st birthday.

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  The Keepers of the House

  Shirley Ann Grau

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  A "beautifully written" Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family's secrets in the American South (The Atlantic Monthly). 
   
   
   
  Seven generations of the Howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. Over the course of a century, the Howlands accumulated a fortune, fought for secession, and helped rebuild the South, establishing themselves as one of the most respected families in the state. But that history means little to Abigail Howland. 
   
   
    
  The inheritor of the Howland manse, Abigail hides the long-buried secret of her grandfather's thirty-year relationship with his African American mistress. Her fortunes reverse when her family's mixed-race heritage comes to light and her community—locked in the prejudices of the 1960s—turns its back on her. Faced with such deep-seated racism, Abigail is pushed to defend her family at all costs. 
   
   
    
  A "novel of real magnitude," The Keepers of the House is an unforgettable story of family, tradition, and racial injustice set against the richly drawn backdrop of the American South (Kirkus Reviews).

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