Roberta Gellis, acclaimed author of The Roselynde Chronicles, brings medieval London to life—and death—with this tale of splendor and squalor.Magdalene la Batarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She and her women are expected to engage in a number of sinful activities, but bloody murder isn't one of them—until Baldassare, the messenger, dies. Magdalene and her women refuse to allow his death to go unavenged, aware that if they don't find the killer,...

A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of sunshine, wisteria, and solitude as neededFour very diverse women, all seeking revitalization from the dreary February rains of 1920s London, rent the small medieval castle of San Salvatore, nestled high above the bay of Portofino, Italy. Arriving at San Salvatore, they find it awash with the scent of flowers, its olive groves terracing down to the sun-warmed sea.Each has her reasons...

Anne Catherine Emmerich, mystic, stigmatist, and visionary, was born in Germany in 1774 to a poor Catholic peasant family. As a child she believed that angels, saints, and the Holy Family visited and talked with her as she worked in the fields. At twenty-four, she had her first mystic vision of the sufferings of Christ, accompanied by stigmata and bleeding as if from the crown of thorns. At twenty-nine, she became an Augustinian nun and continued to have visions and stigmata. Her visions r...

Named for Aristotle's son, Nicomachus, who was the first to edit this work, The Nicomachean Ethics plays a prominent role in defining Aristotelian ethics. In the ten books of this work, Aristotle explains the good life for man: the life of happiness.For Aristotle, happiness exists when the soul is in accordance with virtue. Virtue exists in a deliberate choice of actions that take a middle course between excess and deficiency; this is the famous doctrine of the "golden mea...

Arguably Charlotte Brontë's most deeply felt work, Villette draws on her own profound loneliness following the deaths of her three siblings.Left to fend for herself after a family tragedy, Lucy Snowe flees from her unhappy past in England to begin a new life as a teacher at a French boarding school in the cosmopolitan capital of Villette. There, Lucy struggles to prove herself in her new circumstances and to manage both her unruly students and her inner grief. But her que...

The last novel completed by Jane Austen before her death, Persuasion is often thought to reflect on the author’s own lost love.Sir Walter Elliot has raised his three daughters with his own sense of haughty pride. Elizabeth, at twenty-eight, has found no one good enough to marry, while Mary has, with some condescension, married the son of the local squire. The youngest, Anne, was persuaded to throw off her fiancé, Frederick Wentworth, eight years ago due to...

One of the masterpieces of English literature, Daniel Deronda tells the intertwined stories of two different characters as they each come to discover of the truth of their natures.Gwendolen Harleth is the high-spirited beauty of an impoverished upper-class family. In order to restore their fortunes, she unwittingly traps herself in an oppressive marriage. She turns for solace and guidance to the high-minded young Daniel Deronda, the adopted son of an aristocratic Englishma...

In sinister industrial England, fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger," a prostitute who rents a beautiful blue dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. By day a potter's assistant, by night a courtesan of the streets, Gustine works to support her fragile only child, born with a remarkable anatomical defect.Surgeon Henry Chiver is a prisoner of his own past, implicated in a series of killings in Edinburgh in which beggars were murdered so that the corps...

The ancient Maya were the only fully literate pre-Colombian people in the Americas. Superb scientists, they developed highly sophisticated mathematics and an intricate and accurate calendar system. Theirs was one of the few complex societies to emerge in and to adapt successfully to a tropical forest environment. Their architecture, sculpture, and painting were sophisticated and compellingly beautiful.In this comprehensive survey, updated for this new edition, Henderson explores th...

One of Dickens’ most popular novels, Oliver Twist tells the story of a young workhouse orphan who escapes into the mean backstreets of Victorian London. There, he is thrust into a den of thieves where some of Dickens’ most depraved villains preside: the incorrigible Artful Dodger, the barbarous bully Bill Sikes, and the terrible Fagin, whose knavery threatens to send them all to the gallows. A novel with autobiographical overtones, this was the first of Dickens’ works to realistic...

Cranford is Elizabeth Gaskell’s gently comic picture of life and manners in an English country village during the 1830s. It describes the small adventures in the lives of two middle-aged sisters in reduced circumstances, Matilda and Deborah Jenkyns, who do their best to maintain their standards of propriety, decency, and kindness. At the center of the novel is Miss Matty, whose warm heart and tender ways compel affection and regard from everyone around her. Also revealed are the f...

Often considered Jane Austen’s finest work, Emma is the story of a charmingly self-deluded heroine whose naive matchmaking schemes often lead to substantial mortification. Emma, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” Her own great fortune has blinded Emma to the true feelings and motivations of ot...