Devils Lady

Was she under a spell or truly the Devil’s Lady? Bid by King Edward to marry, Aisley de Laci hopes to avoid the altar by choosing Baron Montmorency. She is certain none will agree to the union, especially the baron, who is rumored to practice the dark arts from his isolated keep. Renowned in battle, Montmorency does not want a wife, no matter how wealthy and beautiful. But even he cannot defy the king, and what comes to him he takes—and holds. Aisley refuses to believe that Montmorency possesses any mysterious powers. Yet how else to explain her own growing feelings for a man so shrouded in shadow she has never seen his face? "Deborah Simmons guarantees the reader a page-turner." – Romantic Times Two-time RITA Finalist Deborah Simmons is a USA Today bestselling author of historical romances originally published by Avon, Harlequin, and Berkley, as well as a romantic comedy.

Contemporary misogyny and antisemitism have their roots in the demonization of women and Jews in medieval Christendom. In church art and mass preaching, the construct of the devil as an outcast from heaven and the source of all evil was linked both to the conception of women as sensual and malicious figures betraying man's soul on its arduous journey to salvation and to the notion of Jews as treacherous dissidents in the Christian landscape. These stereotypes, widely disseminated for over three hundred years, persist today. The exemplum, or cautionary story incorporated into preachers' manuals and popular homilies, was an important mode of religious teaching for clerical and lay folk alike. Sermon narratives drawn from Hindu mythology, Arab storytelling, and secular folktales entertained all classes of medieval society while dispensing theological and cultural instruction. In Devils, Women, and Jews, the vital genre of the medieval sermon story is, for the first time, made accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Rendered in modern English, the tales provide an invaluable primary resource for medievalists, anthropologists, psychologists, folklorists, and students of women's studies and Judaica. Critical introductions and explanatory headnotes contextualize the tales, and comprehensive endnotes and a bibliography allow readers to follow up analogue and subject studies in their own areas of interest.

The Methodist and the highwayman: heaven, meet hell Her pious father’s murder leaves Faith Montague orphaned and lost on the dangerous road to London , only to be rescued by a notorious highwayman. Morgan de Lacy, a lawless rake with the bearing of a nobleman, treats her finer than those who should have loved and protected her. Recognizing a fine gem when he sees one, de Lacy sets about seducing his orphaned companion. His caresses incite passion…his fiery kisses tantalize, and Faith is in peril of losing herself to temptation. She may be the brash Irishman’s captive, but pride will not allow her to surrender to a man whose lust for revenge terrifies her. ~~ bad boy, aristocrat, England, Georgian, highwayman, Methodist

Analyzes and illustrates the demonization of women and Jews in medieval sermon stories, retelling over one hundred of these tales in modern English.

"A pioneer work in…the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft." —Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University Confessing to "familiarity with the devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was "taken with very strange Fits," fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem. More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.

Badly disfigured Lady Isobel Dalceann has fought fiercely to defend her keep, with little thought for her safety. Why, then, has she let a stranger within her walls? While he threatens danger, his battered body marked by war mirrors her own scars and tempts her to put her faith in him. Marc de Courtenay is a mercenary and a loner, although he is drawn to damaged—beautiful—Isobel. But in taking him into her highly defended, buttressed walls, she has unwittingly given him secrets that will enable him to betray her. What would she do if she were ever to find out who he really is…?