Married For Her Beauty Or A Bitter Atonement Dodo Press

Charlotte Mary Brame/Braeme (1836-1884) who also wrote under the pseudonym Bertha M. Clay, was a prolific Victorian author. She was the author of many popular works of fiction and romance. After attending convent schools in Bristol and Preston and a finishing school in Paris, she worked as a governess. Since her husband was a poor businessman, Charlotte found herself forced to support the family with her writing. Her books were very successful with the public, but her earnings were severely diminished by piracy. Amongst her works are: Dora Thorne (1877), Madolin's Lover (1879), Hilda (1882), Wife in Name Only (1883), The Wife's Secret (1884), An Unnatural Bondage (1887) and Two Fair Women (1900).

Diane Balfour was the only child of an artist who had begun life with high aspirations and ended it with disappointment. He had married young, while in France. He married a French girl, whose face was her only fortune, the daughter of an officer who died in Algiers--Diane de Lioncourt. He brought her to England, and although happy in his love and in his marriage, evil fortune seemed to pursue him. His health failed. He had genius, and if he had been strong would have left his mark on the age; the merits of Lawrence Balfour's pictures were not appreciated until after his death. He lived in France until after the birth of his daughter Diane, so named after her mother. Then they came to England and for six years remained in London. Then his wife died; and he betook himself to a wandering life. In his travels his daughter was his sole companion. Together they would wander through the cities of Italy and Spain, through Switzerland and the Rhine land, the artist teaching his daughter, imbuing her with his love of beauty and art. Lawrence Balfour preserved his daughter from all evil, from all knowledge of harm; she had no friends except the artists who visited her father's studio, and who respected the child as they would have done the presence of an angel. She not only grew up retaining all her innocence, but she learned nothing of the world. They had a reverent way of talking, these artists, and next to religion, taught her to love art. Of the shows, tricks, frauds, treachery, the deceit men and women practice she knew nothing. No one in her presence had ever talked of flirtation, love, or marriage; at sixteen she was ignorant of these things; she had never thought of a lover or of love; her father and the world of beauty filled her heart and soul. Then Lawrence Balfour found his health failing fast. Some one told him to try the warm Devonshire air, and he determined to do so.

The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination. Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens. But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas. Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.

Complete and unabridged edition.

An enthralling virtuoso debut that eloquently captures the loves and losses of a dying man 'All the elements of great storytelling are here, the mystic transports of Ben Okri with the intimate charm of Arundhati Roy ... enchanting' Sunday Tribune 'Beautifully captures with great tenderness and depth the eternal war between duty and desire. This is a love letter to Bombay and its people' Sunday Express Vishnu, the odd-job man in a Bombay apartment block, lies dying on the staircase landing. Around him the lives of the apartment dwellers unfold - the warring housewives on the first floor, the lovesick teenagers on the second, and the widower, alone and quietly grieving at the top of the building. In a fevered state Vishnu looks back on his love affair with the seductive Padmini and comedy becomes tragedy as his life draws to a close.

The story of King Solomon, as told by his court historian.

In this classic of medieval literature, a brilliant and daring thinker relates the spellbinding story of his philosophical and spiritual enlightenment--and the tale of his tragic personal life as well. Peter Abélard paints an absorbing portrait of monastic and scholastic life in twelfth-century Paris, while also recounting the circumstances and consequences of one of history’s most famous love stories--his doomed romance with Heloise. Considered the founder of the University of Paris, Abélard was instrumental in promoting the use of the dialectical method in Western education. He regarded theology as the "handmaiden" of knowledge and believed that through reason, people could attain a greater knowledge of God. "By doubting," he declared, "we come to inquire, and by inquiry we arrive at truth." Abélard's tendency to leave questions open for discussion made him a target for frequent charges of heresy, and all his works were eventually included in the church's Index of Forbidden Books. Unfortunately, Abélard’s reputation as a philosopher is often overshadowed by his renown as a lover. In addition to its value as a scholarly treatise, The Story of My Misfortunes offers the rare opportunity to observe a legendary romance from the point of view of one of its participants.