The Book Of Venus

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

"The Transit of Venus is one of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century." - The Paris Review Finalist for the National Book Award Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece of Shirley Hazzard—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves The Transit of Venus is considered Shirley Hazzard's most brilliant novel. It tells the story of two orphan sisters, Caroline and Grace Bell, as they leave Australia to start a new life in post-war England. What happens to these young women--seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal--becomes as moving and wonderful and yet as predestined as the transits of the planets themselves. Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Hazzard's novel is a story of place: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm; of time: from the fifties to the eighties; and above all, of women and men in their passage through the displacements and absurdities of modern life.

Bestselling author of Witch, Lisa Lister, shares how the astrology and mythos of Venus can help readers reclaim their agency and inner power. Attune with Venus’s cycle, discover Her sacred teachings and work with Her powerful energy to reclaim your radiant life force. This powerful book by bestselling author Lisa Lister brings together the esoteric teachings of Venus with stories of her ‘wild roses’ throughout history, sacred practices and rituals, and a unique-to-you journey through her magical and mysterious astrological cycle. In Venus, Lisa guides you through every stage of Venus’s cycle and how you can work with it on a personal level, inviting you to step onto Her initiatory path, unlock Her unique codes and access Her potent Divine Feminine wisdom. This book will support you to: attune to Venus’s cycle and gain access to Her magic and medicine follow Venus’s descent as the Evening Star to shed what no longer serves you heal any deep-rooted wounds of shame, fear or rejection cultivate the self-love you need to heal and grow re-birth a wiser, truer, more real expression of you This activating initiation to The Venus Codes will guide you to honour and reclaim your Divine Feminine energy and embrace love, beauty and liberation in every area of your life.

Earth is a dead cinder and the last of the human race struggles for survival beneath the dense clouds of Venus. Two courageous visionaries--the fighting men Brainard and Gordon--must struggle through the hellish surface jungles, but if they fail, both Venus and Mankind will die.

Simon Wagstaff narrowly escapes the Deluge that destroys Earth when he happens upon an abandoned spaceship. A man without a planet, he gains immortality from an elixir drunk during an interlude with a cat-like alien queen. Now Simon must chart a 3,000-year course to the most distant corners of the multiverse, to seek out the answers to the questions no one can seem to answer.

The final novel in the alchemical thriller series set in an alternate Venice by the World Fantasy Award–winning author of A Bed of Earth. Centuries into the future, the sunken city of Venus has been salvaged from beneath the sea and rebuilt there under a dome, where it is supported by a vast network of computers that regulate weather, noise, and the most precious undersea commodity of all—air. It is here that a macabre experiment takes place. Conducted by geneticists at the university, the test consists of the resurrection of two lost souls, both murdered in their times: Jula, a first-century gladiatrix, and Cloudio del Nero, the eighteenth-century composer who met his fate in Lee’s acclaimed first volume of the Secret Books of Venus series. An unexplained catastrophe occurs, claiming several lives. Was it merely an accident, computer failure, or has the trial unleashed an airborne virus? Or is there an even more sinister danger afoot, a force from beyond that threatens the survival of Venus itself? To answer these questions, a traveler from the surface is forced to confront mysteries in his own past that have remained buried, and to reveal the connection that ties him to the unavenged spirits wreaking havoc on the doomed city. “The last of the four Secret Books of Venus is a tale of suspense and mystery.” —Booklist

The dark side has infiltrated many governments and much of the world of finance. The mission from Venus threatens their planned takeover of Earth. Failing a takeover, the dark lords will cause the planet's destruction through nuclear war, to prevent Earth from ascending to the fourth dimension on the path of light. The volunteer wanderers are all that stand in the way.

A “thrilling adventure story" (San Francisco Chronicle) that brings to life the astronomers who in the 1700s embarked upon a quest to calculate the size of the solar system, and paints a vivid portrait of the collaborations, rivalries, and volatile international politics that hindered them at every turn. • From the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. On June 6, 1761, the world paused to observe a momentous occasion: the first transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun in more than a century. Through that observation, astronomers could calculate the size of the solar system—but only if they could compile data from many different points of the globe, all recorded during the short period of the transit. Overcoming incredible odds and political strife, astronomers from Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden, and the American colonies set up observatories in the remotest corners of the world, only to be thwarted by unpredictable weather and warring armies. Fortunately, transits of Venus occur in pairs; eight years later, they would have another opportunity to succeed. Thanks to these scientists, neither our conception of the universe nor the nature of scientific research would ever be the same.

Unlike most other planets, Venus can be seen from Earth's surface with the naked eye. Only the moon burns brighter in the night sky. Readers will learn why Venus's thick clouds help make the planet so hot and why its days last so long. They will also get an up-close look at Venus's remarkable land features and find out how scientists have studied the harsh surface of the planet.

"Early robot probes sent by Russian and American scientists had given us some tantalizing but fragmentary glimpses of the surface and atmosphere, hinting at some of the most exotic conditions seen in the solar system. Magellan showed a planet full of beautiful landscapes, some eerily familiar and some completely unexpected - a world of active volcanoes, shining mountains, and even river valleys carved by torrents of flowing lava. Venus may once have had a wet, temperate, comfortable climate, much like Earth's. What happened to turn it into a hostile, burning, acid world? Our twin has important tales to tell us regarding several of Earth's most pressing environmental problems, including ozone destruction, global warming, and acid rain. In Venus Revealed, David Grinspoon makes a compelling case for comparative planetology as an important tool for gaining knowledge that is vital for our long-term survival on our own planet. He re-examines the uniqueness of our own Earth in light of the recent Magellan findings, while also raising the provocative questions: Did a runaway greenhouse effect transform Venus into the burning oven she is today? By treating Venus as a "controlled experiment," what can we learn from her that will help us survive on Earth? Grinspoon tackles these and other long-debated questions while explaining the incredible scientific advances made possible by the Magellan space probe."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved