But her perfect career and marriage start to unravel when her husband of twenty years suddenly leaves her for another woman. Devastated, Blanca is forced to question the life she once had and how well she truly knows herself. She leaves Madrid for San Francisco, where she becomes entrenched in the history of an enigmatic Spanish writer who died decades earlier. The more Blanca discovers about this man, the more she is enthralled by the ill-fated loves, half truths, and silent ambitions that haunted his life. With lush, imaginative prose and unforgettable characters, "The Heart Has Its Reasons "is a journey of the soul that takes readers from Spain to California, between the thorny past and all-too-real present. It is a story about the thrill of creating one's life anew.

    For all of the duke's boasts that Eleanor has the brains of a man and the soul of a warrior, everyone knows that a girl of fifteen cannot possibly hold the richest dukedom in France. Everyone, that is, except her dying father, who insists on leaving Eleanor his most valuable provinces---and making her prey to the first baron who rides in to kidnap her. Eleanor, though, is not content to sit idly by and let herself become a victim, and devises a plan to marry the heir to the throne of France. While her alliance to Louis VII may be a dazzling one, her husband is a cautious man whose wit and courage do not always match Eleanor's own, and she ultimately finds herself seeking an even greater match with Henry II of England. Sweeping from the courts of Paris to the perils of the Crusades, Duchess of Aquitaine gloriously illuminates the life of one of the most powerful, resourceful, and fascinating women in all of history.

    During the Seven Years War, just after the events narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, Natty brings the daughter of a British sergeant to her father’s station on the Great Lakes, where the French and their Indian allies are plotting a treacherous ambush. Here, for the first time, he falls in love with a woman, before Cooper manages bring off Leatherstocking’s most poignant, and perhaps his most revealing, escape.The Deerslayer (1842) brings the saga full circle and follows the young Natty on his first warpath. Instinctively gifted in the arts of the forest, pious in his respect for the unspoiled wilderness on which he loves to gaze, honorable to friend and foe alike, stoic under torture, and cool under fire, the young Leatherstocking emerges as Cooper’s noblest figure of the American frontier. Enacting a rite of passage both for its hero and for the culture he comes to represent, this last book in the series glows with a timelessness that readers everywhere will find enchanting.

    While visiting his parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, Earl Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around.When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it?One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as "Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man, descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama, "Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified.

    One is a peculiar but endearing 11-year-old, raised in the seedy world of `70s boarding houses and backstages, now packed off to school for the first time; the other, a garrulous ventriloquist's dummy who belonged to George's grandfather, a favorite traveling act of the British troops in World War II. The two Georges know nothing of each other--until events conspire to unite them in a search to uncover the family's deepest secrets.Weaving the boy's tale and the puppet's "memoirs," BY GEORGE unveils the fascinating Fisher family--its weak men, its dominant women, its disgruntled boys, and its shocking and dramatic secrets. At once bitingly funny and exquisitely tender, Stace's novel is the unforgettable journey of two young boys separated by years but driven by the same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved.

    One night at a cocktail party Mary meets Frank Renzo, a reporter who has covered stories from the fall of Dienbienphu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly, reluctantly, they fall in love. Their ensuing affair, in all its desperate elation, plays out against a backdrop that ranges from the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy campaign. A romance in the grand tradition that is also a neon-lit portrait of America at its apogee, On Green Dolphin Street is Sebastian Faulks at the peak of his powers.

    Exhorted by their patriarch Ty Ty, the Waldens ruin their land by digging it up in search of gold. Complex sexual entanglements and betrayals lead to a murder within the family that completes its dissolution. Juxtaposed against the Waldens' obsessive search is the story of Ty Ty's son-in-law, a cotton mill worker in a nearby town who is killed during a strike.First published in 1933, God's Little Acre was censured by the Georgia Literary Commission, banned in Boston, and once led the all-time best-seller list, with more than ten million copies in print.

    It was a time when publishing was still a private affair - a scattered family of small houses here and in Europe - a time of gatherings in fabled apartments, parties into the night. It is a world in which to immerse himself, a world of intimate connections and surprising triumphs. But the deal that Philip cannot seem to close is love: one marriage goes bad; another fails to happen; and, finally, he meets a woman who enthralls, then betrays him, setting him on a course he could never have imagined for himself. Written with Salter's signature economy of prose, All That Is fiercely, fluidly explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change: a dazzling, sometimes devastating labyrinth of love and ambition, of the small shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.

    Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told by way of a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. Continuing Gaddis's career-long reflection on those aspects of corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts, Agape Agape is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction.

    Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.

    A National Book Award finalist, Eat the Document is a riveting portrait of two eras and one of the most provocative and compelling novels of recent years.

    She will risk disgrace, the wrath of her family and the Church, and confront an evil older than Time itself--and, if she isn't careful, lose her immortal soul.With Death Comes As Epiphany, the first in the Catherine LeVendeur mystery series, medievalist Sharan Newman has woven dark mystery and sparkling romance into a fascinating and richly detailed tapestry of everyday life in twelfth-century France, and one of the most moving love stories of all time: Abelard and Heloise.

    This story brings to life not only the man, but one of the most fantastic periods of the fifteenth century.Among the last of the great medieval rulers and the first of the ardent nation builders, Henry V is seen from several perspectives: his queen; his beautiful Welsh mistress, Morgan; his court jester, the fool; a comrade-in-arms; and his own point of view as both boy and man.As actors in this drama, they illuminate the many sides of Henry V's personality - the devil-may-care prince portrayed by Shakespeare, the bold hero of Agincourt, the husband of Katharine of Valois, and the warrior-peacemaker who welded England, Wales, and France into a single kingdom.

    The struggle for England begins. Matilda, Lady of Flanders, Duchess of Normandy, rules as Regent of Normandy for her husband, Duke William. William has won the Battle of Hastings, but Saxon England does not wish to surrender to him as King. As William sets England to flame, Matilda waits in Normandy for the time to come when she can claim her crown. Through bloodshed, battle and struggle will England be won, but even as Matilda rejoices for her new power, a prophesy is spoken, linking the fates of her children to the wailing voices and horrific images in dreams which come to haunt her. Matilda comes to understand that God is watching, and is not pleased with what He sees. As Matilda battles to save her children, she finds she must stand against her own husband, in order to protect the lives, and immortal souls, of her sons and daughters. Through heartache, discord, battle, rebellion and slaughter, the fate of England, and the future of the house of Normandy, will be decided. The Forest and The Flames is book two in The Chronicles of Matilda, Lady of Flanders, by G. Lawrence The author's thanks to Julia Gibbs, proof reader, as well as Consuelo Parra, the artist who designed the cover, and the model featured on the cover, Jaymasee,deviantart.

     In 1483, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, returns home a hero after a triumphant victory over the invading Scots. His adoring family awaits him, but their happiness will soon be shattered by the death of Richard’s brother, King Edward IV. With his young son as his only heir, Edward makes Richard Protector of England on his deathbed, entrusting him to guide and rule until the child king is old enough to take the throne. This spellbinding novel depicts a Richard III far removed from the popular legend of a bloodthirsty tyrant. A man who makes a loyal friend, but a hard enemy. A thoughtful husband, whose devoted care for his young wife is one of the great love stories in history. And a man betrayed from the time of his brother's death until the bloody climax of his reign on Bosworth Field. Praise for Some Touch of Pity: ‘The most moving novel about Richard that I have ever read’ - Rosemary Sutcliff 'An excellent book' - The Times 'The depth of the research and her love for her subject show through on every page... a compelling moving and sometimes haunting novel' - The Times Literary Supplement