We meet the people who most influenced Goodwin’s early life: her mother, who taught her the joy of books but whose debilitating illness left her housebound: and her father, who taught her the joy of baseball and to root for the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Gil Hodges. Most important, Goodwin describes with eloquence how the Dodgers’ leaving Brooklyn in 1957, and the death of her mother soon after, marked both the end of an era and, for her, the end of childhood.

    The couples are John Ruskin and Effie Gray; Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh; John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; George Eliot and G. H. Lewes; Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth.

    Several problems. Her childhood love, Ethan, has returned home from the Crusades, but he’s more interested in winning his land back than wooing her. She has to rescue a pair of nuns who are being held prisoner in Derby Castle’s tower by the sadistic Sheriff Buxton. And to top it all off, she’s developing scandalous feelings for Buxton’s lackey, the dark and devilish Crispin. Faced with all that what’s a girl to do but don her disguise as the Derbywood Bandit and take matters into her own hands?Sir Crispin is at his wit’s end. Not only does he have his hands full keeping Buxton from killing half the shire, now his arch nemesis, the Derbywood Bandit, has joined forces with his old rival Ethan. And that’s nothing compared to the burning torch he carries for his ex-fiancé, Lady Aubrey. He would do anything to win Aubrey’s love …… until he suspects that there could be a closer connection between Aubrey and the Derbywood Bandit than anyone knows.

    Abused by her ruthless sister, a pawn in the dynastic ambitions of her father, and dismissed by the king who claimed her for a bride, young Arsinoe finds herself falling in love with a young man forbidden to her. She dreams of a destiny as Egypt's queen, but first she must survive the nest of vipers otherwise known as her family.

    Countess Julie Guicciardi’s life is about to change forever. The spirited eighteen-year-old is taking piano lessons with Ludwig van Beethoven, the most talented piano virtuoso in the musical capital of Europe. She is captivated by his volatile genius, while he is drawn to her curiosity and disarming candor. Between them, a unique romance. But Beethoven has a secret he’s yet to share, and Julie is harboring a secret of her own, one so scandalous it could destroy their perfect love story.When Beethoven discovers the truth, he sets his emotions to music, composing a mournful opus that will become the Moonlight Sonata. The haunting refrain will follow Julie for the rest of her life.Set against the rich backdrop of nineteenth-century Vienna, The Woman in the Moonlight is an exhilarating ode to eternal passion. An epic tale of love, loss, rivalry, and political intrigue. A stirring portrait of a titan who wrestled with the gods and a woman who defied convention to inspire him.

    Aspiring painter Masha C. is blindly devoted to Antosha, her famous writer-brother. Through the years Antosha takes up with numerous women from Masha’s circle of friends, yet none of these relationships threaten the siblings’ close ties until the winter he falls into a depression. Then Masha invites into their Moscow home a young woman who teaches with her—the beautiful, vivacious and deeply vulnerable Lika Mizanova—with the express hope she might help Antosha recover.The appearance of Lika sets off a convolution of unrequited love, jealousy and scandal that lasts for seven years. If the famously unattainable writer has lost his heart to Lika as everyone claims, why does he undertake a life-threatening voyage to Sakhalin Island? And what will happen to Masha if she is demoted from “woman of the house” to “spinster sister”? While Antosha and Lika push and pull, Masha falls in love herself—with a man and with a mongoose—only to have her dreams crushed twice. From her own heartbreak Masha comes to recognize the harm that she has done to her friends by encouraging their involvement with Antosha, but it is too late for Lika, who will both sacrifice herself for love and be immortalized as the model for Nina in Chekhov’s The Seagull.A Russian Sister offers a clever commentary on the role of women as prey for male needs and inspiration, a role they continue to play today. At the same time the novel is a plea for sisterhood, both familial and friendly. Chekhov’s The Seagull changed the theatre. A Russian Sister gives the reader a glimpse behind the curtain to the fascinating real-life people who inspired it and the tragedy that followed its premiere.

    Intelligent and independent, her future seems safe and predictable. Lovely Venetia despairs of ever meeting the handsome hero of her romantic dreams but is nearly resigned to spinsterhood, thanks to the enormous amount of responsibility she inherited with a Yorkshire estate and an invalid but precocious brother, Aubrey. She lives in comfortable seclusion in rural Yorkshire, she has never been further than Harrogate, nor enjoyed the lackluster attentions of any but her two wearisomely persistent suitors. She can not accept to marry the respectable but dull Edward Yardley - she will only marry for love.Then her long-absent neighbor, thirty-eight-year-old Lord Jasper Damerel, returns home to Yorkshire. In one extraordinary encounter, she meets the infamous neighbor, who she knows only by reputation - a gamester, a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character - and before she knows better, she finds friendship with a libertine whose way of life has scandalised the North Riding for years. Lord Damerel finds Venetia to be the most truly engaging and wittily perverse female he has encountered in all his life and determined to woo and win her, he pursues her with a passionate abandon that is soon the talk of the ton. And after her encounter with the dashing, dangerous rake, Venetia's well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon a courtship with him that scandalises and horrifies the whole community.But Venetia has no intention of losing her heart to the rakish lord until she is sure that beneath his swashbuckling ways and shocking manners lies a tender heart belonging to her. And Lord Damerel would marry her in a heartbeat if he did not think it would ruin her. Then she discovers a shocking family secret that changes everything ... It was therefore particularly provoking to find that occasion, Lord Damerel could make up his mind to be idiotically noble....

    The successful rugby career that had dominated his adult life had just been finished by a shoulder injury. Devastated, he could see no future for himself.A line from his grandmother's funeral, which he'd had tattooed on the inside of his arm, inspired him to emerge. After 21 days of solitude, he stepped out of the white room and threw himself into a new life in the dazzling, wide-open spaces of mountains and wildernesses. Within two years, he had become the first person in history to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents and ski to the North and South Poles in the same calendar year, completing the feat in less than seven months. Now he is one of the world's leading extreme-environment athletes.Beyond the Horizon is a tale of redemption and astonishing endurance, set against the backdrop of the most extraordinary locations on EarthFrom the Back CoverThe horizon is only the limit of our sight...At the age of 31, Richard Parks lay in an empty white room at the back of the house his parents were renting. The successful rugby career that had dominated his adult life had just been finished by a shoulder injury. Devastated, he could see no future for himself.A line from his grandmother's funeral, which he'd had tattooed on the inside of his arm, inspired him to emerge. After 21 days of solitude, he stepped out of the white room and threw himself into a new life in the dazzling, wide-open spaces of mountains and wildernesses. Within two years, he had become the first person in history to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents and ski to the North and South Poles in the same calendar year, completing the feat in less than seven months. Now he is one of the world's leading extreme-environment athletes.Beyond the Horizon is a tale of redemption and astonishing endurance, set against the backdrop of the most extraordinary locations on EarthAbout the AuthorBorn in 1977, Richard Parks is a former Welsh international rugby player turned extreme athlete and adventurer. When he's not travelling, he divides his time between Cardiff, Sheffield, and London.

    This title tells the sensational inside story on how professional punter Patrick Veitch overcame adversity to take the bookmakers for over 10 million in an eight year period.

    Working as a supervisor on a production line for planes, Hildy believes she is doing her part to help with the war effort. But troubles at home, with her dependent and overly-protective mother, make it harder for her to findhappiness as she hides her relationship with an American GI.Meanwhile, Cora has lost both her parents in the Blitz and is still reeling from the devastating loss. Along with her friend, Belle, the two young women turn to the dark streets of Southampton to work on the game, wishing to raise enough money for a new beginning elsewhere and put their pasts behind them.For all three women, the war provides challenges and hardships that they will only emerge from by maintaining courage, strength and, above all, hope.

    The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoid being seen. In 1897, an elderly widow asked the court to exhume the grave of her late father-in-law, T. C. Druce, under the suspicion that he’d led a double life as the 5th Duke. The eccentric duke, Anna Maria contended, had faked his death as Druce, and her son should inherit the Portland millions. Revealing a dark underbelly of Victorian society, Piu Marie Eatwell evokes an era when the rise of sensationalist media blurred every fact into fiction and when family secrets and fluid identities pushed class anxieties to new heights.

    Refusing to be parted, they faced the unknown together, never imagining just how much their lives would change. From the trials and tribulations of leaving London, the destructive horror of the Blitz and terrible family tragedy to tea dances, romances and the triumph of making a new life in the country, The Sisters of Battle Road is the compelling true story of six ordinary girls who carved out a life in extraordinary wartime circumstances. Today, the six young girls – Mary, Joan, Sheila, Kathleen, Patricia and Ann – are six remarkable women who have lived to tell their tale of sisterhood and its unbreakable bonds in the shadow of World War Two.

    Costing a penny, readers purchased the stories and entered the fantastic world of superhuman men and damsels in distress.The stories have been popular for over fifty years and Lavinia Howard is a young woman who dreams of being such a writer. Having recently lost her father, she turns to a family friend who puts her in touch with Jasper Courtenay, owner of Courtenay Publishing.Writing under the pen name G. R. Howard, Lavinia creates a character who becomes a huge success as her penny dreadful stories are the most popular ever printed. Her character is brash and obnoxious and has no respect for authority as he solves London murders and the working classes adore him!But strange things begin to happen as the stories Lavinia writes start to come true. Two very similar deaths mirror those she writes about, and Detective Chief Inspector Harrison Bryce is assigned to investigate. Inspector Bryce soon discovers that Lavinia has become so popular that she has also made enemies along with her legion of fans.He realizes that everyone surrounding Lavinia has a motive to have committed the crimes. He must work fast to determine who wants to harm her as he suspects Lavinia may be the next target on the killer’s list.

    Instead, she’s caught up in a whirlwind of balls, marriage proposals, and ton intrigues. Worse, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to her sponsors’ maddening neighbor, Henry Ashton, the Marquess of Mandeville. The handsome, arrogant, sometimes infuriating Mandeville stokes a passionate fire within her that won’t be denied, no matter the consequence.Deep, emotional scars secretly plague Henry, Lord Mandeville. As a result, he’s avoided romantic entanglements at all costs. Only, now he needs a wife—someone from a wealthy, powerful family to further his political aspirations. Instead, he finds himself all but obsessed with the beautiful but unconventional Lucy Abbington—a woman whose passions and wit stir desires he’d rather ignore. And yet…she might just be the one woman who can heal his wounded heart.Lucy and Henry’s heads say no, but their hearts say yes. Will they find themselves undone by love?

    In and out of institutions for the greater part of his youth; Josh, a wild teenager, falls into a rollercoaster romance with Isabel, a Southern jewel, who drives him to search for purpose in professional Mixed Martial Arts. As Isabel marches towards personal battles of her own, Josh fights his way from local MMA circuits to front and center of FOX's The Ultimate Fighter TV show. After losing the most important bout of Josh's career, the pair rekindle their love, and seek to find strength in each other. With a penchant for raw and heartfelt honesty, Samman chronicles a gut-wrenching story of love, loss, and what it means to conquer life's greatest tragedies. The Housekeeper is an intimate look into the world of a man fighting for redemption.