from an internationally renowned author.This haunting tale follows two cursed families in a saga of romance, black magic, and music set in an ancient abbey where the lines between the past 500 years and the present are blurred into oblivion. The handsome, mysteriously compelling owner of Beauregard Abbey, Nicholas Beauregard, must help Zuleika Rathbone as she traces the path of a murderous ancestor, rousing an unimaginable evil centered around a mystical violin. An unlikely romance amidst the havoc wreaked by practitioners of the dark arts takes the reader deep into the thrilling world of the occult.

    Pieced together, they form a revealing mosaic of the creative mind. It's like viewing an exhibit from the therapist's couch as each entry delves into the mental anguish that afflicts the artist and affects their art.The scope of the artists covered is as varied as their afflictions. Inside, you will find not just the creators of the darkest of dark literature, music, and art. While it does reveal what everyday problem kept Poe's pen to paper and the childhood catastrophe that kept Picasso on edge, it also uncovers surprising secrets of more unexpectedly tormented artists. From Charles Schultz's unrequited love to J.K. Rowling's fear of death, it's amazing the deep-seeded troubles that lie just beneath the surface of our favorite art.As much an appreciation of artistic genius as an accessible study of the creative psyche, Tortured Artists illustrates the fact that inner turmoil fuels the finest work.

    . .In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William’s star rises, Richard’s onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty.So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls upon Richard, forcing him onto a perilous path through a bawdy and frequently brutal London. Entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal which threatens not only his career and potential fortune, but also the lives of his fellow players, Richard has to call on all he has now learned from the brightest stages and the darkest alleyways of the city. To avoid the gallows, he must play the part of a lifetime . . . .Showcasing the superb storytelling skill that has won Bernard Cornwell international renown, Fools and Mortals is a richly portrayed tour de force that brings to life a vivid world of intricate stagecraft, fierce competition, and consuming ambition.

    It tells the woeful tale of a group of 'fallen' women who have had their babies snatched from them at birth to be given up for adoption, and their wretched lives of drudgery earning their keep in the laundry.

    Both women experienced missing time while driving with a companion, and were later taken from their homes. Both have been unwilling participants in ongoing experimental procedures that appear to follow family genetic lines. Both witnesses have given detailed descriptions of the crafts' interiors and technology, medical procedures, messages from the visitors, and the types of ETs they have encountered, including their society's hierarchical structure. Even more startling, both have independently described finding themselves on identical huge craft, within the same timeframe.The Alien Abduction Files finally reveals:The little-known details of alien experimental proceduresThe theoretical science that can explain alien technologyThe messages conveyed by the ETs to abduction experiencersThe vulnerabilities and benefits of living life as an abduction experiencerThe evidence that these phenomena are real.

    With no beauty, and few prospects, she was lucky to discover a lucrative talent - she can make people laugh. Now the queen of London's music hall stage, Dot feels she's not done badly. She has her audience, her independence, and enough money for champagne: a good life. Pretty, popular orphan Kate Eddowes was an unlikely childhood friend for Dot. The older girl's beauty was bound to take her places, and sure enough Kate soon left, lured away by love and the prospect of adventure. A chance encounter on a London street years later makes it clear that Kate's life has not gone according to plan. Though poor and alone, she retains her indomitable spirit. But this is Whitechapel in 1888, and the shadowy streets are no place for a desperate woman to wander...With her inimitable sharpness and wry wit, Laurie Graham brings to life the bustling pleasures and not-so-hidden dangers of life in a crowded city with its extremes of poverty and wealth. And all the while, in the shadows, lurks the lacerating threat of the Ripper.

    The boys are born to fight and die for honor and—if they survive—marry for influence and money, not love. The girls are assets, to be spent wisely. Their wishes are of no import. Their fates are written on the day they are born.Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo, knows all this. He expects to die for his cousin, for his house, but a spark of rebellion still lives inside him. At night, he is the Prince of Shadows, the greatest thief in Verona—and he risks all as he steals from House Capulet. In doing so, he sets eyes on convent-bound Rosaline, and a terrible curse begins that will claim the lives of many in Verona…… And will rewrite all their fates, forever.

    Anne Gehman gave her first spirit readings to her teddy bears at age five. Raised in the Mennonite tradition, she left home at age 14 to finish her schooling. A life-changing near-death experience led Anne to develop her natural gifts, including an uncanny ability to predict future events. She has gained international attention for her help in solving crimes, locating oil and missing persons, healing illnesses, and connecting family members with their loved ones in spirit. She has worked with top government agencies and officials, police departments, judges, and corporate CEOs. While remarkable for her spiritual gifts and experiences, Anne’s life is all the more fascinating due to an unusual twist: she is married to Wayne Knoll, Ph.D., a former Jesuit priest. A brilliant student devoted to his faith, Wayne also left home at 14 to join a Roman Catholic seminary. Even while pursuing his life’s dream as a professor of literature at Georgetown University, Wayne felt an emptiness that only a woman could fill. After more than a decade of religious training, he made the wrenching decision to leave the priesthood, not knowing if he would find the love he sought. The Priest and the Medium shares the remarkable story of two soul mates on parallel paths with divergent beliefs, yet united in their love for God and each other.

    Hiding in the jungle with the last of the unsubjugated Inca, Haylli transcribes his memoirs from quipus –the Inca’s writing system of knotted string– into Spanish with the help of a captured priest. Beginning with a childhood of privilege and a youth spent as a fugitive from Imperial justice, through a successful career as the Inca’s most powerful bureaucrat, to an old age spent in the ruin of his life’s work, Haylli was present at all the important moments of his people. Through his words he hopes their story will be remembered. Fans of historical fiction can look forward to an epic family saga covering more than seventy years to include almost everything we know happened between the zenith and nadir of Inca power. More than two-thirds of the characters are based on real people, and every corner of the empire is visited over the course of the narrator’s life: The plot has court intrigue, forbidden loves, triumphs, tragedies, rivalries, heroes, monsters, coups, civil wars, prophecies, plagues, treasures, sex and violence –all before the conquistadors arrive to change everything forevermore.

    It is the sound of isolation that has sold itself to millions.” Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is the best-selling piece of music in jazz history and, for many listeners, among the most haunting works of the twentieth century. It is also, notoriously, the only jazz album many people own. Recorded in 1959 (in nine miraculous hours), there has been nothing like it since. Richard Williams’s “richly informative” (The Guardian) history considers the album within its wider cultural context, showing how the record influenced such diverse artists as Steve Reich and the Velvet Underground.In the tradition of Alex Ross and Greil Marcus, the “effortlessly versatile” Williams (The Times) “connects these seemingly disparate phenomena with purpose, finesse and journalistic flair” (Financial Times), making masterly connections to painting, literature, philosophy, and poetry while identifying the qualities that make the album so uniquely appealing and surprisingly universal.

    Goddard takes readers on a tour through the works of William Shakespeare, celebrating his incomparable plays and unsurpassed literary genius.

    But she's "going" to make that house into a true home--a home where she and her baby will be safe and happy...and where women in need can find refuge. And if that means trusting stranger Jacob Smith to help with the repairs, then so be it.Jacob came to town with a handful of old postcards and one goal in mind--to find the mother who'd abandoned him years before. He never planned to stay...and he certainly never planned to care for Callie. Yet as they rebuild the house together, Jacob and Callie also build the "family" they've always wanted.

    Caught up in a world of corruption, secrets, staged deaths, and playwriting, Will must use but not abuse his license to quill.License to Quill is a page-turning James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe during history's real life Gunpowder Plot. The story follows the fascinating golden age of English espionage, the tumultuous cold war gripping post-Reformation Europe, the cloak-and-dagger politics of Shakespeare's England, and lastly, the mysterious origins of the Bard's most haunting play: Macbeth. You won't want to miss this fast-paced historical retelling!

    Although the position is for which it argues was hardly new, having already taken shape in several of his theological essays written during the 1920s, it is nevertheless the classic formulation of this position and as such incomparable in the Bultmann corpus.

    High Art Lite provides a sustained analysis of the phenomenal success of YBA, young British artists obsessed with commerce, mass media and the cult of personality Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, Sarah Lucas, among others. In this fully revised and expanded edition, Julian Stallabrass explores how YBA lost its critical immunity in the new millennium, and looks at the ways in which figures such as Hirst, Emin, Wearing and Landy have altered their work in recent years.