What then? A harsh word can not be hung up by the neck. He gives you impertinence, give him the same; if he give you a slap, return the blow; he a second, you a third; in the end we will compel you to make peace. Whilst if you fight--well, if _you_ should kill _him_, God be with him for I do not like him much; but if he should perforate you, what a nice piece of business Then who will pay for the broken pots?

    The wealthy plantation owners enjoyed an opulent life during this golden age of prosperity. The Vine family owned one of these vast plantations. Hundreds of acres of lush cotton plants covered their property and was home to over three hundred slaves. When Evan Vine's father dies suddenly he is summoned home from France to manage Vine Manor: a task that he does not relish. It is only when he meets Mary Elizabeth Cates that his life changes forever. She returns his love and accepts his proposal of marriage. As a wedding gift he presents her with a magnificent summer home called Magnolia. Mary Elizabeth begins the legacy of women who inhabit Magnolia. In this novel written in a unique style, you will meet and explore the lives of Mary Elizabeth Vine, her daughter; Hallie Vine Simmons, and granddaughters; Mary and Lydia. You will meet the prostitutes who come to Magnolia to seek refuge and the black slave women who have endured the wrath of their masters. Their compelling story will endear itself to you in the detailed profile of the women. Witness the early years when life is good, only to change at a moment's notice by an outbreak of cholera or a slave uprising. There are the middle years when the civil war tears apart the south leaving tragedy and desolation in its path. Finally. the restoration when everyone attempts to find a new life.a new life at Magnolia.

    Orphaned at the age of ten, she has been shuffled around and on her own most of her life. She moved west in anticipation of meeting the man who had stolen her heart, only to be crushed when she finds out she was not wanted.This Christmas, will a meddling mother's scheme bring love to those who are hurting? Find out in this short, holiday story of thirty pages.Other titles available from Leah Atwood:Unlikely Substitute (Mail-Order Husbands)The Not Quite Mail-Order BrideThe Mail Order Bride's Quilt

    He stays at the edge of an outcast community inhabited by eccentrics, criminals and the poverty-stricken. Rising above the physical and human squalor around him, his detachment and wry humour enable him to survive dereliction and destitution with dignity.

    . . The 'subject' was the world as it culminated in the war. Published in four parts between 1924 and 1928, his extraordinary novel centers on Christopher Tietjens, an officer and gentleman- the last English Tory-and follows him from the secure, orderly world of Edwardian England into the chaotic madness of the First World War. Against the backdrop of a world at war, Ford recounts the complex sexual warfare between Tietjens and his faithless wife Sylvia. A work of truly amazing subtlety and profundity, Parade's End affirms Graham Greene's prediction: There is no novelist of this century more likely to live than Ford Madox Ford.

    It's the beginning of an incredible odyssey in which John Carter, a gentleman from Virginia and a Civil War veteran, unexpectedly finds himself on to the red planet, scene of continuing combat among rival tribes. Captured by a band of six-limbed, green-skinned savage giants called Tharks, Carter soon is accorded all the honor of a chieftain after it's discovered that his muscles, accustomed to Earth's greater gravity, now give him a decided advantage in strength. And when his captors take as prisoner Dejah Thoris, the lovely human-looking princess of the city of Helium, Carter must call upon every ounce of strength, courage, and ingenuity to rescue her-before Dejah becomes the slave of the depraved Thark leader, Tal Hajus!Excerpt:Her oval face was beautiful in the extreme, her every feature finely chisled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Similar in face and figure to women of Earth, she was nevertheless a true Martian--and prisoner of the fierce green giants who held me captive, as well!

    

    Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.Sophia, Margaret, and Charlie Kate find strength in a time when women almost always depended on men, and their bond deepens as each one experiences love and loss during World War II. Charms for the Easy Life is a passionate, luminous, and exhilarating story about embracing what life has to offer, even if it means finding it in unconventional ways.

    Somerset Maugham's ode to the powerful forces behind creative genius. Charles Strickland is a staid banker, a man of wealth and privilege. He is also a man possessed of an unquenchable desire to create art. As Strickland pursues his artistic vision, he leaves London for Paris and Tahiti, and in his quest makes sacrifices that leave the lives of those closest to him in tatters. Through Maugham's sympathetic eye, Strickland's tortured and cruel soul becomes a symbol of the blessing and the curse of transcendent artistic genius, and the cost in humans' lives it sometimes demands.

    A sort of fairyland transformation takes place. Beyond the once solid wall strange figures move on -- a new mise en scene, with the old blotted out in darkness. The lady, whom we left knitting by the fire, becomes a fairy -- Sara Lee became a fairy, of a sort -- and meets the prince. Adventure, too; and love, of course. And then the lights go out, and it is the same old back drop again, and the lady is back by the fire -- but with a memory. This is the story of Sara Lee Kennedy's memory -- and of something more. . . .

    But constrained by the times, instead she marries her cousin Thomas, a boat builder, and settles down to raise a family.Janet's loving spirit - the passionate yearning for adventure and for love - is passed down to her son, and through him to his children's children. As generations of the family struggle against hardship and loss, their intricately plotted history is set against the greater backdrop of war and social change in Britain.

    Both are duped, however, by their son Sigismund -- the Blessing of the title -- a juvenile Machiavelli who mixes Gallic cunning with Saxon thoroughness to become one of Mitford's most memorable characters.

    But two years after he was reported missing in action, he appears in a Liverpool hospital with no memory of the time that has passed. Rainier marries and embarks on a life of relative success, but he still can’t recall his time on the battlefield—until the first bombs of the Second World War begin to fall. Suddenly, his memories flood back. Now, recollections of a violent battlefield, a German prison, and a passionate affair all threaten to fracture the peaceful life he has worked so hard to create. From the bestselling author of Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips—who also earned an Oscar for his screenwriting during Hollywood’s Golden Age—Random Harvest is a moving account of the trauma of war, the disruption of a seemingly ordinary life, and the courage required to find redemption in the face of the most overwhelming circumstances.

    Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times.

    Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she's been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.