The country in question is the Philippines, where corruption is strictly the rule. From his deathbed, Don Carlos looks back on the life he has led, from his initiation at the family's private bordello to his reign as head of a worldwide family business empire and then on to an appointment as ambassador to Peru. But--wonder of wonders--it turns out that money can't always buy love and happiness. In the end it is the barefoot servant girl of his youth that the mighty Don Carlos pines for.

    Not that it has wanted for spirited advocates; but, despite all efforts, it has remained firmly on the periphery. The one signal exception is Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers usually rendered as 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'. Werther was an extraordinary and immediate bestseller both in Germany and abroad.

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    *** Volume 1 plays a key role in the plot of the US movie Sex and the City. *** This Volume 2 includes love poems written by Matthew Arnold, Alfred Austin, Samuel Alfred Beadle, William Blake, Christopher Brennan, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Constable, William Cowper, Michael Drayton, George Eliot, Thomas Ford, Stephen Foster, Robert Frost, Thomas Frost, Norman Rowland Gale, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alfred P. Graves, Robert Herrick, Leigh Hunt, Benjamin Jonson, John Keats, Richard Lovelace, Pablo Neruda, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Shakespeare.

    Fanella and five-year-old Ellie get off to a rocky start, but Fanella patiently steers their relationship on to more solid ground. Meanwhile, her relationship with Rod, Ellie's teacher and a married man, is a little more complicated.

    Smart, spunky, and energetic, she bears her situation with a good will and exercises her considerable talents for the good of those she loves. Before long, a Mr. Jefferson comes to board and Georgiana invites her cousin—rich, town-bred cousin Jeannette—to visit. Companioned by her childhood friend Jimps and fast-moving suitor Miles Channing, Georgiana won't be bored for long! Written in 1916.

    They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.

    The story of two women - and a man; of Emmy and Rose, bound to each other irrevocably by ties of friendship and love, and still locked in a ceaseless struggle for the same man, Adam.

    Set against the turbulent history of East Asia in the twentieth century and by turns erotic and tragic, Magdalena vividly depicts three generations of strong Filipino women. Aimee Liu, author of Cloud Moutain Cecilia Manguerra Brainard s novel Magdalena takes its title from a protagonist descended from several generations of equally compelling female characters. . . Brainard uses a nonlinear narrative and multiple points of view to describe the history of the Philippines that roughly corresponds to its contact with the United States from the Spanish American War to the war in Vietnam. The novel brings into focus not only the romantic and social conflicts of different generations of women but also economic and racial divisions in the Philippines . . . Interspersed throughout the novel are archival photographs of places and people, photographs that remind the reader that while the characters are fictional, the backdrop is historical reality. Kathleen Flanagan, Longwood University, World Literature Today With her second novel, Magdalena, Cecilia Brainard adds new portraits to the gallery in Philippine literature. She has always had a strong sense of place. Here, she provides an inner landscape as well. Together, these provide the coordinates for the family secrets that bind the characters as securely as bloodlines. Linda Ty-Casper, author of The Stranded Whale In this novel, Brainard blends a series of multiple perspectives to create a polyphony of voices that enacts Philippine society before and during the Second World War. The narrative is a nuanced vision of the workings of culture, social class, obligation and the Filipino personality. Rocio G. Davis, author of Transcultural Reinventions: Asian American and Asian Canadian Short Story Cycles I have been looking for a good story about the war. N.V.M. Gonzalez, author of The Bread of Salt and Other Stories (upon reading Winning Hearts and Minds, one chapter of Magdalena.) About Brainard s first novel When the Rainbow Goddess Wept The strengthening of the national spirit; the loss of innocence in two generations these themes are explored by the author, who was born in the Philippines, with persuasive conviction and stark realism. (Publishers Weekly) A fast-paced, sensitively written first novel about the psychological damage war wreaks, seen through the eyes of an intelligent, resilient young girl ... Brainard s appealing characters are larger-than-life people who change before our eyes, yet remain utterly convincing. (Kirkus Review) "

    How can they promise to love everyone at church but choose to hate me because I'm different?The social worker told me to keep my chin up, but I don’t know if I’m headed for the streets or the orphanage on the other side of town. Wherever I go, I won’t let them discover my dirty little secret. I can’t risk telling them the truth everyone hates about me.I wish I could take it back.I wish I'd never fallen in love with my best friend, Cameron.Skyler Phoenix is the first book of the Love Grows in Honest Places series.Get it now.This book was originally published as The Climb.

    

    (novel-length 320 pages)Hannah's used to giving all of herself and expecting nothing in return. Her career as nurse is thankless and unforgiving, her family is cold and distant, and her ex boyfriend Sloan is a violent and manipulative sociopath. After their breakup she's desperate to move on with her life, willing to do whatever it takes to distance herself from the bruises, fear, and pain of the abusive relationship.The only way Hannah knows to cope is to absorb herself in work, she'll be less likely to give in to Sloan's constant advances if she has no time to herself. Things start to look up when she answers a craigslist ad for a private duty assignment to care for the dying mother of a very wealthy and powerful employer, Lukas Roth.When Hannah shows up for her interview, Lukas realizes that he's made a mistake, he never meant to interview a nurse as young as her—there's no way she could relate to his elderly mother. But as the interview moves along he begins to see something special in Hannah, she's a genuinely beautiful person and she carries herself with a level of confidence and respect that's rare to find. He can't deny his physical attraction to her and perhaps that worries him the most...It's been a long time since he let someone in. After his wife and children were brutally slaughtered in front of him, he vowed to never love another soul, to never be that vulnerable again. In his line of work, softness equals death.He's learned that love is weakness and has no place in the heart of a man who's lost everything.When Hannah takes the job, she and Lukas fall headfirst into a working relationship that quickly becomes less and less—professional. They each carry deep visceral wounds, damaged from the pain of past relationships and horrific tragedies, but neither can deny the intense physical attraction and yearning sexual desire building between them.Can they each allow their own hearts to heal and let raw passion, desire, and love overcome? Will Hannah be able to accept Lukas for all of his flaws, his dark past and even darker present, or will his mysterious life be too disastrous to unravel?

    “I liked being the evil queen.” Finally, the “villain” gets to tell her version of the story.At first glance, Avery Chase seems to be the typical head cheerleader: she’s pretty, has an equally gorgeous boyfriend, and together, they have won the hearts of Crescent Grove High.Avery’s life starts to fall apart when she meets the goody-two-shoes Charlotte Brooke. But this isn’t your ordinary cheerleader vs. nerd story. When Charlotte steals Avery’s boyfriend, Avery sheds her perfect cheerleader act and goes full-on bad girl.Will Avery get her crown back? Or will Charlotte succeed in defeating their high school queen bee?Bad Girls will show you that there is more to every person than what meets the eye. Grab your copy now, and the next time you find another “villain” in another book, you might have to think twice.

    What Emma didn't expect was to meet Brandon Fisher. Tall and sexy, with dimples that would make any girl swoon, Brandon Fisher was literally the man of Emma's dreams. She couldn't quite believe that this stranger, who seduced her every night in her dreams, actually existed.After serendipitously bumping into each other, Emma could not resist Brandon's pull and spent an unforgettable night with him. Passing it off as a spring break fling, Emma never expected to see Brandon again. But when she started her first day at her new job a few months later, there he was.When Emma begins to fall in love with the man from her dreams, she wasn't expecting that both her and Brandon's secrets and pasts would threaten to pull them apart. Will Emma and Brandon's inextricable pull for one another be strong enough to withstand the external factors that seem to pull them apart, or will Emma's dream man be nothing but just that--a dream?

    When he realizes she’s in trouble, he rushes to save her. He’s instantly attracted to the voluptuous dark haired Selena Gomez. When Selena says she doesn’t remember how she ended up in Cabo, he invites her back to his house. Business as usual ends and his suspenseful romantic adventure begins.