Download or read book The Birth of Venus Random House Reader s Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new deluxe eBook edition features more than eighty additional pages of exclusive, author-approved annotations throughout the text, which contain new illustrations and photographs, to enrich your reading experience. You can access the eBook annotations with a simple click or tap on your eReader via the convenient links. Access them as you read the novel or as supplemental material after finishing the entire story. There is also Random House Reader’s Circle bonus content, which is sure to inspire discussion at book clubs everywhere. Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florence palazzo. A child of the Renaissance with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the artist’s abilities. But Alessandra’s parents have made plans for their daughter, and she is soon married off to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, the reign of the Medicis, with their love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, is being threatened by the hellfire preaching and increasing brutality of the fundamentalist monk Savonarola and his reactionary followers. As the city shudders with violence and change, Alessandra must find her own way—and finally explore the passions she’s kept so long at bay. “Simply amazing, so brilliantly written . . . almost intolerably exciting at times, and at others, equally poignant.”—Antonia Fraser “A broad mural bursting with color, passion, and intrigue.”—People
Download or read book The Birth of Venus written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.
Download or read book Sacred Hearts written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2009 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Condemned by sixteenth-century demands for lucrative dowries in order to marry, young Serafina is ripped from an illicit love affair and confined in a Renaissance Italy convent, a situation against which she passionately rebels and reminds the convent's doctor of her own unhappy early years. 200,000 first printing.
Download or read book The Transit of Venus written by Shirley Hazzard and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning, New York Times bestselling literary masterpiece of Shirley Hazzard—the story of two beautiful orphan sisters whose fates are as moving and wonderful, and yet as predestined, as the transits of the planets themselves A Penguin Classic Considered "one of the great English-language novels of the twentieth century" (The Paris Review), The Transit of Venus follows Caroline and Grace Bell as they leave Australia to begin a new life in post-war England. From Sydney to London, New York, and Stockholm, and from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two sisters experience seduction and abandonment, marriage and widowhood, love and betrayal. With exquisite, breathtaking prose, Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard tells the story of the displacements and absurdities of modern life. The result is at once an intricately plotted Greek tragedy, a sweeping family saga, and a desperate love story.
Download or read book Mapping The Edge written by Sarah Dunant and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where and why she is going - just that she'll be back soon. Her thoughts as she boards a plane, are that this journey will give her time to think about her life - as a woman hitting forty, a journalist and a single mother. She has no premonition that she will become a statistic in a missing person file. Left at home is Anna's beloved six-year-old daughter Lily, her gay friend Paul, who is surrogate father to Lily, and her eccentric best friend Estella. When Anna doesn't return, they make uneasy excuses until, as time passes, the mind-numbing possibility that Anna might not be coming back becomes terrifyingly real. And while those closest to her battle with their imaginations, Anna is on a dark journey - in one scenario Anna is on a ravishing, sexual adventure, on the other, much darker voyage, she is the victim of a stranger's dangerous sexual fantasy. In a masterpiece of emotionally intelligent and nerve-wracking suspense, Sarah Dunant takes us to the very edge.
Download or read book In The Company Of The Courtesan written by Sarah Dunant and published by Virago. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her companion dwarf Bucino escape the sack of Rome. It's 1527. They head for the shimmering, decadent city of Venice. Sarah Dunant's epic novel of sixteenth-century Renaissance Italy is a story about the sins of pleasure and the pleasures of sin, an intoxicating mix of fact and fiction, and a dazzling portait of one of the worlds greatest cities at its most potent moment in history.
Download or read book Sophie s World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Download or read book In the Name of the Family written by Sarah Dunant and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **A Times (London) Best Book of the Year** Before the Corleones, before the Lannisters, there were the Borgias. One of history’s most notorious families comes to life in this riveting bestseller, as the House of Borgia crosses paths with a young diplomat named Niccolò Machiavelli. “Full to the brim with vivid historical details both gory and beautiful.” —Library Journal It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two—already three times married and a pawn in her father’s plans—is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class on the dark arts of power and politics. What he learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince. But while the pope rails against old age and his son’s increasingly maverick behavior, it is Lucrezia who must navigate the treacherous court of Urbino and another challenging marriage to create her own place in history. Bestselling novelist Sarah Dunant employs her remarkable gifts as a storyteller to bring to life the passionate men and women of the Borgia family, as well as the ever-compelling figure of Machiavelli, through whom the reader will experience one of the most fascinating—and doomed—dynasties of all time.
Download or read book The Serpent King written by Jeff Zentner and published by Ember. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named to ten BEST OF THE YEAR lists and selected as a William C. Morris Award Winner,The Serpent King is the critically acclaimed, much-beloved story of three teens who find themselves--and each other--while on the cusp of graduating from high school with hopes of leaving their small-town behind. Perfect for fans of John Green's Turtles All the Way Down. "Move over, John Green; Zentner is coming for you." —The New York Public Library “Will fill the infinite space that was left in your chest after you finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” —BookRiot.com Dill isn't the most popular kid at his rural Tennessee high school. After his father fell from grace in a public scandal that reverberated throughout their small town, Dill became a target. Fortunately, his two fellow misfits and best friends, Travis and Lydia, have his back. But as they begin their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him. His only escapes are music and his secret feelings for Lydia--neither of which he is brave enough to share. Graduation feels more like an ending to Dill than a beginning. But even before then, he must cope with another ending--one that will rock his life to the core. Debut novelist Jeff Zentner provides an unblinking and at times comic view of the hard realities of growing up in the Bible belt, and an intimate look at the struggles to find one’s true self in the wreckage of the past. “A story about friendship, family and forgiveness, it’s as funny and witty as it is utterly heartbreaking.” —PasteMagazine.com “A brutally honest portrayal of teen life . . . [and] a love letter to the South from a man who really understands it.” —Mashable.com “I adored all three of these characters and the way they talked to and loved one another.”—New York Times
Download or read book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay with bonus content written by Michael Chabon and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author “It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Decade • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award
Download or read book Le Deuxi me Sexe written by Simone de Beauvoir and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1989 with total page 791 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.
Download or read book The Power of Birthdays Stars Numbers written by Saffi Crawford and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-11-25 with total page 842 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most complete, comprehensive birthday forecast available--synthesizing the secrets of astrology, numerology, and fixed stars! In this delightfully addictive, wholly accessible book, two skilled astrologers guide you toward greater psychological insight, self-awareness, and a keen understanding of your unique position in the universe. Packed with an extraordinary wealth of knowledge and clear, easy-to-interpret graphs and charts, The Power of Birthdays, Stars and Numbers provides: ¸ BIRTHDAY FORECASTS--366 profiles--one for each day of the year--reveal your positive and negative personality traits, career strengths, tips on love and relationships, your secret self, your best days for romance and friendship, potential fatal attractions, famous people who share your birthday, and much more! INCLUDING! ¸ FIXED STARS--Though astrologers have used fixed stars for centuries, now the general public can reap the rewards of this classic method for enlightenment. The stars that line the heavens radiate great power, depending on your date of birth. You'll learn your primary fixed star plus those that influence your astrological chart. ¸ NUMEROLOGICAL PROFILES--Discover the importance of the nine basic numbers, and learn how to calculate your holistic number (which reveals your life purpose) and your personal year number (which sheds light on what specific lessons a particular year has in store for you). Travel beyond the twelve signs of the zodiac and tap into The Power of Birthdays, Stars and Numbers. You hold centuries of wisdom in your hands.
Download or read book Orientalism written by Edward W. Said and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.
Download or read book Blood Beauty written by Sarah Dunant and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched only by its brutality and corruption. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy, he is defined not just by his wealth, charisma and power, but by his blood: a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If he is to succeed, he must use his Machiavellian son and innocent daughter. Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood & Beauty breathes life into the astonishing family of Alexander VI and celebrates the raw power of history itself: compelling, complex, and relentless.
Download or read book A Great and Terrible Beauty written by Libba Bray and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's 1895, and after the death of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's being followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls - and their foray into the spiritual world - lead to?
Download or read book Conquistadora written by Esmeralda Santiago and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Leon. And in handsome twin brothers Ramon and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. Marrying Ramon at the age of eighteen, she travels across the ocean to Hacienda los Gemelos, a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited. But soon the Civil War erupts in the United States, and Ana finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been built: the hacienda’s slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own in this epic novel of love, discovery and adventure.
Download or read book There s No Place Like Space All About Our Solar System written by Tish Rabe and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laugh and learn with fun facts about the sun, the moon, the planets, constellations, astronauts, and more—all told in Dr. Seuss’s beloved rhyming style and starring The Cat in the Hat! “The universe is a mysterious place. We are only just learning what happens in space.” The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series combines beloved characters, engaging rhymes, and Seussian illustrations to introduce children to non-fiction topics from the real world! On this adventure into outer space, readers will discover: • what makes each planet in our solar system unique • how a million Earths could fit inside the sun • how astronauts have driven a special car all over the moon • and much more! Perfect for story time and for the youngest readers, There’s No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System also includes an index, glossary, and suggestions for further learning. Look for more books in the Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series! Cows Can Moo! Can You? All About Farms Hark! A Shark! All About Sharks If I Ran the Dog Show: All About Dogs Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? All About Dinosaurs On Beyond Bugs! All About Insects One Vote Two Votes I Vote You Vote Who Hatches the Egg? All About Eggs Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? All About Deserts Wish for a Fish: All About Sea Creatures
