Download or read book I Am Venus written by Bárbara Mujica and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fictional account of the seventeenth-century Spanish painter’s life is “a very enjoyable read . . . A portrait of Velázquez and a meditation on love” (Washington Independent Review of Books). Narrated by the mysterious model who posed for Rokeby Venus, Diego Velázquez’s only surviving female nude, I Am Venus is the riveting account of a great artist’s rise to prominence, set against the backdrop of political turmoil and romantic scandal. A sweeping story of scandal and passion, and a vivid recreation of a corrupt kingdom on the brink of collapse, I Am Venus is a thrilling novel that brings to life the public and private worlds of Spain’s greatest painter. “A well-plotted read with engaging characters and rich detail. Fans of Tracy Chevalier and Elizabeth Kostova as well as art history buffs will enjoy Mujica’s interpretation.” —Library Journal “A worthwhile read . . . Mujica continues her realistic representation by loading the text with rich historical detail [that] instantly creates a sensory world for her readers to inhabit.” —Booklist “Mujica’s prose is vigorous and intense, and the story is paradoxically both dark and illuminating.” —Kirkus Reviews

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 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 Venus on the Half Shell written by Philip Jose Farmer and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon Wagstaff narrowly escapes the Deluge that destroys Earth when he happens upon an abandoned spaceship. A man without a planet, he gains immortality from an elixir drunk during an interlude with a cat-like alien queen. Now Simon must chart a 3,000-year course to the most distant corners of the multiverse, to seek out the answers to the questions no one can seem to answer.

Download or read book Venus Rising written by Kaitlin Bevis and published by ImaJinn Books. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final battle . . . Aphrodite is in big trouble this time. She's stranded on the island of the DAMNED--without powers and without her beloved Ares. Worse, she knows it's only a matter of time before the demigods figure out she's a goddess. If that happens, she'll wish she were dead. Help arrives in the form of an unlikely ally. But Medea has her own demands, and if Aphrodite wants to survive--not to mention find Hades and the weapons cache--she has to meet them. But all their plans take a back seat when they find themselves in even more pressing danger. When Medea moved the island, she rendered it unstable. Now it's breaking apart and sinking. In the chaos, the demigods have risen up, blaming the gods for their misfortune. Nobody is safe from the demigods . . . especially a Pantheon sympathizer like Aphrodite. And they've come up with a deadly test to uncover any imposters. Aphrodite knows she can't do this alone. It will take the whole Pantheon to get her out of this mess. Unfortunately, they'll have to find her first . . . Kaitlin Bevis spent her childhood curled up with a book and a pen. If the ending didn't agree with her, she rewrote it. Because she's always wanted to be a writer, she spent high school and college learning everything she could to achieve that goal. After graduating college with a BFA and Masters in English, Kaitlin went on to write The Daughters of Zeus series.

Download or read book Venus Envy written by Shannon McKelden and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-01-02 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Venus: “After a few centuries of turning pumpkins into coaches and frogs into princes, I thought I was getting the hang of being a fairy godmother. Maybe soon Zeus would let me back onto Mount Olympus . . . then I met Rachel Greer. A goody-two-shoes do-gooder who ignored my advice—terrific advice, if I do say so myself—about men. And kept nagging me for spending too much time in the bathroom when everyone knows a goddess always needs to look her best. Rachel: “I had a decent job, friends, a loving family. My volunteer work, as a mentor for young women and a dog-walker at the local shelter, kept me hopping. Then this amazingly beautiful woman, who literally turns heads—men walk into walls when she passes by—announces she’s my fairy godmother, here to help me fall in love! Next thing I know, she’s moved into my apartment and kicked me out of my own bedroom. Of course I thought she was nuts . . . until the magic started to happen.”

Download or read book Garden of Venus written by Eva Stachniak and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An alluring, exotic novel based on the life of the famous and much-painted courtesan, La Belle Phanariote. Perfect for fans of Painting Mona Lisa.

Download or read book The Great Fire written by Shirley Hazzard and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Fire is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction. A great writer's sweeping story of men and women struggling to reclaim their lives in the aftermath of world conflict The Great Fire is Shirley Hazzard's first novel since The Transit of Venus, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1981. The conflagration of her title is the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, Aldred Leith, a brave and brilliant soldier, finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. Helen Driscoll, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself. In the looming shadow of world enmities resumed, and of Asia's coming centrality in world affairs, a man and a woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, struggling to reclaim their humanity.

Download or read book My Name Is Venus Black written by Heather Lloyd and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this riveting, heartfelt debut, a young woman assumes a new name to escape her dark past and find the redemption she desperately seeks. “It’s impossible not to root for this strong, willful girl as she finds her place in the world and for her brother as he tries to make sense of it.”—Kirkus Reviews “Charming, touching, and a host of other adjectives not often associated with a murderous thirteen-year-old.”—Booklist Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy—until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus’s developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing. More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past. Estranged from her mother, and with her beloved brother still missing, she sets out to make a fresh start in Seattle, skittish and alone. But as new people enter her orbit—including a romantic interest and a young girl who seems like a mirror image of her former lost self—old wounds resurface, and Venus realizes that she can’t find a future while she’s running from her past. In this gripping story, debut novelist Heather Lloyd brilliantly captures ordinary lives thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Told through a constellation of captivating voices, My Name Is Venus Black explores the fluidity of right and wrong, the pain of betrayal, and the meaning of love and family. Praise for My Name Is Venus Black “Fans of realistic coming-of-age fiction will enjoy Lloyd’s fast-paced first novel for the freshly drawn original characters, compelling story line, and beautiful tribute to the healing power of love. It’s bound to have crossover appeal to older YA readers.”—Library Journal “A dark but ultimately uplifting story about family, love, and forgiveness, and how to find your place in the world, My Name Is Venus Black is a powerful debut novel from a fresh voice in fiction.”—New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jio

Download or read book Venus in Winter written by Gillian Bagwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of The September Queen explores Tudor England with the tale of Bess of Hardwick—the formidable four-time widowed Tudor dynast who became one of the most powerful women in the history of England. On her twelfth birthday, Bess of Hardwick receives the news that she is to be a waiting gentlewoman in the household of Lady Zouche. Armed with nothing but her razor-sharp wit and fetching looks, Bess is terrified of leaving home. But as her family has neither the money nor the connections to find her a good husband, she must go to facilitate her rise in society. When Bess arrives at the glamorous court of King Henry VIII, she is thrust into a treacherous world of politics and intrigue, a world she must quickly learn to navigate. The gruesome fates of Henry’s wives convince Bess that marrying is a dangerous business. Even so, she finds the courage to wed not once, but four times. Bess outlives one husband, then another, securing her status as a woman of property. But it is when she is widowed a third time that she is left with a large fortune and even larger decisions—discovering that, for a woman of substance, the power and the possibilities are endless . . .

Download or read book Merchant of Venus written by Ellen Hart and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-02-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Restaurateur and sometime sleuth Jane Lawless accompanies her friend Cordelia to Connecticut for her estranged sister's wedding. But the groom, a reclusive 83-year-old film director with a guarded past, has disappeared. In this intricate, juicy entry in Hart's beloved Lambda Award-nominated series, Jane must confront the secrets and lies of Hollywood's golden age.

Download or read book Unveiling Venus written by Sophia Bennett and published by Ophelia. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoping to get over her first love, Mary heads with her socialite friend Kitty to Venice. There she finds herself faced with a terrible dilemma when Kitty's aristocratic fiancé, Arthur Malmesbury, declares his love for her. Should Mary make her way to fame, fortune and financial independence by marrying him, or stay loyal to her friend? Back in London, she hears dark rumours about Arthur and decides to turn him down. But can she warn Kitty about his true nature before it's too late?

Download or read book Noah s Compass written by Anne Tyler and published by Doubleday Canada. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize–winner Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a retired school teacher forced to re-evaluate his life. Liam Pennywell has never liked teaching at a run-down private school, so when he is forced to retire at sixty-one, it doesn’t bother him. But what does is having no memory of an assailant who attacked him on the first night after he moved to his efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. He’s driven to recover this memory and at the same time recover other moments of his life that he has, over time, forgotten. But he can’t do it alone. What he needs is a “hired rememberer” — someone who will do the remembering for him — but when he finds Eunice, he gets a whole lot more than he anticipated. Subtle, funny, and populated with characters that are as real as friends, Noah’s Compass is an engaging and revealing novel about coming to terms with change, family, love, and memory.

Download or read book Venus in Fur written by David Ives and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 2012 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: Thomas, a beleaguered playwright/director, is desperate to find an actress to play Vanda, the female lead in his adaptation of the classic sadomasochistic tale Venus in Fur . Into his empty audition room walks a vulgar and equally

Download or read book The Forgery of Venus LP written by Michael Gruber and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-05-20 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical—he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly. This feat attracts the attention of Werner Krebs, a shady art dealer who becomes Wilmot's friend and patron. Wilmot is suddenly working with a fervor he hasn't felt in years, but without warning, he finds himself reliving moments from his past—not as memories but as if they are happening all over again. Soon, he believes he can travel back to the 17th century where he lived as the Spanish artist Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez. Wilmot begins to fantasize that as Velazquez, he has created a masterpiece and when the painting actually turns up, he doesn't know if he painted it or if he imagined the whole thing. Little by little, Wilmot enters a secret world of gangsters, greed and murder, with his mystery patron at the center of it all, either as the mastermind behind a plot to forge a painting worth hundred of millions, or as the man who will save Wilmot from obscurity and madness. Miraculously inventive, this book cements Gruber's reputation as one of the most imaginative and gifted writers of our time.

Download or read book What We Talk About When We Talk About Books written by Leah Price and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike. Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020

Download or read book Postcards from Venus written by Trisha R. Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: