Radiance of Tomorrow

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C.W. Gortner

"No one believed I was destined for greatness. So begins Isabella's story, in this evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history's most famous and controversial queens--the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner envisages the turbulent early years of a woman whose mythic rise to power would go on to transform a monarchy, a nation, and the world. Young Isabella is barely a teenager when she and her brother are taken from their mother's home to live under the watchful eye of their half-brother, King Enrique, and his sultry, conniving queen. There, Isabella is thrust into danger when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is determined to wed the one man she loves yet who is forbidden to her--Fernando, prince of Aragon. As they unite their two realms under "one crown, one country, one faith," Isabella and Fernando face an impoverished Spain beset by enemies. With the future of her throne at stake, Isabella resists the zealous demands of the inquisitor Torquemada even as she is seduced by the dreams of an enigmatic navigator named Columbus. But when the Moors of the southern domain of Granada declare war, a violent, treacherous battle against an ancient adversary erupts, one that will test all of Isabella's resolve, her courage, and her tenacious belief in her destiny. From the glorious palaces of Segovia to the battlefields of Granada and the intrigue-laden gardens of Seville, The Queen's Vow sweeps us into the tumultuous forging of a nation and the complex, fascinating heart of the woman who overcame all odds to become Isabella of Castile"--

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Ellie Macdonald

"Claire Bannister just wants to be a good teacher so that she and the other ladies of the Governess Club can make enough money to leave their jobs and start their own school in the country. But when the new sinfully handsome and utterly distracting tutor arrives, Claire finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance that could change the course of her future. Jacob Knightly has a secret. He is actually the notorious Earl of Rimmel. He's just posing as a tutor to escape his reputation in the city. He never expected to fall in love with the kind and beautiful governess. She is the first person to love him for himself and not his title. But when Jacob's true identity is revealed, Claire realizes she has risked her reputation and her heart on a man she doesn't truly know. Will Jacob be able to convince her that the Wild Earl has been tamed and that she is the true countess of his heart?"--Page 4 of cover.

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Ezekiel Nieto Benzion

When Ezekiel Nieto Benzion's grandfather handed him the journals written by Dr. Judah Halevi, he pleaded, "Before I die, tell me about the men in these books. For 200 years, our family in the old country kept the stories safe. I want to know why." The writer of the journals, Judah Halevi, was a doctor, an engineer, a musician, and a family man, who lived in Bohemia during the Napoleonic Wars. But that was all he chose to say openly. Everything else he buried in codes and puzzles. Then, after years of writing, he hid the journals, hoping that someday the truth would be told. What is the truth? Who was he really? What was the terror that he said "jabbed its bony finger into my heart?" What deeds "stained my soul with blood?" And who was the Hawk who led him both into danger and out of his own terrors? You Shall Know Our Names is the first tale from the Judah Halevi journals. Guided by Judah Halevi's clues, Ezekiel Nieto Benzion traced the tales from an old cemetery in Prague to its glory on a Bohemian farm. By the journey's end, two men separated by two centuries become connected by name, heritage and their dream of a better future.

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Andrzej Szczypiorski

"In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of 1943, Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow, possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: she has blue eyes and blond hair. With these, and a set of false papers, she has slipped out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma?s arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw?s Jews are about to meet their deaths in the burning ghetto. A handful of people conspire in Irma?s escape, forming into a pattern of intersecting lives and miraculously defying the duress of time to leap from the present into the past and forward into the future: eighteen-year-old Henryczek Fichtelbaum, condemned by his Jewish looks to be hounded from every hiding place until he returns to embrace death in the ghetto; his little sister, Joasia, who owes her survival first to Suchowiak, a small-time thug who smuggles her out for a price, and then to Sister Weronika, who manages to overcome her dislike of Jews in order to guide the child onto the path of salvation; Kujawski, the Polish patriot who tailors smart riding breeches for German officers; and Stuckler, the SS man who speculates about the nature of harmony and truth"--The publisher.