by Leigh Greenwood (2002)
(The Night Riders Series) Captain of the Night Riders, Cade Wheeler led the survivors home to Texas to make a fresh start. His grandfather still lived, his ranch still stood, and waiting there was a dark-eyed temptress who made him all too glad to be alive. When he took Pilar in his arms, his blood surged hotly and he felt like the wild young man who’d once abducted her for a lark. But the war had change them all, and now he would allow nothing to come between them – not her family, not his heritage, not even her turncoat of a brother.
Jorge Volpi
In a story based on actual events in Nazi Germany in which civilians were recruited to exterminate the Jews in their own community, the author presents the group's recruitment, training, and terrible mission without historical context and fused with dark fairy tales.
Arthur Golden
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction--at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful--and completely unforgettable.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Victoria Holt
Minella Maddox grew up on a great English estate. But as the schoolmistress' daughter, her place was not, and never could be, at beautiful Derringham Manor. And that is where the trouble started, for Derringham's young heir thought he saw in Minella just the kind of wife he wanted. But a dark and cruelly handsome French count, who always got what he wanted, thought she was just the kind of mistress he had to have. Not for nothing was he called the Devil on Horseback. Yet Minella's humble heritage was to prove more precious that titles and riches, for it freed her to follow her heart, leading her into adventures and dangers she had never dreamed of. It put her directly in the path of another woman's hatred, swept her up into the deadly terrors of the French Revolution and, finally, carried her into the arms of the great and powerful man she loved.
Marie Macpherson
Hailes Castle, 1511. Midnight on a doom-laden Hallowe'en and Elisabeth Hepburn, feisty daughter of the Earl of Bothwell, makes a wish?to wed her lover, the poet David Lindsay. But her uncle has other plans. To safeguard the interests of the Hepburn family she is to become a nun and succeed her aunt as Prioress of St. Mary?s Abbey, Haddington. However, plunged into the political maelstrom and religious turmoil of the early Scottish Reformation, her life there is hardly one of quiet contemplation. Strong-willed and independent, she clashes with those who question her unorthodox regime at St. Mary?s, including Cardinal David Beaton and her rival, Sister Maryoth Hay. But her greatest struggle is against her thrawn godson, John Knox. Witnessing his rejection of the Roman Catholic Church?aided by David Lindsay?she despairs that the sins of her past may have contributed to his present disenchantment. As he purges himself from the puddle of papistry, Knox finds his voice, denouncing everything he once held dear, but will that include his godmother, Prioress Elisabeth? And by confessing her dark secrets, will Elisabeth steer Knox from the pernicious pull of Protestantism or drive him further down the fateful path he seems hell-bent on, a path that leads to burning at the stake? In a daring attempt to shed light on a wheen of unanswered questions about John Knox?s early, undocumented life, this novel throws up some startling claims and controversial conjectures. The First Blast of the Trumpet is book one of The Knox Trilogy.