English Renaissance

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In Renaissance Florence, a young artist searching for her missing mother is discovered by arch-rivals Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci In Tuscany during the early 1500s, Beatrice, a peasant girl, finds herself alone in the countryside after her father is killed and her...

In a city of masks, no one is what they seem . . . Englishman Richard Hughes has survived a stint as a galley slave and is now a free man in Venice, where he enjoys a modest life as a fencing master. He believes he has long-since left behind the ideals that landed him in slavery...until he...

An exhaustively researched novel weaves both historical fact and plausible fiction in bringing the story of Mary Queen of Scots to life.

A woman wrestles with stifling race and gender expectations in this debut novel by Nella Larsen, one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Teutonic Knights were powerful and ferocious advocates of holy war. Their history is suffused with crusading, campaigning, and struggle. Feared by their enemies but respected by medieval Christendom, the knights and their Order maintained a firm hold over the Baltic and Northern Germany and established a formidable regime that flourished across Central Europe for 300 years. William Urban's narrative charts the rise and fall of the Order and, in an accessible and engaging style, throws light on a band of knights whose deeds and motives have long been misunderstood.

A pretend relationship gives two friends more than they bargained for in a Renaissance Faire rom com filled with flower crowns, kilts, corsets, and sword fights. Single mother April Parker has lived in Willow Creek for twelve years with a wall around her heart. On the verge of being an empty...

When the American Civil War finally drew to an end in 1865, victory for the North seemed to herald a new beginning for African Americans. Emancipation for thousands of former slaves appeared, for the first time, to offer people the chance of full and equal participation in American society. That dream didn't last for long, particularly in the Southern states where new Jim Crow laws prevented African Americans from exercising fundamental rights, including the right to vote.

The Scarlet Letter is one of the great classics of American literature. Set in the harsh Puritan environment of 17th-century Boston, it describes the plight of Hester Prynne, an independent-minded woman who stands alone against society. Having given birth to a child after an illicit affair, she refuses to name the father and is forced to wear the letter "A", for Adulteress, embroidered on her dress.

Mary Boleyn was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. In this astonishing and riveting biography, Alison Weir’s extensive research gives a new and detailed portrayal, in which she recounts that, contrary to popular belief, Mary was entirely undeserving of her posthumous notoriety as a great whore.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic by Lucretius—a beautiful poem containing the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles.

In the first part of this audiobook, you will discover: Woolly mammoths were used for the craziest things; brrr! Ice Ages last how long?; how man’s best friends are related to wolves; and more....

Joining the bestsellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, a lively and intriguing tale of two artists whose competitive spirit brought to life one of the world’s most magnificent structures and ignited the Renaissance The dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the great cathedral of Florence, is...

Recovering from Training is the ultimate guide to the theory and practice of recovery from training. It will allow the dedicated athlete and coach to plan out training, diet, and recovery strategies for optimal results. If you can recover better, you can train more, train harder, and make better gains over time.

The papal tiara has been worn by a number of infamous men through the course of its history. Some have been accused of murder, many have had mistresses, while others sold positions in the church to their followers or gave land and wealth to their illegitimate children. E. R. Chamberlin examines the lives of eight of the most controversial popes, from the reign of Pope Stephen VI, who had his predecessor exhumed, put on trial and thrown in the Tiber, in the ninth century, through to Pope Clement VII, whose failed international policy led to the Sack of Rome in 1527.

From a highly lauded modern voice in feminism and racial justice comes a deeply personal and insightful testament to the power of reimagining to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do. “Powerful . . . You will leave these pages changed for...

The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Anneke Sheldrake suddenly finds her family bankrupted when her father’s ship is swept away at sea. Forced to find a way to provide for herself and her siblings, Anneke rejects an offer of marriage from a despised cousin and instead turns to her late mother’s family business – brewing ale. Armed with her mother’s recipes, she then makes a bold deal with her father’s aristocratic employer, putting her home and family at risk.

England, 1651. Oliver Cromwell has defeated his royalist opponents in two civil wars, executed the Stuart King Charles I, laid waste to Ireland, and crushed the late king's son and his Scottish allies. He is master of Britain and Ireland. But Parliament, divided between moderates, republicans and Puritans of uncompromisingly millenarian hue, is faction-ridden and disputatious. By the end of 1653, Cromwell has become 'Lord Protector'. Seeking dragons for an elect Protestant nation to slay, he launches an ambitious 'Western Design' against Spain's empire in the New World.

How did 2.3 billion people become overweight? How did heart disease, cancer, and other degenerative diseases become the leading causes of death worldwide? Our ancestors, especially our distant, Paleolithic ancestors, before the advent of agricultural, enjoyed remarkably robust health. What went wrong?

Many have attempted to read Spenser’s original masterpiece only to retreat, daunted by language that was deliberately archaic even in Elizabethan times. Classical educator Rebecca K. Reynolds bridges this gap, crafting a prose adaptation that gradually introduces more of Spenser’s distinctive vocabulary and diction. By the final volume, listeners will find themselves prepared to engage directly with Spenser’s original text with confidence and delight.

Welcome to Edmund Spenser’s 1590s epic poem, The Faerie Queene. This text-faithful, line-by-line prose rendering transports modern listeners into a vast narrative tapestry. Knights traverse diverse fantastical landscapes including the shadowy depths of an enchanted forest, a treacherous underwater lair, a mysterious subterranean kingdom, and the deadly Bower of Bliss.