Renaissance Fiction

Having sent his much-beloved but deceitful young wife Katheryn Howard to her beheading, King Henry fixes his lonely eyes on a more mature woman, 30-year-old, twice-widowed Katharine Parr. She, however, is in love with Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to the late Queen Jane. Aware of his rival, Henry sends him abroad, leaving Katharine no choice but to become Henry's sixth queen in 1543. The king is no longer in any condition to father a child, but Katharine is content to mother his three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and the longed-for male heir, Edward.

Cassie is about to have her dream retirement, joining her favorite gaming world, Biprism Realm. A world filled with magic, portals, pocket realms, towers to eternity, monsters, and, most important of all, steampunk elements. Most people would have balked at the idea of spending their retirement in a virtual world. Selling their pension for a chance at a better start in a new world filled with magic, mayhem, and monsters. Fortunately, Cassie was one who wished to sell everything.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * #1 INDIE BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “An immersive, sensual experience.” —The New York Times "Essential." —The Washington Post "Narrator Lauren Fortgang channels the currents of magic and intrigue running throughout Bardugo’s layered historical...

JAPON. 1600. John Blackthorne rêvait d’y accoster. Il n’imaginait pas que, pour y parvenir, il aurait à braver une tempête. Craché par l’océan, l’équipage du pilote anglais touche enfin terre. Mais les marins regrettent bien vite leur découverte, car ils sont maintenant prisonniers de samouraïs aux mœurs très différentes des leurs. Amené devant Toranaga et Ishido, deux daimyō rivaux dont l’ambition secrète est de devenir Shōgun, Blackthorne fera tout pour recouvrer sa liberté. Mais il faudra bien des sacrifices pour survivre sur cette "Terre des Larmes", où la mort est une fatalité.

Elizabeth of York is the oldest daughter of King Edward IV. Flame-haired, beautiful, and sweet-natured, she is adored by her family; yet her life is suddenly disrupted when her beloved father dies in the prime of life. Her uncle, the notorious Richard III, takes advantage of King Edward’s death to grab the throne and imprison Elizabeth's two younger brothers, the rightful royal heirs. Forever afterwards known as the princes in the tower, the boys are never seen again.

Best-selling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir tells the tragic story of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, a 19-year-old beauty with a hidden past, in this fifth novel in the sweeping Six Tudor Queens series. In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve. A prematurely aged and ailing 49, with an ever-growing waistline, he casts an amorous eye on a pretty 19-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard.

Pour venger la mort de son frère, le tourmenté Preston Seaton, duc de Grandhampton, est prêt à tout. Quand il apprend que Lord Beckett, l'homme qu'il tient pour responsable, a mis la main de sa fille aux enchères, il y voit l'occasion parfaite. Rêvant d'une carrière d'artiste, Lady Penelope Beckett est horrifiée de se voir soudainement liée à un homme qui la méprise ouvertement. Mais pour sauver son père, elle est contrainte d'accepter ce mariage et se retrouve prisonnière dans la demeure sombre et froide du duc.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year's Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade―masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid―with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de' Medici, the Duke of Florence's oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

This audiobook compiles Ralph Waldo Emerson's most important works: "The American Scholar", "The Divinity School Address", "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "The Poet", and "Thoreau". The audiobook is expertly read by Daniel Adam Day. Published by American Renaissance Books.

Written in the winter of 1849, The Scarlet Letter unfolds the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman branded as an adulteress in the harsh Puritan world of 17th-century New England. As Hester calls on her inner strength to transcend her shame, the scarlet letter ceases to be a stigma and finally becomes Hester's symbol of self-affirmation. This dramatic reading heightens the sense of lyric poetry that permeates every line of Nathaniel Hawthorne's great novel.

Born into poverty, brutalised and ignored by her family, it is only when she is married off to a nobleman that her life undergoes a transformation, as her husband recognises in Rosamund a magic she does not know she possesses but which affects almost all who encounter her. Presiding over a luxurious chocolate house where men go to be seen, exchange news and indulge in the sweet and heady drink to which they have become addicted, Rosamund feels blessed. But disaster strikes, and Rosamund stands on the brink of losing all she has worked so hard to achieve.

"And they lived happily ever after." In fairy tales, that's always how things end. The prince and princess ride away on his white horse and from then on, all's right with the world. But what if it wasn't? What if the prince's life didn't suit the princess? What if she felt stifled by life inside the castle walls? Could she tell him? And if she loved him - really loved him - how could she ask him to give up his kingdom?

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...

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.

When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.

In 1461, Nicholas is in Florence. Backed by none other than Cosimo de' Medici, he will sail the Black Sea to Trebizond, last outpost of Byzantium, and the last jewel missing from the crown of the Ottoman Empire. But trouble lies ahead. Nicholas's stepdaughter—at the tender age of thirteen—has eloped with his rival in trade: a Machiavellian Genoese who races ahead of Nicholas, sowing disaster at every port. And time is of the essence: Trebizond may fall to the Turks at any moment.

Sélection d'Essais de Jean-Yves Tadié. Montaigne se lance dans la rédaction des "Essais" avec un objectif : se connaître soi-même. Philosophie, nature, justice, lecture, histoire... Les réflexions qui nourrissent l'œuvre de cet humaniste curieux et érudit sont le résultat d'une vaste introspection. Le génie de Montaigne est de donner à cette découverte du moi une portée universelle. Le plaisir de lecture qu'offrent les "Essais" ne serait rien sans la saveur d'une langue si singulière. L'ancien français - parfois difficile d'accès - a été ici "rajeuni".

Et ce avant que son désir ne le rende fou. Que sa partenaire soit en sécurité dans son nid ne suffit pas. La voir lentement succomber à ses instincts ne suffit pas. Il veut son cœur et son âme. Il en a besoin… avant qu’il ne soit trop tard.

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.

PASSION, MENSONGES, TRAHISONS, DUELS, MEURTRES : UN EXCELLENT ROMAN DE CAPE ET D'ÉPÉE ! Paris, une nuit de février 1578. Six ans ont passé depuis le massacre de la Saint-Barthélémy. Dans une ruelle sombre des abords de la Bastille, Bussy d'Amboise, gentilhomme courageux et loyal, tombe dans l'embuscade que les mignons du roi Henri III lui ont tendue. Seul contre cinq, il ne doit la vie sauve qu'à l'intervention providentielle d'une belle inconnue blonde comme un ange : Diane de Méridor.