The Honorable Edmund Rookwood needs to get married. By Midwinter. Or his father will disinherit him. Edmund has always tried to be a loyal son and dutiful heir -- unlike his scandalous younger brother. But his father’s ultimatum seems impossible. Edmund has never fallen in love easily, and -- according to his father -- he’s a disappointment, inadequate, never good enough. Who would ever say yes to him? Sebastian Melior, the Duke of Morinbrough, mathematician and inventor and Edmund’s best friend, offers to help. After all, Sebastian’s also unmarried, and they’ve known each other for years. So Sebastian’s proposal is a logical solution ... But this Midwinter marriage of convenience stirs up unexpected emotions. And Edmund and Sebastian just might discover they’ve been each other’s answers all along.
A Guardian / Sunday Times / Irish Times / Herald Scotland / Mail on Sunday Book of the Year Winner of the Bord Gáis Novel of the Year ‘Midwinter Break is a work of extraordinary emotional precision and sympathy, about coming to terms – to an honest reckoning – with love and the loss of love, with memory and pain...this is a novel of great ambition by an artist at the height of his powers’ Colm Tóibín A retired couple, Gerry and Stella Gilmore, fly to Amsterdam for a midwinter break. A holiday to refresh the senses, to see the sights and to generally take stock of what remains of their lives. But amongst the wintry streets and icy canals we see their relationship fracturing beneath the surface. And when memories re-emerge of a troubled time in their native Ireland things begin to fall apart. As their midwinter break comes to an end, we understand how far apart they are – and can only watch as they struggle to save themselves.
Some might call Princess Anja of Ivermere brave for offering herself up as a bride to Kael the Conqueror, a barbarian warlord who'd won his crown by the bloodied edge of his sword. It was not courage that drove Anja from her magic-wielding family's enchanted palace, however, but a desperate attempt to secure a kingdom of her own-even if she has to kill the Conqueror to do it. She expects pain beneath his brutal touch as she awaits her chance. She expects death if he discovers the truth of her intentions. She didn't expect Kael to reject her and send her back to Ivermere. Raised in the ashes of the Dead Lands, Kael fears nothing-certainly not the beautiful sorceress who arrives at his mountain stronghold. But no matter how painful his need for her, Kael has no use for a bride who would only tolerate his kiss. Yet the more of Anja's secrets he uncovers during their journey to return her home, the more determined he becomes to win the princess's wary heart. And Kael the Conqueror has never been defeated... This print edition also includes BEAUTY IN SPRING by Kati Wilde.
This book places Dickens and Wilkie Collins against such important figures as John Henry Newman and George Eliot in seeking to recover their response to the religious controversies of mid-nineteenth century England. While much recent criticism has tended to overlook or dismiss their religious pronouncements, this book foregrounds the religious aspect of their writing and relocates their most important work in the context of contemporary debate. The response of both writers is seen to be complex and fraught with tension.
In the midst of a Victorian culture ingrained with strict social etiquette and societal norms, Wilkie Collins composed novels that contained asocial, even anarchic, impulses. A contemporary of Dickens, Collins creates a world more Kafkaesque than Dickensian, a world populated by doppelgangers, secret selves, oddballs, and grotesques. The essays of Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins purposefully work to expand Collins's legacy beyond The Woman in White and The Moonstone; they move well past the simplistic view of Collins's works as "sensation novels," "detective novels," or even "popular fiction," all labels that carry with them pejorative connotations. This collection represents the range of Collins's aesthetic project from various critical perspectives. New methodological and theoretical approaches are applied both to him most popular and to his lesser-known works, giving the reader a broader picture of this multifaceted and undervalued writer The Editors: Maria K. Bachman in an assistant professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Newsletter, Literature and Psychology, The Dickensian, and Dickens Studies Annual. Don Richard Cox is a professor of English and associate dean at the University of Tennessee. His books include Sexuality andVictorian Literature (Tennessee), Arthur Conan Doyle, and Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood: An Annotated Bibliography. He is the coeditor, with Maria Bachman, of an edition of Wilkie Collins's final novel, Blind Love
Wilkie Collins has given us in this novel one more instance of his strange capacity for weaving extra plots. Armadale, from beginning to end, is a lurid labyrinth of improbabilities. It produces upon the reader the effect of a literary nightmare. Miss Gwilt, Mrs. Oldershaw, and Doctor Le Doux of the Sanatorium are enough to make any story in which they figure disagreeably sensational; and Mr. Collins seizes every possible opportunity of working up the horror they inspire to the highest point. If it were the object of art to make one's audience uncomfortable without letting them know why, Mr. Wilkie Collins would be beyond all doubt a consummate artist. To the accomplishment of this object he devotes great ingenuity, a curious genius for arranging and contriving mysteries, and a good deal of what may be called galvanic power. There is a sort of unearthly and deadly look about the heroes and heroines of his narrative, and though it is necessary for the purpose of the plot that they should keep moving, we feel, that every, one of their motions is due, not to a natural process, but to the sheer force and energy of the author's will. They dodge each other up and down the stage after the manner of puppets at a puppet-show, and after watching their twistings and turnings from first to last we come away full of admiration of the strings and the unseen fingers that are directing everything from behind the curtain. An ordinary novelist would let the villains murder their intended victim at once, and have done with it. Not so Mr. Wilkie Collins. A hundred agencies are brought into play to suspend our interest through this long volume. Spies, detective officers, lawyers, and two or three virtuous and watchful amateurs counterplot day and night against the villains. Each dogs the other till he is tired, and when he is tired the other dogs him. They overhear each other's secrets from behind trees, or lurk unsuspected under windows, keeping diaries sometimes of their proceedings. To heighten the absorbing interest of this contest of intelligences, railways, telegraphy, post-offices, presentiments, and dreams are freely used ; and the wonders of science do duty side by side with the marvels of the supernatural world. As a whole the effect is clever, powerful, and striking, though grotesque, monotonous, and, to use a French word, bizarre. There can be no mistake about the talent displayed. What strikes one as wanting is that humor which is the salt of all great genius, and that sense of proportion and beauty which is the soul of all real art.
