They had made a binding arrangement Dutch surgeon Sebastian van Tecqx had offered Emily’s father the chance to have a life-changing operation. But favors don’t come cheap, and the doctor expected something in return. It wasn’t hard for Emily to exchange her drab nurse’s lodgings for Sebastian’s luxurious home, but how could Emily stop herself from falling in love with her charismatic employer? Especially once Sebastian made it clear that marriage was not part of the bargain.
Dutch surgeon Sebastian van Tecqx had offered Emily's father the chance to have a life-changing operation. But favors don't come cheap, and the doctor expected something in return. It wasn't hard for Emily to exchange her drab nurse's lodgings for Sebastian's luxurious home, but how could Emily stop herself from falling in love with her charismatic employer? Especially once Sebastian made it clear that marriage was not part of the bargain.
Mills & Boon presents the Betty Neels collection. Timeless tales of heart–warming romance by one of the world's best–loved romance authors. They had made a binding arrangement. Dutch surgeon Sebastian van Tecqx had offered Emily's father the chance of a life–changing operation. But favours don't come cheap, and he expected something in return. It wasn't hard for Emily to exchange her drab nurse's lodgings for Sebastian's luxurious home, but how could Emily stop herself from falling in love with her charismatic employer? Especially once Sebastian made it clear that marriage was not part of the bargain.
Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.), who reigned as king of Macedonia for only thirteen years, set a flame of conquest that introduced the dynamism of Hellenism to the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian worlds. Re-creating their ossified cultures, he established a standard of leadership and military conquest that the most successful of Roman emperors, medieval knights, and steppe barbarians would never truly match. Julius Caesar wept that he could not surpass Alexander, while Napoleon could only dream of such invincibility. Alexander had the great fortune to be born the able son of Philip II, one of the most talented men of war and politics produced by the Hellenic world, who created for Alexander the foundation of the Macedonian state and army that would be the tools of his future greatness. Alexander's invincibility was the product of his profound genius - the perfection of body, boundless energy, imagination, daring, intellect, and vision in one man. He was a master tactician, strategist, logistician, diplomat, and statesman, with an ability to win the affection and quick obedience of others. Even his enemies fell victim to his valor and charm. His personal attributes and accomplishments were so far removed from those of ordinary men that he achieved almost superhuman status within his lifetime. Above all, he was the preeminent man of war. Even today, as the noise of battle rattles Kandahar, a city in Afghanistan that Alexander named for himself, war clings to his name.
Few musical works loom as large in Western culture as Richard Wagner's four-part Ring of the Nibelung. In Finding an Ending, two eminent philosophers, Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht, offer an illuminating look at this greatest of Wagner's achievements, focusing on its far-reaching and subtle exploration of problems of meanings and endings in this life and world. Kitcher and Schacht plunge the reader into the heart of Wagner's Ring, drawing out the philosophical and human significance of the text and the music. They show how different forms of love, freedom, heroism, authority, and judgment are explored and tested as it unfolds. As they journey across its sweeping musical-dramatic landscape, Kitcher and Schacht lead us to the central concern of the Ring--the problem of endowing life with genuine significance that can be enhanced rather than negated by its ending, if the right sort of ending can be found. The drama originates in Wotan's quest for a transformation of the primordial state of things into a world in which life can be lived more meaningfully. The authors trace the evolution of Wotan's efforts, the intricate problems he confronts, and his failures and defeats. But while the problem Wotan poses for himself proves to be insoluble as he conceives of it, they suggest that his very efforts and failures set the stage for the transformation of his problem, and for the only sort of resolution of it that may be humanly possible--to which it is not Siegfried but rather Brünnhilde who shows the way. The Ring's ending, with its passing of the gods above and destruction of the world below, might seem to be devastating; but Kitcher and Schacht see a kind of meaning in and through the ending revealed to us that is profoundly affirmative, and that has perhaps never been so powerfully and so beautifully expressed.
“Part historical novel, part futuristic adventure . . . chock full of curious lore and considerable suspense.”—Entertainment Weekly It is history's most feared disease. It turned neighbor against neighbor, the civilized into the savage, and the living into the dead. Now, in a spellbinding novel of adventure and science, romance and terror, two eras are joined by a single trace of microscopic bacterium—the invisible seeds of a new bubonic plague. In the year 1348, a disgraced Spanish physician crosses a landscape of horrors to Avignon, France. There, he will be sent on an impossible mission to England, to save the royal family from the Black Death. . . . Nearly seven hundred years later, a woman scientist digs up a clod of earth in London. In a world where medicine is tightly controlled, she will unearth a terror lying dormant for centuries. From the primitive cures of the Middle Ages to the biological police state of our near future, The Plague Tales is a thrilling race against time and mass destruction. For in 2005, humankind's last hope for survival can come only from one place: out of a dark and tortured past. Praise for The Plague Tales “Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future bio-thriller.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Harrowing . . . Will give readers both nightmares and thrills . . . A carefully woven page-turner from which . . . Robin Cook and Michael Crichton could learn.”—Library Journal “A hard-to-put-down thriller steeped in historical fiction and bio-tech sci-fi.”—Middlesex News (Mass.)
