Strange Revelations
Strange Revelations

Author: Lynn Wood Mollenauer

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0271029153

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The Affair of the Poisons was the greatest court scandal of the seventeenth century. From 1679 to 1682 the French crown investigated more than 400 people&—including Louis XIV&’s official mistress and members of the highest-ranking circles at court&—for sensational crimes. In Strange Revelations, Lynn Mollenauer brings this bizarre story to life, exposing a criminal magical underworld thriving in the heart of the Sun King&’s capital. The macabre details of the Affair of the Poisons read like a gothic novel. In the fall of 1678, Nicolas de la Reynie, head of the Paris police, uncovered a plot to poison Louis XIV. La Reynie&’s subsequent investigation unveiled a loosely knit community of sorceresses, magicians, and renegade priests who offered for sale an array of services and products ranging from abortions to love magic to poisons known as &“inheritance powders.&” It was the inheritance powders (usually made from powdered toads steeped in arsenic) that lent the Affair of the Poisons its name. The purchasers of the powders gave the affair its notoriety, for the scandal extended into the most exalted ranks of the French court. Mollenauer adroitly uses the Affair of the Poisons to uncover the hidden forms of power that men and women of all social classes invoked to achieve their goals. While the exercise of state power during the ancien r&égime was quintessentially visible&—ritually displayed through public ceremonies&—the affair exposes the simultaneous presence of other imagined and real sources of power available to the Sun King&’s subjects: magic, poison, and the manipulation of sexual passions. Highly entertaining yet deeply researched, Strange Revelations will appeal to anyone interested in the history of court society, gender, magic, or crime in early modern Europe.

Arcimboldo the Marvelous
Arcimboldo the Marvelous

Author: André Pieyre de Mandiargues

Publisher: ABRAMS

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13:

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"Arcimboldo, a 16th century Italian artist [working in Vienna and Prague] is an artist with an indisputable claim, he single mindedly pursued his invention, the so-termed "composite head", applying it to numerous and varied subjects. Apt and witty combinations of animals, fish, fruit, vegetables, and a variety of other objects, all painted with meticulous realism, are fitted together into head and shoulder figures that sometimes have the look of portraits. He also devised compositions that can be hung upside down as well as right side up. Arcimboldo's major works were his numerous series on allegorical themes, especially the Four Seasons and the Four Elements."--Amazon.

Koralovski - Volume 1 - The Oligarch
Koralovski - Volume 1 - The Oligarch

Author: Philippe Gauckler

Publisher: Europe Comics

Published: 2016-01-13T00:00:00+01:00

Total Pages: 51

ISBN-13:

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Viktor Koralovski was Russia's Oil King--a title that earned him the wrath of President Khanine and ten years in prison. An unexpected missile attack allows Koralovski to escape. However, he soon learns that while he was locked up, his friends and enemies have become almost indistinguishable, which leads to his current position at the centre of a vast conspiracy that threatens to engulf the entire oil industry!

Little Oops!
Little Oops!

Author: Colin McNaughton

Publisher: HMH Books For Young Readers

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780152025373

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Preston Pig and a wolf cause each other to have accidents.

The Death of a King
The Death of a King

Author: Paul Doherty

Publisher: Headline

Published: 2013-06-06

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 0755395859

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The fate of a king is not always glorious... The dramatic events of Edward II's death are told with masterful skill by acclaimed writer, Paul Doherty, in The Death of a King. Perfect for fans of Michael Jecks and Ellis Peters. England's Edward II so angered his wife, her lover, and his subjects that they revolted, deposed him, and made him prisoner. History records that Edward II was eventually murdered in Berkeley Castle and buried publicly in Gloucester cathedral. But was he? The heir, Edward III, charges Chancery Clerk Edmund Beche with uncovering the truth of the matter. Beche's investigation is torturous, blocked by hidden records, outright lies, unexpected confessions, double crosses, and a high body count. Grave digging, burglary, and soldiering at the bloody battle of Crécy await him. But Edward is a most determined man... What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'Doherty writes well and paints a very believable picture' 'Mr. Doherty's research is only topped by his imagination' 'The intrigue! The intrigue! What can I say? Read it... NOW!'

New Ways to Kill Your Mother
New Ways to Kill Your Mother

Author: Colm Toibin

Publisher: Emblem Editions

Published: 2012-05-01

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 0771084420

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In this fascinating, informative, and entertaining collection, internationally acclaimed, award-winning author Colm Tóibín turns his attention to the intricacies of family relationships in literature and writing. In pieces that range from the importance of aunts (and the death of parents) in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, Colm Tóibín illuminates not only the intimate connections between writers and their families but also, with wit and rare tenderness, articulates the great joy of reading their work. In the piece on the Notebooks of Tennessee Williams, Tóibín reveals an artist "alone and deeply fearful and unusually selfish" and one profoundly tormented by his sister's mental illness. Through the relationship between W.B. Yeats and his father, or Thomas Mann and his children, or J.M. Synge and his mother, Tóibín examines a world of family relations, richly comic or savage in its implications. In Roddy Doyle's writing on his parents we see an Ireland reinvented. From the dreams and nightmares of John Cheever's journals Tóibín makes flesh this darkly comic misanthrope and his relationship to his wife and his children.The majority of these pieces were previously published in the Londron Review of Books, the New York Review Review of Books, and the Dublin Review. Three of the thirteen pieces have never appeared before.

A Guest at the Feast
A Guest at the Feast

Author: Colm Toibin

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0771006179

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From bestselling and Booker-nominated author Colm Tóibín comes a beautiful collection of essays ranging from personal memoir to brilliantly acute writing on religion, literature and politics. From the melancholy and amusement within the work of the writer John McGahern to an extraordinary essay on his own cancer diagnosis, Tóibín delineates the bleakness and strangeness of life and also its richness and its complexity. As he reveals the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists and the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as the intricacies of Marilynne Robinson's fiction.The imprint of the written word on the private self, as Tóibín himself remarks, is extraordinarily powerful. In this collection, that power is gloriously alive, illuminating history and literature, politics and power, family and the self.

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme

Author: Gerald M. Ackerman

Publisher: Acr Edition

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13:

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Jean-Leon Gerome has become a popular artist. More and more young people are showing interest in his work and collectors worldwide are hunting down pieces of ever increasing value. This volume is a condensed presentation of his monographs together with a catalogue raisonne."