She gave him her innocence...now she’ll be his convenient bride! Wherever ruthless billionaire Ethan Devereux goes, the press follow. So when he discovers the astonishing night he shared with talented actress Merida ended in pregnancy, he moves fast to contain the scandal! Suddenly Merida lands the biggest role of her career — playing the part of the loving Mrs Devereux. But she knows the real challenge is pretending she can walk away from their electric chemistry...
The whole world was about to change, and no one would be affected more deeply than Dorothea and Iris Crosby, sisters—identical twins—born to the wealth and social standing of New York City's Park Avenue. It was 1914, and while life in Manhattan seemed to center on grand balls and exotic parties, in Europe everything was coming undone. World War I was about to explode, and when it did it would involve many thousands of young Americans already heading overseas. Aroused by the perils of the rest of the world, Dorothea and Iris decided to join the American Red Cross in France. Sent immediately to the battlefront, they became immersed in a daily struggle to help save lives, and when that wasn't possible, to at least make death less terrifying for the young French soldiers in their care. Beautiful and mysterious, the twin sisters were dubbed les anges, the angels, by the wounded men. They charmed the Americans as well, among them a fighter pilot with whom Iris fell in love—the first threat to the singular bond that held the sisters together. As the losses mounted, however, the link between the sisters grew stronger. Finally, when the battles ended, they awoke to the reality that the world they had known was forever gone, and home seemed a distant and alien place. A powerful story of spiritual awakening, of innocence lost, and of the emotional toll of war, The Innocents is sure to appeal to readers of such outstanding historical novels as Regeneration by Pat Barker, Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, and Rebecca West's classic The Return of the Soldier.
The astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. “It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the oral histories of these women and by the courage and candor with which they express themselves.” —The Washington Post “A remarkably well-researched and accomplished book.” —The New York Times Book Review “A wrenching, riveting book.” —Chicago Tribune In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the hidden social history of adoption before Roe v. Wade - and its lasting legacy. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.
A ruthless billionaire... When Sicilian tycoon Raul Di Savo meets Lydia Hayward it’s not only her cool elegance he desires—seducing Lydia will also deny his lifelong rival’s bid for her body...
Claimed by his touch… Alexis Constantinou haunts Selena Blake's every memory. Before his expert touch awakened her, she was nothing more than a naive schoolteacher. Now she dreams every night of his idyllic Mediterranean island, and the scorching affair that stole her innocence… Left carrying his child! But their brief time together left Selena with a shameful secret. And when family duty calls her back to Greece, she must face the man whose caress branded her as his! Seeing Alexis once more, Selena cannot ignore their still-sizzling passion, but dare she reveal the truth she's hidden from the world—the secret Constantinou heir!
The gospel of Christ is the gospel of life, and the Christian's defining reality. Yet the shedding of innocent blood, primarily through abortion, has now marked an entire generation. Innocent Blood explores a series of questions so as to reveal vital connections between the gospel and the call to defend the unborn. These questions include: What does the Bible mean when it says that "life is in the blood"? What does the Bible say about blood-guilt? How is it that we are all stained by it and accountable for it even though few of us have taken a human life? What remedy does God provide for the guilt of shedding innocent blood? What are we to do when confronted with the shedding of innocent blood, and where does our courage to take action come from? What is the link between protecting the innocent and proclaiming good news to the guilty? Not a book on social issues per se, nor a book on missions, Innocent Blood integrates the two and calls us to courageously challenge the powers of death with the gospel of life.
Positioned at a crossroads between feminist geographies and modernist studies, Excursions into Modernism considers transnational modernist fiction in tandem with more rarely explored travel narratives by women of the period who felt increasingly free to journey abroad and redefine themselves through travel. In an era when Western artists, writers, and musicians sought 'primitive' ideas for artistic renewal, Joyce E. Kelley locates a key similarity between fiction and travel writing in the way women authors use foreign experiences to inspire innovations with written expression and self-articulation. She focuses on the pairing of outward journeys with more inward, introspective ones made possible through reconceptualizing and mobilizing elements of women’s traditional corporeal and domestic geographies: the skin, the ill body, the womb, and the piano. In texts ranging from Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark to Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out and from Evelyn Scott’s Escapade to Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, Kelley explores how interactions between geographic movement, identity formation, and imaginative excursions produce modernist experimentation. Drawing on fascinating supplementary and archival materials such as letters, diaries, newspaper articles, photographs, and unpublished drafts, Kelley’s book cuts across national and geographic borders to offer rich and often revisionary interpretations of both canonical and lesser-known works.
International and New York Times bestseller Deborah Crombie returns with her beloved Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James in a compelling new crime novel as they race to solve the shocking murder of a young woman before panic spreads across London. Junior doctor Sasha Johnson hurries through a rainy November evening crowd in London's historic Russell Square. Out of the darkness, a stranger brushes roughly past her. A moment later, Sasha stumbles, then collapses. Nearby, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant, Doug Cullen, are called to the scene, and quickly discover that she's been stabbed. Kincaid immediately calls in his wife, D.I. Gemma James, who has currently assigned to a special task force investigating knife crimes which are on the rise. Along with her partner, Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot, Gemma joins in the investigation. But Sasha Johnson doesn’t fit the usual profile of their typical knife-crime victim. Sasha is single, successful, career-driven, and has no history of abusive relationships or any gang links. Sasha did have secrets, though, and some of them lead the detectives uncomfortably close to home. Even as the team unravels the Sasha's tangled connections, another, related murder intensifies the hunt and the consequences. Kincaid, Gemma, and their colleagues find that even their closest friendships may be at risk if they are to find the killer stalking the dark streets of Bloomsbury.
In When Mystical Creatures Attack!, Ms. Freedman’s high school English class writes essays in which mystical creatures resolve the greatest sociopolitical problems of our time. Students include Janice Gibbs, “a feral child with excessive eyeliner and an anti-authoritarian complex that would be interesting were it not so ill-informed,” and Cody Splunk, an aspiring writer working on a time machine. Following a nervous breakdown, Ms. Freedman corresponds with Janice and Cody from an insane asylum run on the capitalist model of cognitive-behavioral therapy, where inmates practice water aerobics to rebuild their Psychiatric Credit Scores. The lives of Janice, Cody, and Ms. Freedman are revealed through in-class essays, letters, therapeutic journal exercises, an advice column, a reality show television transcript, a diary, and a Methodist women’s fundraising cookbook. (Recipes include “Dark Night of the Soul Food,” “Render Unto Caesar Salad,” and “Valley of the Shadow of Death by Chocolate Cake.”) In “Virtue of the Month,” the ghost of Ms. Freedman’s mother argues that suicide is not a choice. In “The Un-Game,” Janice’s chain-smoking nursing home charge composes a dirty limerick. In “The Hall of Old-Testament Miracles,” wax figures of Bible characters come to life, hungry for Cody’s flesh. Set against a South Texas landscape where cicadas hum and the air smells of taco stands and jasmine flowers, these stories range from laugh-out-loud funny to achingly poignant. This surreal, exuberant collection mines the dark recesses of the soul while illuminating the human heart.
Lamb to the Slaughter is a short, sharp, chilling story from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale. In Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a twisted story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a wife serves up a dish that utterly baffles the police . . . Lamb to the Slaughter is taken from the short story collection Someone Like You, which includes seventeen other devious and shocking stories, featuring the two men who make an unusual and chilling wager over the provenance of a bottle of wine; a curious machine that reveals the horrifying truth about plants; the man waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach; and others. 'The absolute master of the twist in the tale.' (Observer ) This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Juliet Stevenson. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.
