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The Virgin Courtesan
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Book Synopsis The Virgin Courtesan by : Michelle Kelly
Download or read book The Virgin Courtesan written by Michelle Kelly and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Penniless and homeless, beautiful Juliana Hearnshaw's virginity is her most bankable asset, and now the gently bred young woman must sell herself to a wealthy, elderly patron who will pay handsomely for her company. But on her way to her first assignation, Juliana falls into the hands of a mysterious highwayman—who makes no secret of his desire for her! Juliana should be afraid—only somehow she finds herself trusting this dark-eyed rogue. Dare she take a chance and, for one night, experience real passion in his arms?
Book Synopsis Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride by : Louise Allen
Download or read book Innocent Courtesan to Adventurer's Bride written by Louise Allen and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of the brothel… Wrongly accused of theft, innocent Celina Shelley is cast out of the brothel she calls home and flees to Quinn Ashley, Lord Dreycott, for safety. But the heat in the daredevil adventurer's eyes tells Lina that the danger is just beginning.... And into the rake's bedroom! Lina dresses like a nun, looks like an angel, but flirts like a professional—and the last thing Quinn expects to discover is that she's a virgin!
Download or read book Rules for Virgins written by Amy Tan and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sensual jewel of a tale is an extract from ‘Valley of Amazement’ – the first book in six years from the beloved and bestselling Amy Tan.
Book Synopsis The Courtesan Duchess by : Joanna Shupe
Download or read book The Courtesan Duchess written by Joanna Shupe and published by Zebra Books. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wickedly sexy Regency romance series debut, a Duchess plays seductress in a cunning scheme that leads to love. Julia, Duchess of Colton, has a cunning plan to banish her debts. All she has to do is seduce her estranged husband—an undertaking that proves to be as wickedly pleasurable as it is improper. After learning the secrets of Juliet Leighton, London's leading courtesan, she travels to Venice in disguise as Juliet. Now all she has to do is locate her husband, conceive an heir, and voila, her future is secure! It’s a foolproof plan. After all, Julia’s husband has not bothered to lay eyes on her in eight years, since their hasty wedding day when she was only sixteen. But what begins as a tempestuous flirtation escalates into full-blown passion—and the feeling is mutual! Could the man she married actually turn out to be the love of her life?
Book Synopsis The Courtesan's Arts by : Martha Feldman
Download or read book The Courtesan's Arts written by Martha Feldman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-23 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courtesans, hetaeras, tawaif-s, ji-s--these women have exchanged artistic graces, elevated conversation, and sexual favors with male patrons throughout history and around the world. Of a different world than common prostitutes, courtesans deal in artistic and intellectual pleasures in ways that are wholly interdependent with their commerce in sex. In pre-colonial India, courtesans cultivated a wide variety of artistic skills, including magic, music, and chemistry. In Ming dynasty China, courtesans communicated with their patrons through poetry and music. Yet because these cultural practices have existed primarily outside our present-day canons of art and have often occurred through oral transmission, courtesans' arts have vanished almost without trace. The Courtesan's Arts delves into this hidden legacy, unveiling the artistic practices and cultural production of courtesan cultures with a sideways glance at the partly-related geisha. Balancing theoretical and empirical research, this interdisciplinary collection is the first of its kind to explore courtesan cultures through diverse case studies--the Edo period and modern Japan, 20th-century Korea, Ming dynasty China, ancient Greece, early modern Italy, and India, past and present. Each essay puts forward new perspectives on how the arts have figured in the courtesan's survival or demise. Though performative and often flamboyant, courtesans have been enigmatic and elusive to their beholders--including scholars. They have shaped cultures through art, yet their arts, often intangible, have all but faded from view. Often courtesans have hovered in the crevices of space, time, and practice--between gifts and money, courts and cities, feminine allure and masculine power, as substitutes for wives but keepers of culture. Reproductively irrelevant, they have tended to be ambiguous figures, thriving on social distinction while operating outside official familial relations. They have symbolized desirability and sophistication yet often been reviled as decadent. The Courtesan's Arts shows that while courtesans cultures have appeared regularly in various times and places, they are universal neither as a phenomenon nor as a type. To the contrary, when they do crop up, wide variations exist. What binds together courtesans and their arts in the present-day post-industrialized world of global services and commodities is their fragility. Once vital to cultures of leisure and pleasure, courtesans are now largely forgotten, transformed into national icons or historical curiosities, or reduced to prostitution.
Book Synopsis In the Company of the Courtesan by : Sarah Dunant
Download or read book In the Company of the Courtesan written by Sarah Dunant and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor’s army blew a hole in the wall of God’s eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment. Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant’s epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to become a miracle of east-west trade: rich and rancid, pious and profitable, beautiful and squalid. With a mix of courage and cunning they infiltrate Venetian society. Together they make the perfect partnership: the sharp-tongued, sharp-witted dwarf, and his vibrant mistress, trained from birth to charm, entertain, and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Yet as their fortunes rise, this perfect partnership comes under threat, from the searing passion of a lover who wants more than his allotted nights to the attentions of an admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his sultan’s court. But Fiammetta and Bucino’s greatest challenge comes from a young crippled woman, a blind healer who insinuates herself into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all. A story of desire and deception, sin and religion, loyalty and friendship, In the Company of the Courtesan paints a portrait of one of the world’s greatest cities at its most potent moment in history: It is a picture that remains vivid long after the final page.
Download or read book Courtesan written by Diane Haeger and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the disapproving gossip of the Court, a royal romance defies all obstacles. The Court of François I is full of lust, intrigue, and bawdy bon temps—a different world from the quiet country life Diane de Poitiers led with her elderly husband. Now a widow, the elegant Diane is called back to Court, where the King’s obvious interest marks her as an enemy to the King’s favourite, Anne d’Heilly. The Court is soon electrified by rumors of their confrontations. As Anne calls on her most venomous tricks to drive Diane away, Diane finds an ally in the one member of Court with no allegiance to the King’s mistress: his teenage second son, Henri. Neglected by his father and disliked by his brothers, Prince Henri expects little from his life. But as his friendship with Diane deepens into infatuation and then a romance that scandalizes the Court, the Prince begins to discover hope for a future with Diane. But fate and his father have other plans for Henri—including a political marriage with Catherine de Medici. Despite daunting obstacles, Henri’s devotion to Diane never wanes; their passion becomes one of the most legendary romances in the history of France. Also available as an eBook
Book Synopsis The Virgin Who Bewitched Lord Lymington by : Anna Bradley
Download or read book The Virgin Who Bewitched Lord Lymington written by Anna Bradley and published by Lyrical Press. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the heart of Mayfair lies the Clifford Charity School for Wayward Girls, where a secret society of extraordinary young women conspire to bring England’s wickedest aristocrats to justice . . . In London’s brothels and bawdy houses, sin and scandal run rampant. Yet as Emma Downing knows, far worse perils often lurk within the lavish homes of high society. Emma has been tasked with uncovering secrets at the Lymington family’s country estate—the scene of a rash of mysterious disappearances. Samuel Fitzroy, Marquess of Lymington, is no easy mark, and Emma fears he may see through both her disguise and her feigned indifference to his seductive charm . . . Recently returned to England after a long absence, Samuel finds his family in chaos amid disquieting rumors floating about town. His young cousin has become a worthless rake, several housemaids have gone missing, and then there is Emma, who is clearly not the naïve debutante she pretends to be. Yet irresistibly attracted despite his mistrust, he joins her in a daring game of cat and mouse. For Emma will unearth the truth even if it brings ruin to Samuel’s family—but the threat is as inescapable as their mutual desire . . . Praise for Anna Bradley and The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray “A sparkling Georgian romance . . . Bradley expertly balances excitement, humor, and heat to create a rollicking romance headlined by a pair of irresistible protagonists. Readers will be eager to see what comes next.” —Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
Book Synopsis Queen of the Courtesans by : Barbara White
Download or read book Queen of the Courtesans written by Barbara White and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fanny Murray was an incomparable Georgian beauty and the most desired courtesan of the 1750s. The daughter of an impoverished musician from Bath, she took London society by storm, not only as the most prized 'purchaseable beauty' of her day, but also as a fashion icon and muse to poets, writers and artists. She counted princes, aristocrats and politicians among her friends and lovers, but relished the company of rogues, fraudsters and ne'er-do-wells. Barbara White presents evidence to suggest that Fanny Murray participated spiritedly in the sexual antics of the notorious 'Monks of Medmenham', the most infamous of the Hell-fire Clubs. After she retired from prostitution, Fanny Murray reinvented herself, entering a pragmatic marriage with the Scottish actor David Ross. Surprisingly, her virtues as a devoted and faithful wife became almost proverbial. Even so, Murray could not escape her disreputable past. In 1763, a scurrilous poem dedicated to her caused a national scandal that ended in the infamous trial of the radical politician John Wilkes for obscene libel. Barbara White's portrait of Fanny Murray takes readers from the brothels of Covent Garden to sex romps at Medmenham Abbey, from refined drawing rooms in London to marital respectability in Edinburgh. This is an illuminating contribution to the scholarly understanding and popular appreciation of a complex and intriguing period of British history. Fanny Murray's triumph – against almost insuperable odds – is a remarkable story, as rich in the telling as it is enthralling.
Download or read book Sins of a Virgin written by Anna Randol and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new talent has emerged on the historical romance scene, and author Sarah MacLean calls her, “Perfect!” Anna Randol, a boldly original voice, returns with her second novel, Sins of a Virgin, a most unusual love story as edgy, sexy, and exciting as her magnificent debut, Secret in Her Kiss. The always daring—and dazzling—Anna Randol sets this, the start of a new series, in seedy underbelly of London where a desperate heroine facing destitution is about to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder, but is saved by a dashing lord who seeks her help in his mission of vengeance. Fans of Loretta Chase, Sherry Thomas and Stephanie Laurens take note: these innovative and sensual Sins are just the sort of romance you crave.
Book Synopsis The Honest Courtesan by : Margaret F. Rosenthal
Download or read book The Honest Courtesan written by Margaret F. Rosenthal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-07-13 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Venetian courtesan has long captured the imagination as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty, and unruliness. What then to make of the cortigiana onesta—the honest courtesan who recast virtue as intellectual integrity and offered wit and refinement in return for patronage and a place in public life? Veronica Franco (1546-1591) was such a woman, a writer and citizen of Venice, whose published poems and familiar letters offer rich testimony to the complexity of the honest courtesan's position. Margaret F. Rosenthal draws a compelling portrait of Veronica Franco in her cultural social, and economic world. Rosenthal reveals in Franco's writing a passionate support of defenseless women, strong convictions about inequality, and, in the eroticized language of her epistolary verses, the seductive political nature of all poetic contests. It is Veronica Franco's insight into the power conflicts between men and women—and her awareness of the threat she posed to her male contemporaries—that makes her literary works and her dealings with Venetian intellectuals so pertinent today. Combining the resources of biography, history, literary theory, and cultural criticism, this sophisticated interdisciplinary work presents an eloquent and often moving account of one woman's life as an act of self-creation and as a complex response to social forces and cultural conditions. "A book . . . pleasurably redolent of Venice in the 16th-century. Rosenthal gives a vivid sense of a world of salons and coteries, of intricate networks of family and patronage, and of literary exchanges both intellectual and erotic."—Helen Hackett, Times Higher Education Supplement The Honest Courtesan is the basis for the film Dangerous Beauty (1998) directed by Marshall Herskovitz. (The film was re-titled The Honest Courtesan for release in the UK and Europe in 1999.)
Book Synopsis Dangerous Pleasures by : Gail Hershatter
Download or read book Dangerous Pleasures written by Gail Hershatter and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering work examines prostitution in Shanghai from the late nineteenth century to the present. Drawn mostly from the daughters and wives of the working poor and declassé elites, prostitutes in Shanghai were near the bottom of class and gender hierarchies. Yet they were central figures in Shanghai urban life, entering the historical record whenever others wanted to appreciate, castigate, count, regulate, cure, pathologize, warn about, rescue, eliminate, or deploy them as a symbol in a larger social panorama. Over the past century, prostitution has been understood in many ways: as a source of urbanized pleasures, a profession full of unscrupulous and greedy schemers, a changing site of work for women, a source of moral danger and physical disease, a marker of national decay, and a sign of modernity. For the Communist leadership of the 1950s, the elimination of prostitution symbolized China's emergence as a strong, healthy, and modern nation. In the past decade, as prostitution once again has become a recognized feature of Chinese society, it has been incorporated into a larger public discussion about what kind of modernity China should seek and what kind of sex and gender arrangements should characterize that modernity. Prostitutes, like every other non-elite group, did not record their own lives. How can sources generated by intense public argument about the "larger" meanings of prostitution be read for clues to those lives? Hershatter makes use of a broad range of materials: guidebooks to the pleasure quarters, collections of anecdotes about high-class courtesans, tabloid gossip columns, municipal regulations prohibiting street soliciting, police interrogations of streetwalkers and those accused of trafficking in women, newspaper reports on court cases involving both courtesans and streetwalkers, polemics by Chinese and foreign reformers, learned articles by Chinese scholars commenting on the world history of prostitution and analyzing its local causes, surveys by doctors and social workers on sexually transmitted disease in various Shanghai populations, relief agency records, fictionalized accounts of the scams and sufferings of prostitutes, memoirs by former courtesan house patrons, and interviews with former officials and reformers. Although a courtesan may never set pen to paper, we can infer a great deal about her strategizing and working of the system through the vast cautionary literature that tells her customers how not to be defrauded by her. Newspaper accounts of the arrests and brief court testimonies of Shanghai streetwalkers let us glimpse the way that prostitutes positioned themselves to get the most they could from the legal system. Without recourse to direct speech, Hershatter argues, these women have nevertheless left an audible trace. Central to this study is the investigation of how things are known and later remembered, and how, later still, they are simultaneously apprehended and reinvented by the historian.
Book Synopsis The Mistress of Paris by : Catherine Hewitt
Download or read book The Mistress of Paris written by Catherine Hewitt and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in the United Kingdom by Icon Books Ltd"--Title page verso.
Book Synopsis The Valley Of Amazement by : Amy Tan
Download or read book The Valley Of Amazement written by Amy Tan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller The Valley of Amazement is an evocative epic of two women's intertwined fates and their search for identity—from the lavish parlors of Shanghai courtesans to the fog-shrouded mountains of a remote Chinese village. Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the daughter of the American madam of the city’s most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother and forced to become a “virgin courtesan.” Spanning more than forty years and two continents, Amy Tan’s newest novel maps the lives of three generations of women—and the mystery of an evocative painting known as “The Valley of Amazement.” Moving from the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty to the growth of anti-foreign sentiment and the inner workings of courtesan houses, The Valley of Amazement interweaves the story of Violet, a celebrated Shanghai courtesan on a quest for both love and identity, and her mother, Lucia, an American woman whose search for penance leads them to an unexpected reunion. The Valley of Amazement is a deeply moving narrative of family secrets, legacies, and the profound connections between mothers and daughters, reminiscent of the compelling territory Tan so expertly mapped in The Joy Luck Club. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humor, Tan conjures up a story of inherited trauma, desire, deception, and the power and stubbornness of love.
Book Synopsis The Dread of Responsibility by : Émile Faguet
Download or read book The Dread of Responsibility written by Émile Faguet and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Dread of Responsibility by : A. E. Faguet
Download or read book The Dread of Responsibility written by A. E. Faguet and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by : Honoré de Balzac
Download or read book Scenes from a Courtesan's Life written by Honoré de Balzac and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.
