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The Decadent Countess
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Book Synopsis THE DECADENT COUNTESS by : Deborah Miles
Download or read book THE DECADENT COUNTESS written by Deborah Miles and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A case of mistaken identity… Young widow Miranda Fitzgibbon arrives in England to meet her late husband’s family, only to find she has been mistaken for her scandalous stepmother, the decadent countess. Playing up to the in-laws’ expectations, Miranda revels in her new role as the notoriously outspoken coquette. But then she clashes with her handsome, aloof brother-in-law Leo, the Duke of Belford. As Miranda’s confidence begins to falter, revealing a glimpse of the intriguing naiveté beneath her bravado, Leo is torn between pursuing this bewitching beauty and preserving his family’s reputation….
Book Synopsis The Duchess Countess by : Catherine Ostler
Download or read book The Duchess Countess written by Catherine Ostler and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A scintillating story superbly told... [Ostler] packs every paragraph with eye-opening detail' The Times 'A rollicking read... [Ostler] tells Elizabeth's story with admirable style and gusto' Sunday Times 'Terrifically entertaining: if you liked Bridgerton, you’ll love this...and her research is impeccable' Evening Standard 'Fascinating. Magnificent. Sensitively told' Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five 'Catherine Ostler’s superb, gripping, decadent biography brings an extraordinary woman and a whole world blazingly to life' Simon Sebag Montefiore When the glamorous Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, Countess of Bristol, went on trial at Westminster Hall for bigamy in April 1776, the story drew more attention in society than the American War of Independence. A clandestine, candlelit wedding to the young heir to an earldom, a second marriage to a Duke, a lust for diamonds and an electrifying appearance at a masquerade ball in a diaphanous dress: no wonder the trial was a sensation. However, Elizabeth refused to submit to public humiliation and retire quietly. Rather than backing gracefully out of the limelight, she embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe, being welcomed by the Pope and Catherine the Great among others. As maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales, Elizabeth led her life in the inner circle of the Hanoverian court and her exploits delighted and scandalised the press and the people. She made headlines, and was a constant feature in penny prints and gossip columns. Writers were intrigued by her. Thackeray drew on Elizabeth as inspiration for his calculating, alluring Becky Sharp. But her behaviour, often depicted as attention-seeking and manipulative, hid a more complex tale – that of Elizabeth’s fight to overcome personal tragedy and loss. Now, in this brilliantly told and evocative biography, Catherine Ostler takes a fresh look at Elizabeth’s story and seeks to understand and reappraise a woman who refused to be defined by society’s expectations of her. A woman who was by turns, brave, loving and generous but also reckless, greedy and insecure; a woman totally unwilling to accept the female status of underdog or to hand over all the power, the glory and the adventures of life to men.
Book Synopsis The Countess and the King by : Susan Holloway Scott
Download or read book The Countess and the King written by Susan Holloway Scott and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Katherine Sedley lived by her own rules and loved who she pleased- until she became the infamous mistress of King James II... London, 1675: Born to wealth and privilege, Katherine is introduced to the decadent court of King Charles II, and quickly becomes a favorite from the palace to the bawdy playhouses. She gleefully snubs respectable marriage to become the Duke of York's mistress. But Katherine's life of carefree pleasure ends when Charles II dies, and her lover becomes King James II. Suddenly she is cast into a tangle of political intrigue, religious dissent, and ever-shifting alliances, where a wrong step can mean treason, exile, or death at the executioner's block. As the risks rise, Katherine is forced to make the most perilous of choices: to remain loyal to the king, or to England.
Download or read book His Countess written by S. M. LaViolette and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Businessman Gideon Banks is cold, brilliant, rich?and bored. Who knew that a man who excelled at debauchery could become so bored? It's not until he learns that he is heir to the Taunton Earldom that things start to get interesting. The late earl's irksome, superior, and entirely too attractive widow is particularly fascinating to him. And the fact that she's now entirely dependent on him? That opens up an astonishing array of thrilling-and erotic-possibilities?Alys Taunton might be sheltered and lonely, but she's not stupid. When Gideon proposes a marriage of convenience, she never expects the immoral man to remain faithful. But the sensual delights he promises are impossible to resist, and she soon starts to wonder what would be more painful: refusing him and keeping her distance, or offering him her complete surrender, heart, body and soul.Amidst a cycle of mind games and struggles for sexual dominance, can Gideon and Alys find their way to happily ever after? Or will their dark desires tear them apart forever?His Countess is an angsty, dark, standalone historical erotic romance novel featuring consensual BDSM, MF, MMF, FFM, voyeurism, exhibitionism, explicit love scenes, and YES, a happily ever after!This is EROTIC ROMANCE, not erotica. That means this book has a real story and lots of it.
Book Synopsis The Bloody Countess by : Valentine Penrose
Download or read book The Bloody Countess written by Valentine Penrose and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2013-10-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descended from one of the most ancient aristocratic families of Europe, Erzsebet Bathory bore the psychotic aberrations of centuries of intermarriage. From adolescence she indulged in sadistic lesbian fantasies, where only the spilling of a woman’s blood could satisfy her urges. By middle age, she had regressed to a mirror-fixated state of pathological necro-sadism involving witchcraft, torture, blood-drinking, cannibalism and wholesale slaughter. These years, at the latter end of the 16th century, witnessed a reign of cruelty unsurpassed in the annals of mass murder, with the Countess’ depredations on the virgin girls of the Carpathians leading to some 650 deaths. Her many castles were equipped with chambers where she would hideously torture and mutilate her victims; hundreds of girls were killed and processed for the ultimate, youth-giving ritual: the bath of blood. The Bloody Countess is Valentine Penrose’s true, disturbing case history of a female psychopath, a chillingly lyrical account beautifully translated by Alexander Trocchi (author of Cain’s Book), which has an unequalled power to evoke the decadent melancholy of doomed, delinquent aristocracy in a dark age of superstition.
Book Synopsis The Most Dangerous Duke in London by : Madeline Hunter
Download or read book The Most Dangerous Duke in London written by Madeline Hunter and published by Zebra Books. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times-bestselling author, “an intelligent, fast-paced romance, chock-full of sensuality and spiced with mystery” (Publishers Weekly). NOTORIOUS NOBLEMAN SEEKS REVENGE Name and title: Adam Penrose, Duke of Stratton. Affiliation: London’s elite Society of Decadent Dukes. Family history: Scandalous. Personality traits: Dark and brooding, with a thirst for revenge. Ideal romantic partner: A woman of means, with beauty and brains, willing to live with reckless abandon. Desire: Clara Cheswick, gorgeous daughter of his family’s sworn enemy. FAINT OF HEART NEED NOT APPLY Clara may be the woman Adam wants, but there’s one problem: she’s far more interested in publishing her women’s journal than getting married—especially to a man said to be dead-set on vengeance. Though, with her nose for a story, Clara wonders if his desire for justice is sincere—along with his incredibly unnerving intention to be her husband. If her weak-kneed response to his kiss is any indication, falling for Adam clearly comes with a cost. But who knew courting danger could be such exhilarating fun? Madeline Hunter’s novels are: “Brilliant, compelling . . . An excellent read.” —The Washington Post “Mesmerizing.” —Publishers Weekly “Pure passion.” —Booklist Bonus content included in this digital edition
Book Synopsis The Blood Countess by : Andrei Codrescu
Download or read book The Blood Countess written by Andrei Codrescu and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “brilliant” novel of Elizabeth Bathory, the notorious sixteenth-century Hungarian aristocrat who bathed in the blood of virgins (St. Petersburg Times). Turmoil reigns in post-Soviet Hungary when journalist Drake Bathory-Kereshtur returns from America to grapple with his family history. He’s haunted by the legacy of his ancestor, the notorious sixteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is said to have murdered more than 650 young virgins and bathed in their blood to preserve her youth. Interweaving past and present, The Blood Countess tells the stories of Elizabeth’s debauched and murderous reign and Drake’s fascination with the eternal clashes of faith and power, violence and beauty. Codrescu traces the captivating origins of the countess’s obsessions in tandem with the emerging political fervor of the reporter, building the narratives into an unforgettable, bloody crescendo. Taut and intense, The Blood Countess is a riveting novel that deftly straddles the genres of historical fiction, thriller, horror, and family drama.
Book Synopsis A Baedeker of Decadence by : George C. Schoolfield
Download or read book A Baedeker of Decadence written by George C. Schoolfield and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the final decades of the nineteenth century, a common mind-set emerged among many intellectuals--"la decadence." Many novels and novellas of the period were populated with protagonists who were fragile, refined, self-absorbed, and preoccupied with a trivially exquisite aesthetic. A Baedeker of Decadence presents thirty-two international works of literary decadence written between 1884 and 1927. George C. Schoolfield, a world authority on the decadent novel, offers an entertaining and wide-ranging commentary on this highly significant literary and cultural phenomenon. Schoolfield tracks down the symptoms of decadence in narrative works written in more than a dozen languages, providing synopses and passages in English translation to give a sense of each author's style and tone. Schoolfield throws new light on the close intellectual kinship of authors from August Strindberg to Bram Stoker to Thomas Mann, and on the ingredients, themes, motifs, and preconceptions that characterized decadent literature.
Book Synopsis The Dandelion Seed by : Lena Kennedy
Download or read book The Dandelion Seed written by Lena Kennedy and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like a dandelion seed adrift on the wayward winds, Marcelle de la Strange is an innocent in the decadent and dangerous London of James I. When her mother's violent death leaves Marcelle at the mercy of her lecherous stepfather, she can't help but be drawn to the dashing Thomas Mayhew, King's Messenger and attendant to the flamboyant court favourite Robert Carr, who offers her protection, freedom . . . and love. But such perfect happiness is brittle, vulnerable. A mysterious royal lover, tawny-haired and passionate, leaves Marcelle with child. Kidnapped by the powerful Howard family, the baby is an innocent pawn in a deadly political game and Marcelle's desperate search for her son threatens her reconciliation with Thomas, her health, and even her very sanity . . . *********** What readers are saying about THE DANDELION SEED 'An amazing read . . . A book not to be missed' - 5 STARS 'Perfect!' - 5 STARS 'Another excellent tale by Lena Kennedy' - 5 STARS 'What a book - loved it from start to finish' - 5 STARS 'A must-read' - 5 STARS
Book Synopsis The Sign of Angellica by : Janet Todd
Download or read book The Sign of Angellica written by Janet Todd and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the entry of women into literature as a profession. Looks at over a century of women's writings, from Behn to mary Wollstonecraft.
Book Synopsis Decadent Catholicism and the Making of Modernism by : Martin Lockerd
Download or read book Decadent Catholicism and the Making of Modernism written by Martin Lockerd and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the movement of literary decadence from the writers of the fin de siècle - Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, and Lionel Johnson - to the modernist writers of the following generation, this book charts the legacy of decadent Catholicism in the fiction and poetry of British and Irish modernists. Linking the later writers with their literary predecessors, Martin Lockerd examines the shifts in representation of Catholic decadence in the works of W. B. Yeats through Ezra Pound to T.S. Eliot; the adoption and transformation of anti-Catholicism in Irish writers George Moore and James Joyce; the Catholic literary revival as portrayed in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited; and the attraction to decadent Catholicism still felt by postmodernist writers D.B.C. Pierre and Alan Hollinghurst. Drawing on new archival research, this study revisits some of the central works of modernist literature and undermines existing myths of modernist newness and secularism to supplant them with a record of spiritual turmoil, metaphysical uncertainty, and a project of cultural subversion that paradoxically relied upon the institutional bulwark of European Christianity. Lockerd explores the aesthetic, sexual, and political implications of the relationship between decadent art and Catholicism as it found a new voice in the works of iconoclastic modernist writers.
Book Synopsis Sapphic Fathers by : Gretchen Schultz
Download or read book Sapphic Fathers written by Gretchen Schultz and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gretchen Schultz explores how male writers and their readers in late nineteenth-century France took lesbianism as a cipher for apprehensions about sex and gender during a time of social and political upheaval.
Book Synopsis Decadence in the Age of Modernism by : Kate Hext
Download or read book Decadence in the Age of Modernism written by Kate Hext and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributors: Howard J. Booth, Joseph Bristow, Ellen Crowell, Nick Freeman, Ellis Hanson, Kate Hext, Kirsten MacLeod, Kristin Mahoney, Douglas Mao, Michèle Mendelssohn, Alex Murray, Sarah Parker, Vincent Sherry
Book Synopsis The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence by : Martin A. S. Hume
Download or read book The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence written by Martin A. S. Hume and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Court of Philip IV.: Spain in Decadence is a book by Martin Andrew Sharp Hume. It serves as a biography on Philip IV, who was King of Spain from 1621 to his death in 1665.
Book Synopsis A History of Italian Cinema by : Peter Bondanella
Download or read book A History of Italian Cinema written by Peter Bondanella and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only comprehensive and up-to-date book on the subject of Italian cinema available anywhere, in any language.
Book Synopsis Woman's Place In The Novels Of Henry James by : Elizabeth E Allen
Download or read book Woman's Place In The Novels Of Henry James written by Elizabeth E Allen and published by Springer. This book was released on 1984-06-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Lesbian Decadence by : Nicole G. Albert
Download or read book Lesbian Decadence written by Nicole G. Albert and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1857 the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who was fascinated by lesbianism, created a scandal with Les Fleurs du Mal [The Flowers of Evil]. This collection was originally entitled "The Lesbians" and described women as "femmes damnées," with "disordered souls" suffering in a hypocritical world. Then twenty years later, lesbians in Paris dared to flaunt themselves in that extraordinarily creative period at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries which became known as the Belle Époque. Lesbian Decadence, now available in English for the first time, provides a new analysis and synthesis of the depiction of lesbianism as a social phenomenon and a symptom of social malaise as well as a fantasy in that most vibrant place and period in history. In this newly translated work, praised by leading critics as "authoritative," "stunning," and "a marvel of elegance and erudition," Nicole G. Albert analyzes and synthesizes an engagingly rich sweep of historical representations of the lesbian mystique in art and literature. Albert contrasts these visions to moralists' abrupt condemnations of "the lesbian vice," as well as the newly emerging psychiatric establishment's medical fury and their obsession on cataloging and classifying symptoms of "inversion" or "perversion" in order to cure these "unbalanced creatures of love." Lesbian Decadence combines literary, artistic, and historical analysis of sources from the mainstream to the rare, from scholarly studies to popular culture. The English translation provides a core reference/text for those interested in the Decadent movement, in literary history, in French history and social history. It is well suited for courses in gender studies, women's studies, LGBT history, and lesbianism in literature, history, and art.
