Abandoned by his cavalier father at a young age, William de Veres grew up knowing precious little happiness. But William has put the past firmly behind him and as a military hero and noted rake, he rises fast in the ranks of the hedonistic Restoration court. Though not before he is forced to seek shelter from a charming young Puritan woman… The civil wars have cost the once-high-spirited Elizabeth Walters her best friend and her father, leaving her unprotected and alone. She flees an unwanted marriage, seeking safe haven, but what she finds is something she never expected. When her kindness and her beauty bring her to the attention of William, and then the king, she will have a choice to make. After all, can a notorious libertine really be capable of love?

In works by filmmakers from Bertolucci to Spielberg, debauched images of nazi and fascist eroticism, symbols of violence and immorality, often bear an uncanny resemblance to the images and symbols once used by the fascists themselves to demarcate racial, sexual, and political others. This book exposes the "madness" inherent in such a course, which attests to the impossibility of disengaging visual and rhetorical constructions from political, ideological, and moral codes. Kriss Ravetto argues that contemporary discourses using such devices actually continue unacknowledged rhetorical, moral, and visual analogies of the past. Against postwar fictional and historical accounts of World War II in which generic images of evil characterize the nazi and the fascist, Ravetto sets the more complex approach of such filmmakers as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Liliana Cavani, and Lina Wertmuller. Her book asks us to think deeply about what it means to say that we have conquered fascism, when the aesthetics of fascism still describe and determine how we look at political figures and global events. Book jacket.

Italian novelist, poet, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally killed in Rome in 1975, a macabre end to a career that often explored humanity’s capacity for violence and cruelty. Along with the mystery of his murderer’s identity, Pasolini left behind a controversial but acclaimed oeuvre as well as a final quartet of beguiling projects that signaled a radical change in his aesthetics and view of reality. The Resurrection of the Body is an original and compelling interpretation of these final works: the screenplay Saint Paul, the scenario for Porn-Theo-Colossal, the immense and unfinished novel Petrolio, and his notorious final film, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, a disturbing adaptation of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Together these works, Armando Maggi contends, reveal Pasolini’s obsession with sodomy and its role within his apocalyptic view of Western society. One of the first studies to explore the ramifications of Pasolini’s homosexuality, The Resurrection of the Body also breaks new ground by putting his work into fruitful conversation with an array of other thinkers such as Freud, Strindberg, Swift, Henri Michaux, and Norman O. Brown.

Analyses English sexual culture between the Civil Wars and the death of Charles II.

Kit is a twenty-five-year-old Yorkshire bus driver who isn't quite like the rest of us, as the old story goes. One day she hears a passenger playing a song-the Electric Hellfire Club's "Kiss the Goat"-a song she never knew existed outside the ghostly manifestations that have been haunting her lonely nights, complete with sounds, smell and sight. Enter, then, the ghost of Rose Selavy . . . a devil-worshipping prostitute with more on her mind than just bodily possession . . . A romp through satanic disco music, ethereal auto-erotica and apparitions with agendas, this modern ghost story is Brain Stableford at his quirky and subversive best.

In these two delectable novels, someone craves to be married and loses sight of the joys of true love—until their heart is opened unexpectedly... The Fortune Hunter: A stunning beauty rejects the charming suitor who isn't wealthy enough to save her impoverished family. But she can't so easily dismiss the memory of their sweet shared kiss. Deirdre and Don Juan: The dashing Earl of Everdon is most eager to marry someone-anyone-who will bear him an heir. But when he meets a quiet, well-bred lady who fits the bill, he must resort to an amorous dance of deception to gain her acceptance to his proposal.

An eye-opening and richly detailed history of women’s sexuality that upends entrenched perceptions of the long eighteenth century. Libertine London investigates the sex lives of women throughout the period 1680 to 1830, known as the long eighteenth century. The book uncovers the various experiences of women, whether as mistresses, adultresses, or as participants in the sex trade. From renowned courtesans to downtrodden streetwalkers, it examines the multifaceted lives of these women within brothels, on stage, and even behind bars. Based on new research in court transcripts, asylum records, magazines, pamphlets, satires, songs, theater plays, and erotica, Libertine London reveals the gruesome treatment of women who were sexually active outside of marriage. Julie Peakman looks at sex from women’s points of view, undercutting the traditional image of the bawdy eighteenth century to expose a more sordid side, which often left women distressed, ostracized, and vilified for their sexual behavior.

This “rich . . . highly enjoyable portrait of an extraordinary moment in French history” introduces us to 7 dazzling aristocrats who rose and fell during the French Revolution (Guardian). Benedetta Craveri reveals the history of the Libertine generation “whose youth coincided with the French monarchy’s final moment of grace—a moment when . . . a style of life based on privilege and the spirit of caste might acknowledge the widespread demand for change, and . . . reconcile itself with Enlightenment ideals of justice, tolerance, and citizenship.” Here we meet 7 characters who Craveri singles out not only for their “romantic character” but also for “the keenness with which they experienced this crisis . . . of the ancien régime, of which they themselves were the emblem.” • Duc de Lauzun • Vicomte de Ségur • Duc de Brissac • Comte de Narbonne • Chevalier de Boufflers • Comte de Ségur • Comte de Vaudreuil These men were at once “irreducible individualists” and true “sons of the Enlightenment”—all of them ambitious to play their part in bringing around the great changes that were in the air. But when the French Revolution came, they found themselves condemned to poverty, exile, and in some cases execution. Telling the parallel lives of these dazzling but little-remembered historical figures, Craveri brings the past to life, powerfully dramatizing a turbulent time that was at once the last act of a now-vanished world and the first act of our own.