View our feature on Catherine Delors' Mistress of the Revolution.An impoverished noblewoman, Gabrielle de Montserrat is only fifteen when she meets her first love, a commoner named Pierre-André Coffinhal. But her brother forbids their union, forcing her instead to marry an aging, wealthy cousin. Widowed and a mother before the age of twenty, Gabrielle arrives at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in time to be swept up in the emerging turbulence—and to encounter the man she never expected to see again. Determined and independent, she strives to find her own freedom— as the Revolution takes an ever more violent turn.

THE BEAUTY. THE SPY. AND THE BEHOLDER. From the beloved New York Times bestselling Madeline Hunter comes this riveting historical romance, in which a darkly handsome nobleman is determined to unmask a delicate and mysterious young beauty... A refugee from the war in France, Marielle Lyon has established herself at the fringes of London society. Claiming to be the niece of an executed aristocrat, Marielle welcomes the gossip that she is a spy. The more eyes she has watching her, the better protected she is—and the better chance she has of saving her father’s life. A warrior at heart, Alban Norwood, Viscount Kendale, would still be in uniform if not for his older brother’s untimely death. After all he’s seen, Kendale doesn’t trust the French—or their femmes fatales. He has set up a surveillance network to ferret out undercover agents, and he believes he’s found one in the delicate, mysterious Marielle. Ready to pounce on his tempting prey, Kendale arranges a meeting with Marielle, who is more beautiful and more cunning than he anticipated. But the Viscount is ready to do whatever it takes to unmask her—even if it means playing a game of seduction…

A recognized master fantasist, Tanith Lee has won multiple awards for her craft, including the British Fantasy Award, the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. The fourth installment in Lee’s breathtaking series, Tales from the Flat Earth, Delirium’s Mistress returns to a shadowy and mythic world where demons battle for dominion, and the fate of mankind is shaped by the whims of capricious and volatile beings. Beneath the mortal realm of the Flat Earth, demons lurk. But Azhriaz—daughter of the mortal priestess Dunizel and the demon known as Night’s Master, Azhrarn—bridges these two worlds, a being of both light and darkness. Raised on an isolated isle in the demons’ realm of Underearth, guarded and hidden away from demon and mortal alike, Azhriaz was meant to sleep forever, never knowing the world outside her dreams. But other forces in the Underearth are moving to wake Azhriaz. Prince Chuz, the demon known as Delusion’s Master, has made an enemy of Azhrarn, after his betrayal cost Dunizel her life. Chuz seeks out Azhriaz’s island, drawn by her latent power and entranced by her beauty. To release Azhriaz from her eternal slumber, Chuz must create the grandest illusion he has ever rendered. If he succeeds, Azhriaz will be reborn as Delirium’s Mistress, a sorcerous of extraordinary power. Perhaps even more powerful than Azhrarn himself.... Delirium's Mistress in the fourth book in the Flat Earth sereies.

This book explores shifting representations and receptions of the arms-bearing woman on the British stage during a period in which she comes to stand in Britain as a striking symbol of revolutionary chaos. The book makes a case for viewing the British Romantic theatre as an arena in which the significance of the armed woman is constantly remodelled and reappropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political and social rebellion at home and abroad. Magnifying heroines who appear on stage wielding pistols, brandishing daggers, thrusting swords, and even firing explosives, the study spotlights the intricate and often surprising ways in which the stage amazon interacts with Anglo-French, Anglo-Irish, Anglo-German, and Anglo-Spanish debates at varying moments across the French revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns. At the same time, it foregrounds the extent to which new dramatic genres imported from Europe –notably, the German Sturm und Drang and the French-derived melodrama– facilitate possibilities at the turn of the nineteenth century for a refashioned female warrior, whose degree of agency, destructiveness, and heroism surpasses that of her tragic and sentimental predecessors.

J. Christopher Herold vigorously tells the story of the fierce Madame de Stael, revealing her courageous opposition to Napoleon, her whirlwind affairs with the great intellectuals of her day, and her idealistic rebellion against all that was cynical, tyrannical, and passionless. Germaine de Stael's father was Jacques Necker, the finance minister to Louis XVI, and her mother ran an influential literary-political salon in Paris. Always precocious, at nineteen Germaine married the Swedish ambassador to France, Eric Magnus Baron de Stael-Holstein, and in 1785 took over her mother's salon with great success. Germaine and de Stael lived most of their married life apart. She had many brilliant lovers. Talleyrand was the first, Narbonne, the minister of war, another; Benjamin Constant was her most significant and long-lasting one. She published several political and literary essays, including "A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations," which became one of the most important documents of European Romanticism. Her bold philosophical ideas, particularly those in "On Literature," caused feverish commotion in France and were quickly noticed by Napoleon, who saw her salon as a rallying point for the opposition. He eventually exiled her from France. This winner of the 1959 National Book Award is "excellent ... detailed, full of color, movement, great names, and lively incident" -- The New York Times "Mr. Herold's full-bodied biography is clear-eyed, intelligent, and written with abundant wit and zest." -- The Atlantic Monthly

Mary Robinson, nicknamed 'Perdita' by the Prince of Wales after her role on the London stage, was a woman in whom showmanship and reckless behaviour contrasted with romantic sensibility and radical thinking. Born in Bristol in 1758, she moved to London with her family at a young age and was trained by Garrick for the theatre. After a royal command performance as Perdita in "The Winter's Tale", she was hotly pursued by George, the 17-year-old Prince of Wales, and she became his first mistress. He gave her GBP 20,000, a house in Berkeley Square, and another in Old Windsor; the popular press followed the affair with glee and gusto. But when he left her she blackmailed him for the return of his letters. A string of other high-profile lovers followed including Lord Malden, Charles James Fox and, most notably, Lt Col Tarlton. However, a miscarriage left Mary semi-paralysed and when her last lover deserted her to marry someone else, she wrote two novels in revenge. Her growing literary reputation brought in many friends, including Coleridge but her death saw the bailiffs trying to evict her from her cottage. This lively account of one of the most extraordinary women of her age is set against the social, literary, political and military background of the times.