USA Today bestselling author Abby Green takes you on one queen’s sensational journey from a masquerade ball to a royal scandal in this fantastic digital novella! Desperate for a last taste of freedom before she enters a political, loveless marriage, Analia—the famous Virgin Queen of Azoria—hides behind her mask at a glitzy Venetian ball. Until the stormy grey gaze of an enigmatic, disguised stranger lays her soul—and her body—bare in one passionate night! World-famous photojournalist Daniel Petrovsky learned years ago to harden his heart against emotions and the morning disappearance of his anonymous lover should mean nothing. But when a certain queen’s shock pregnancy hits the headlines, the brooding billionaire will stop at nothing to fight for what is his! Don’t miss the other titles in this fantastic collection that celebrates Royal Babies all over the world!

One night at the Italian’s ball… has permanent consequences! Mauro Bianchi is stunned to discover the beautiful innocent who left his bed at midnight three months ago is a queen…and she’s pregnant! He’s never wanted a family, but nothing will stop this billionaire from claiming his heir. Queen Astrid can’t forget the pleasure of Mauro’s touch, despite her scandalous royal bombshell! To protect her throne, she is determined to raise her baby alone. Only now Mauro’s back, his powerful presence a constant reminder of their chemistry. And he has a demand: “I want my child.”

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

"The Queen's Lover" reveals the untold love affair between Swedish aristocrat Count Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette.

This is the story of the 'failed' British Empire in Ireland and the sad end of the Tudor reign. The relationship between England and Ireland has been marked by turmoil ever since the 5th century, when Irish raiders kidnapped St. Patrick. Perhaps the most consequential chapter in this saga was the subjugation of the island during the 16th century, and particularly efforts associated with the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the reverberations of which remain unsettled even today. This is the story of that ‘First British Empire’. The saga of the Elizabethan conquest has rarely received the attention it deserves, long overshadowed by more ‘glamorous’ events that challenged the queen, most especially those involving Catholic Spain and France, superpowers with vastly more resources than Protestant England. Ireland was viewed as a peripheral theater, a haven for Catholic heretics and a potential ‘back door’ for foreign invasions. Lord deputies sent by the queen were tormented by such fears, and reacted with an iron hand. Their cadres of subordinates, including poets and writers as gifted as Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, and Walter Raleigh, were all corrupted in the process, their humanist values disfigured by the realities of Irish life as they encountered them through the lens of conquest and appropriation. These men considered the future of Ireland to be an extension of the British state, as seen in the ‘salon’ at Bryskett’s Cottage, outside Dublin, where guests met to pore over the ‘Irish Question’. But such deliberations were rewarded by no final triumph, only debilitating warfare that stretched the entire length of Elizabeth’s rule. This is the story of revolt, suppression, atrocities and genocide, and ends with an ailing, dispirited queen facing internal convulsions and an empty treasury. Her death saw the end of the Tudor dynasty, marked not by victory over the great enemy Spain, but by ungovernable Ireland – the first colonial ‘failed state’.

A Spanish aristocrat’s forbidden indiscretion yields scandalous surprises in this contemporary romance by a USA Today–bestselling author. Overwhelming. Irresistible. Off-limits. Teo de Luz was all those things to innocent Amelia. Until she attends his opulent masquerade ball, and they share a deliciously anonymous encounter! Now Amelia must tell this brooding Spaniard he’s the father of her unborn child. Teo can’t forget his runaway Cinderella, but discovering her true identity stuns him. His loathing of Amelia’s family means he cannot dismiss her deception! He will marry her. He will claim his heir. And he’ll exact a sensual revenge on Amelia, one pleasurable night at a time . . .

Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.