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Britain's mystical and mythological heritage has been inspirational throughout the ages. The author discusses such visionaries as Blake and the alchemist Dr Dee, challenging nihilism with the survival of the sacred in art.

While searching for her real father, a runaway stumbles into a deadly mess in this gritty noir novel by the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice. With just seventy-four bucks in her pocket, Mandy packs her things and buys the bus ticket that will get her away from the stepfather who’s been abusing her for years—and the mother who lets it happen. She plans to head to Baltimore and find her biological father—someone she hopes will finally stand up for her. At the bus stop, Mandy meets Rick—a handsome young thug who’s a few days removed from his last bath. He’s charming and sympathetic, so she buys him a ticket and tells him her story. But wouldn’t it be better, Rick suggests, to greet Daddy in style? Of course, a mink coat would cost a little money, but Rick knows just where to get it. His plan is daring, foolish, and highly dangerous. What teenage runaway could resist? Praise for James M. Cain’s fiction “Cleverly plotted.” —The New York Times “Swift and absorbing.” —The Wall Street Journal

In Enchanted Islands, renowned art historian Mary D. Sheriff explores the legendary, fictional, and real islands that filled the French imagination during the ancien regime as they appeared in royal ballets and festivals, epic literature, paintings, engravings, book illustrations, and other objects. Some of the islands were mythical and found in the most popular literary texts of the day—islands featured prominently, for instance, in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso,Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and Fénelon’s, Telemachus. Other islands—real ones, such as Tahiti and St. Domingue—the French learned about from the writings of travelers and colonists. All of them were imagined to be the home of enchantresses who used magic to conquer heroes by promising sensual and sexual pleasure. As Sheriff shows, the theme of the enchanted island was put to many uses. Kings deployed enchanted-island mythology to strengthen monarchical authority, as Louis XIV did in his famous Versailles festival Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée. Writers such as Fénelon used it to tell morality tales that taught virtue, duty, and the need for male strength to triumph over female weakness and seduction. Yet at the same time, artists like Boucher painted enchanted islands to portray art’s purpose as the giving of pleasure. In all these ways and more, Sheriff demonstrates for the first time the centrality of enchanted islands to ancient regime culture in a book that will enchant all readers interested in the art, literature, and history of the time.

Born to immigrant parents in Minnesota just before the turn of the century, Frances Frankowski grew up coveting the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel. And yet, decades later, when the women reconnect in San Francisco, their lives have diverged. Rosalie is a housewife and mother, while Frances works for the Office of Naval Intelligence and has just been given a top-secret assignment: marry handsome spy Ainslie Conway and move to the Galápagos Islands to investigate the Germans living there in the build-up to World War II. Amid active volcanoes, forbidding wildlife and flora, and unfriendly neighbors, Ainslie and Frances carve out a life for themselves. But the secrets they harbor—from their friends, from their enemies, and even from each other—may be their undoing.

Colorful illustrations and maps accompany stories of Great Britain and Ireland, covering topics from landscapes to literature and rock bands to the mystique of the royal family.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Enchanted Island" by Fannie Louise Apjohn. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.