Severin is a dominant jerk with a bad attitude. Minnow, the woman hired to curb his temper, has seen beyond his bastard nature and has become obsessed with the way he masters her.She thinks she knows all of his secrets.She's wrong.For years someone else has sought Severin's mastery - a man she never suspected. When the situation implodes, she's no longer sure where she stands.New trouble reopens old wounds. Their unstable three-way relationship threatens to collapse. Will Severin's submissives be able to save him from self-destruction, or will they need to abandon the man they love?Warning: BDSM, dark themes. Character's memories of prior abuse may trigger some readers.

Recounts the personal and professional life of the country singer and songwriter whose music bridged the gap between country and pop music and established country music within popular culture.

ONE OF USA TODAY'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A riveting account of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a president—from the best-selling author of One Minute to Midnight. In January 1973, Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated after winning re-election in a historic landslide. He enjoyed an almost 70 percent approval rating. But by April 1973, his presidency had fallen apart as the Watergate scandal metastasized into what White House counsel John Dean called “a full-blown cancer.” King Richard is the intimate, utterly absorbing narrative of the tension-packed hundred days when the Watergate conspiracy unraveled as the burglars and their handlers turned on one another, exposing the crimes of a vengeful president. Drawing on thousands of hours of newly-released taped recordings, Michael Dobbs takes us into the heart of the conspiracy, recreating these traumatic events in cinematic detail. He captures the growing paranoia of the principal players and their desperate attempts to deflect blame as the noose tightens around them. We eavesdrop on Nixon plotting with his aides, raging at his enemies, while also finding time for affectionate moments with his family. The result is an unprecedentedly vivid, close-up portrait of a president facing his greatest crisis. Central to the spellbinding drama is the tortured personality of Nixon himself, a man whose strengths, particularly his determination to win at all costs, become his fatal flaws. Rising from poverty to become the most powerful man in the world, he commits terrible errors of judgment that lead to his public disgrace. He makes himself—and then destroys himself. Structured like a classical tragedy with a uniquely American twist, King Richard is an epic, deeply human story of ambition, power, and betrayal.

Minnow Korsgaard works a dead end job to make ends meet. When she's hired to take care of a wealthy old man with no social skills, she's excited to have found work in her field.The new boss isn't at all what she expected.Severin Leduc is only thirty. He's also a dominant, tattooed brute who needs someone to break through the walls he's built. The exiled son of a wealthy family, he's unapologetically rude and eccentric. Raised by servants, he doesn't want extra people in his life, let alone a pretty girl who refuses to leave him in peace.Minnow's submissive nature sparks against Severin's dominance. Torrid sexual attraction flares between them. Sharing her with his best friend, Rodrigo, only strengthens their growing bond, and Severin's life is scattered into chaos. Will he learn to trust her, or will he live the rest of his life forgotten?Warning: BDSM, dark themes. Character's memories of prior abuse may trigger some readers.

In this compact, yet comprehensive exploration of Shakespeare's romances, Robert W. Uphaus suggests that the romances bring us to a realm of human and dramatic experience that is "beyond tragedy." The inexorable movement of tragedy toward death and a final close is absorbed in romance by a further movement in which death can lead to renewed life, characters can experience a second time of joy and peace, and the audience's conventional expectations about reality and literature are challenged and enlarged. In the late tragedies of King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, Uphaus finds the tragic structure augmented by elements that will later contribute to the form of the romances. Turning then to the romances themselves, he sees these plays as forming a profession in which Pericles is a brilliant outline of the conventions of romance and Cymbeline is romance taken to its dramatic limits, in fact to the point of parody. Through his fresh and provocative readings of the plays we experience anew the delight of Shakespearean romance and glimpse the world of renewal at its heart.

James M. Scott examines a denarius minted in Rome in 55 bce which is visually fascinating but conceptually enigmatic. On its obverse, around the head of a female figure with turreted crown, appears the name A. Plautius, who held the office of aedilis curulis in that year; on its reverse is a camel, in front of which a male figure kneels on his right leg, holding the camel's reins in his left hand and extending a branch in his right hand; the legend reads: BACCHIVS IVDAEVS.Scott's study argues that the oft-suggested connection between Aristobulus' gift of the golden vine (from the Temple) and the Bacchius Iudaeus denarius does seem to merit further investigation. To that end,he examines, first, Pompey's own agenda in having the coin minted. It is shown that the year the denarius appeared, 55 bce, was the same year in which Pompey dedicated his spectacular theater-temple in Rome, and, furthermore, that these very public displays are related as expressions of Pompey's Dionysian pretensions. Second, Scott examines each element of the denarius in question, looking for clues as to the meaning of Bacchius Iudaeus. It is shown that the Latin inscription refers first and foremost to the god Bacchus/Dionysus via an interpretatio Romana. Finally, he explores the possible implications of his investigation for the precise date of the fall of Jerusalem in 63 bce. Scott's study delves deeply into Judaism at the beginning of the Roman era, using the Roman coin to highlight the complex interface between Greco-Roman and Jewish religiocultural institutions of the period.

Donated by Sydney Harris.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy presents fifty-four essays by a range of scholars from all parts of the world. Together these essays offer readers a fresh and comprehensive understanding of Shakespeare tragedies as both works of literature and as performance texts written by a playwright who was himself an experienced actor. The opening section explores ways in which later generations of critics have shaped our idea of 'Shakespearean' tragedy, and addresses questions of genre by examining the playwright's inheritance from the classical and medieval past. The second section is devoted to current textual issues, while the third offers new critical readings of each of the tragedies. This is set beside a group of essays that deal with performance history, with screen productions, and with versions devised for the operatic stage, as well as with twentieth and twenty-first century re-workings of Shakespearean tragedy. The book's final section expands readers' awareness of Shakespeare's global reach, tracing histories of criticism and performance across Europe, the Americas, Australasia, the Middle East, Africa, India, and East Asia.