"A fascinating book. Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman is instructive and a delight to read all at the same time."—Quentin Crisp Born in 1728, French aristocrat Charles d'Eon de Beaumont had served his country as a diplomat, soldier, and spy for fifteen years when rumors that he was a woman began to circulate in the courts of Europe. D'Eon denied nothing and was finally compelled by Louis XVI to give up male attire and live as a woman, something d'Eon did without complaint for the next three decades. Although celebrated as one of the century's most remarkable women, d'Eon was revealed, after his death in 1810, to have been unambiguously male. Gary Kates's acclaimed biography of d'Eon recreates eighteenth-century European society in brilliant detail and offers a compelling portrait of an individual who challenged its conventions about gender and identity.

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. To begin with, he is too afraid to leave the refugee centre, but the first time he braves the freezing cold to walk the streets of this strange, fast-moving town, he encounters Monsieur Bark, a widower whose dignified sorrow mirrors his own. Though they have no shared language, an instinctive friendship is forged; but Monsieur Linh's stay in the dormitory is only temporary. Sooner or later he and his child must find a permanent home. Delicate and restrained, but with an extraordinary twist, Monsieur Linh and His Child is an immensely moving novel of perfect simplicity, by the author of Brodeck's Report.

Set in 18th century France, Monsieur D'Eon-courtier, soldier, spy and intellect-keeps his (or her) secret for 60 years. A gender-bending, swash-buckling, biting comedy with all the right elements for an adventure story, it nonetheless makes some interesting observations about gender and class, both in 18th century France and today.

Reading was so important to Marcel Proust that it sometimes seems he was unable to create a personage without a book in hand. Everybody in his work reads: servants and masters, children and parents, artists and physicians. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations. Proust made literary taste a means of defining personalities and gave literature an actual role to play in his novels. In this wonderfully entertaining book, scholar and biographer Anka Muhlstein, the author of Balzac’s Omelette, draws out these themes in Proust's work and life, thus providing not only a friendly introduction to the momentous In Search of Lost Time, but also exciting highlights of some of the finest work in French literature.

The third novel starring Montana's fly fisherman-cum-detective Sean Stranahan, for fans of C. J. Box and Craig Johnson Wolves howl as a riderless horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing woman, Nanika Martinelli, is better known as the Fly Fishing Venus, a red-haired river guide who lures clients the way dry flies draw trout. As Sheriff Martha Ettinger follows hoof tracks in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under the temptress’s spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, a kill that’s been claimed by a wolf pack. An accident? If not, is the killer human or animal? With painter, fly fisherman, and sometimes private detective Sean Stranahan’s help, Ettinger will follow clues that point to an animal rights group called the Clan of the Three-Clawed Wolf and to their svengali master, whose eyes blaze with pagan fire. In their most dangerous adventure yet, Stranahan and Ettinger find themselves in the crossfire of wolf lovers, wolf haters, and a sister bent on revenge, and on the trail of an alpha male gone terribly wrong.

If the writings of Chateaubriand, one above all is both most representative of its author and most significant for reader and student alike. René, a milestone of literature, presents the first genuine and complete picture of that state of spiritual frustration and moral isolation known as le mal du siècle, its causes, symptoms, ravages, and cure. Chateaubriand, a prodigious artist with an incomparable style, enjoys the further distinction of having fused in his work the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. It is sometimes forgotten that these epochs are not only French but also European in scope, and their reverberations as expressed by Chateaubriand have affected almost every subsequent writer of importance up to the present. Chateaubriand is often called the father of romanticism. It may be claimed with equal reason that he is the grandfather of the neo-romanticism of our time. This edition of René contains, as well as a full introduction, notes covering the allusions to place names, events, and personages, and a complete vocabulary.

Violaine, a devotee of books and learning, finds herself sold by her father to a mysterious nobleman to become his companion. Fearing herself at the mercy of a monster, Violaine instead succumbs to the seductive spell of her magical new home, and the love of a man she has never seen, who comes to her only in the darkness of night.

Meet Tannie Maria - recipe writer turned crime fighter - and before she has time to take her Venus Chocolate Cake out of the oven, our glorious heroine finds herself embroiled in another mystery. In this wonderful sequel to Recipes for Love and Murder, Slimkat the bushman finds his life under threat and Tannie Maria is determined to find out who wants to kill him. But her boyfriend is keen to keep Tannie out of danger, and she's pretty sure he's hiding something so Tannie has mysteries of her own solve . . . Blending a perfect whodunnit with lovable characters, Sally Andrew really does have the perfect recipe for a crime series.

This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company's army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher's portrayal of Mahomet's sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the first Indian restaurant in England and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a practitioner of "oriental" medicine, i.e., therapeutic massage and herbal steam bath, in London and the seaside resort of Brighton. This is a fascinating account of life in late eighteenth-century India—the first book written in English by an Indian—framed by a mini-biography of a remarkably versatile entrepreneur. Travels presents an Indian's view of the British conquest of India and conveys the vital role taken by Indians in the colonial process, especially as they negotiated relations with Britons both in the colonial periphery and the imperial metropole. Connoisseurs of unusual travel narratives, historians of England, Ireland, and British India, as well as literary scholars of autobiography and colonial discourse will find much in this book. But it also offers an engaging biography of a resourceful, multidimensional individual.