From fighting fires… To fighting attraction! Firefighter medic Lauren Autry was devastated when she lost out on her dream job as a smoke jumper to golden boy Beck Ellison. Two years later she’s trying again and surprised to see her nemesis with the rookies on probation. Beck is more brooding than ever, but still as maddeningly handsome. A wildfire forces them to work together, but it’s the flaming attraction raging between them that Lauren is desperately trying to put out… “The healing powers of love are working overtime! Excellent characters and attention grabbing … highly recommend!” — Goodreads on Healed Under the Mistletoe “This was such an emotionally-charged story, which I loved from start to finish…a wonderfully-crafted tale…” — Harlequin Junkie on Back in Dr. Xenakis’ Arms

The riveting true story of mother-and-daughter queens Catherine de' Medici and Marguerite de Valois, whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the shape of their tempestuous and dangerous century. Set in magnificent Renaissance France, this is the story of two remarkable women, a mother and daughter driven into opposition by a terrible betrayal that threatened to destroy the realm. Catherine de' Medici was a ruthless pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for thirty years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous "Queen Margot," was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control. When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his followers to their deaths, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family. Rich in detail and vivid prose, Goldstone's narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, international espionage, and adultery form the background to a story that includes such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus. The Rival Queens is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.

The “important . . . meticulously researched” prize-winning biography of the pre-eminent Polish star of the nineteenth century global stage (CosmopolinReview.com). In reintroducing “a little-remembered actress to a new American audience” biographer Beth Holgram delivers a revelatory portrait of Helena Modjeska—from unparalleled European success to her reign as the most acclaimed, and most recognized female celebrity in the late nineteenth-century United States. In 1876, Poland’s leading actress, Helena Modrzejewska, accompanied by her husband, the self-stylized Count Bozente, emigrated to southern California to give up her career and establish a utopian commune. In light of its failings, it hardly fulfilled the real dreams of Madame Helena. Within a year, she changed her surname to Modjeska, and made her American debut at San Francisco’s California Theatre. Godmother to Ethel Barrymore, and sharing the Shakespearian stage with such luminaries as Otis Skinner, Edwin Booth, and Maurice Barrymore, Helena Modjeska became the leading star in the United States, where she reigned for the next thirty years. In this “Impressive . . . achievement,” Holmgren traces Modjeska’s fabulous life and career from her illegitimate birth in Krakow, to her successive reinventions of herself as a trans-continental diva, and finally to her enduring legacy (Women’s Review of Books). All in all, Starring Madame Modjeska “makes for great drama” (NewPages.com).

The study of new literacies is quickly emerging as a major research field. This book «samples» work in the broad area of new literacies research along two dimensions. First, it samples some typical examples of new literacies - video gaming, fan fiction writing, weblogging, role play gaming, using websites to participate in affinity practices, memes, and other social activities involving mobile technologies. Second, the studies collectively sample from a wide range of approaches potentially available for researching and studying new literacies from a sociocultural perspective. Readers will come away with a rich sense of what new literacies are, and a generous appreciation of how they are being researched.

There's something about the New York Times bestselling Julie James... FATE HAS THROWN TWO SWORN ENEMIES... Of all the hotel rooms rented by all the adulterous politicians in Chicago, female Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde had to choose the one next to 1308, where some hot-and-heavy lovemaking ends in bloodshed. And of all the FBI agents in Illinois, it had to be Special Agent Jack Pallas who gets assigned to this high-profile homicide. The same Jack Pallas who still blames Cameron for a botched crackdown three years ago—and nearly ruining his career… …INTO EACH OTHER'S ARMS Work with Cameron Lynde? Are they kidding? Maybe, Jack thinks, this is some kind of welcome-back prank after his stint away from Chicago. But it’s no joke: the pair is going to have to put their rocky past behind them and focus on the case at hand. That is, if they can cut back on the razor-sharp jibes—and smother the flame of their sizzling-hot sexual tension…

The waters are rising--everywhere--and most of England is inundated by the surge, leaving isolated pockets of mankind to fight for survival--and for civilization!

Award-winning author Givens brings to life the passion and political treachery of 14th-century Scotland, after a dynastic feud for the crown explodes into a war for Scottish independence.

A beautifully imagined tale of the Brontë sisters and the writing of Jane Eyre. Sheila Kohler's memoir Once We Were Sisters is now available. The year is 1846. In a cold parsonage on the gloomy Yorkshire moors, a family seems cursed with disaster. A mother and two children dead. A father sick, without fortune, and hardened by the loss of his two most beloved family members. A son destroyed by alcohol and opiates. And three strong, intelligent young women, reduced to poverty and spinsterhood, with nothing to save them from their fate. Nothing, that is, except their remarkable literary talent. So unfolds the story of the Brontë sisters. At its center are Charlotte and the writing of Jane Eyre. Delicately unraveling the connections between one of fiction's most indelible heroines and the remarkable woman who created her, Sheila Kohler's Becoming Jane Eyre will appeal to fans of historical fiction and, of course, the millions of readers who adore Jane Eyre, as well as biographies about the Brontës like Claire Harman’s Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart.

The English Novel, Volume II: Smollett to Austen collects a series of previously-published essays on the early eighteenth-century novel in a single volume, reflecting the proliferation of theoretical approaches since the 1970s. The novel has been the object of some of the most exciting and important critical speculations, and the eighteenth-century novel has been at the centre of new approaches both to the novel and to the period between 1750 and 1800. Richard Kroll's introduction seeks to frame the contributions by reference to the most significant critical discussions. These include: the general importance of 'sentimentalism' as a cultural movement after 1750; its relationship to the emergence of the Gothic novel as a specific genre or mode; the rapid rise in the number of women novelists in the later eighteenth century; the relationship between the novel as mediator of social relations and the idea of the 'public sphere'; the relationship between novelistic codes and the massive growth of a consumerist society; the class conflicts of writers like Smollett; the effect on the novel of the new 'British' nation; and the effects of the French Revolution and the subsequent political debates on writers like Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Austen. This collection will be of interest to students of the later enlightenment, and also to all who are interested in late eighteenth-century radicalism, and the general relationship between literature, history, and politics.