“I present to you . . . the truth about this man’s death and my life.” Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s. As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration strikes Quentin–in the form of Poe’s own stories. The young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection. In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s. Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research–featuring documented material never published before–opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and devious twists, does honor to Poe himself

This book presents an interpretation of Maurice Scève’s lyric sequence Délie, object de plus haulte vertu (Lyon, 1544) in literary relation to the Vita nuova, Commedia, and other works of Dante Alighieri. Dante’s subtle influence on Scève is elucidated in depth for the first time, augmenting the allusions in Délie to the Canzoniere of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). Scève’s sequence of dense, epigrammatic dizains is considered to be an early example, prior to the Pléiade poets, of French Renaissance imitation of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry, in a time when imitatio was an established literary practice, signifying the poet’s participation in a tradition. While the Canzoniere is an important source for Scève’s Délie, both works are part of a poetic lineage that includes Occitan troubadours, Guinizzelli, Cavalcanti, and Dante. The book situates Dante as a relevant predecessor and source for Scève, and examines anew the Petrarchan label for Délie. Compelling poetic affinities emerge between Dante and Scève that do not correlate with Petrarch.

“[A] stunning tale of academic fraud . . . shocking and compelling.”-The Washington Post Dave Tomar wrote term papers for a living. Technically, the papers were “study guides,” and the companies he wrote for-there are quite a few-are completely aboveboard and easily found with a quick web search. For as little as ten dollars a page, these paper mills provide a custom essay, written to the specifics of any course assignment. During Tomar's career as an academic surrogate, he wrote made-to-order papers for everything from introductory college courses to Ph.D. dissertations. There was never a shortage of demand for his services. The Shadow Scholar is the story of this dubious but all-too-common career. In turns shocking, absurd, and ultimately sobering, Tomar explores not merely his own misdeeds but the bureaucratic and cash-hungry colleges, lazy students, and even misguided parents who help make it all possible.

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

Dante brings the legendary author—and the medieval Italy of his era— to vivid life, describing the political intrigue, battles, culture, and society that shaped his writing. Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has defined how people imagine and depict heaven and hell for over seven centuries. However, outside of Italy, his other works are not well known, and less still is generally known about the context he wrote them in. In Dante, Barbero brings the legendary author’s Italy to life, describing the political intrigue, battles, city and society that shaped his life and work. The son of a shylock who dreams of belonging to the world of writers and nobles, we follow Dante into the dark corridors of politics where ideals are shattered by rampant corruption, and then into exile as he travels Italy and discovers the extraordinary color and variety of the countryside, the metropolises, and the knightly courts. This is a book by a serious scholar with real popular appeal, as evidenced by its bestseller ranking in Italy. It is a remarkable piece of forensic investigation into medieval Italian life.

In a world where angels, demons, and gods fight over the possession of mortal souls, two conflicted pawns are ensnared in a cruel game. The enigmatic seer Estella finds herself thrown together with Count Mikhail, a dogmatic Templar dedicated to subjugating her kind. But when a corrupted cardinal and puppet king begin a systematic genocide of her people, the two become unlikely allies. Taking humanity back to their primordial beliefs and fears, Estella confronts Mikhail’s faith by revealing the true horror of the lucrative trade in human souls. All organized religions are shops orchestrated to consume mankind. Every deity, religion, and spiritual guide has been corrupted, and each claims to have the monopoly on truth and salvation. In a perilous game where the truth is distorted and meddling ancient deities converge to partake of the unseen battle, Estella unwittingly finds herself hunted by Lucifer. Traversing the edge of hell’s precipice, Estella and Mikhail are reduced to mere instruments. Their only means to overcome is through courting the Threefold Death, the ancient ritual of apotheosis—of man becoming God. The Shadow Crucible is a gripping epic set in medieval England where the struggle for redemption is crushed by the powers of evil. Tamara Lakomy is a new and compelling voice in the world of dark fantasy.

“A heart-wrenching quest for identity every YA reader will relate to, and a deep dive into the meaning of family." —Ellen Hopkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author Debut author Dante Medema explores the emotional fallout after a teenage girl discovers she is the product of an affair. Told through a series of poems, text messages, and emails, this contemporary YA is perfect for fans of Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin. Seventeen-year-old Cordelia Koenig intended to breeze through her senior project. While her peers stressed, Cordelia planned to use the same trace-your-roots genealogy idea her older sister used years prior. And getting partnered with her longtime crush, Kodiak Jones, is icing on the cake. All she needs to do is mail in her DNA sample, write about her ancestry results, and get that easy A. But when Cordelia’s GeneQuest results reveal that her father is not the person she thought he was, but a stranger who lives thousands of miles away, her entire world shatters. Now she isn’t sure of anything—not the mother who lied, the man she calls Dad, or the girl staring back at her in the mirror. If your life began with a lie, how can you ever be sure of what's true?

The life of one of the Great Lovers of all time, John Dante lived the life of a bachelor's fantasy, going from his humble beginnings in a small Italian village to the Playboy Mansion, where he lived for 26 years with Hugh Hefner and 40 of the most beautiful women in the world. John Dante was a key figure in the first years of the Playboy empire, hiring Bunnies, training Bunny Mothers, and managing the Playboy jet. He befriended some of the most popular and important figures of our time, including Hugh Hefner, whom John paints as a "fascinating, complex man," as well as Shel Silverstein, Lenny Bruce, Linda Lovelace, Don Adams, James Caan and myriad other personalities and stars. A first hand, inside look. An important book from the life of the second-in-command. "This is a highly original way of telling the story of John Dante, self-made namesake of the more famous Dante. Using the medieval poet's vision of Hell as a kind of running parallel narrative, Anthony Valerio weaves a fascinating tale of ambition, excess, friendship, and rocking good times back in the day of the Playboy Clubs, replete with Bunnies, orgies, and hedonistic fun. Valerio writes with verve and compassion about men and women who ran after their dreams and their pleasures with abandon, living as if youth, potency, and beauty would never end. They did, of course, and this gives a poignant quality to the book. This is also the life story of an Italian American who came up from very humble origins to the heights of Hugh Hefner's sexy Never Never Land. I didn't always like these players' choices, and the machismo of that world is sometimes hard to take. Women are prized for their long, smooth legs, their willingness to service the men, their decorative essence, all of which is not the most admirable way of viewing women. But those were the times and those were the values that dominated Hef's universe. John Dante did have his own moral code, unusual as it was, and he was above all a good and faithful friend. Valerio is so expert at making us feel the lives of others, even those very far from our own experiences, and his colloquial style is just right. It seems that he wrote this book out of friendship, and so it is ultimately a kind, compassionate book. I am looking forward to many more tales told by the master storyteller, Anthony Valerio " Rebecca West, professor, University of Chicago

Memories, fears, the fog of nightmares... Five years after a series of Dante-inspired killings stunned Boston, a politician is found in a London park with his neck crushed by an enormous stone device etched with a verse from the Divine Comedy. When other shocking deaths erupt across the city, all in the style of the penances Dante memorialized in Purgatory, poet Christina Rossetti fears her missing brother, the artist and writer Dante Gabriel Rossetti, will be the next victim. The unwavering Christina enlists poets Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes to decipher the literary clues, and together these unlikely investigators unravel the secrets of Dante’s verses to find Gabriel and stop the killings. Racing between the shimmering mansions of the elite and the seedy corners of London’s underworld, they descend further into the mystery. But when the true inspiration behind the gruesome murders is finally revealed, Christina must confront a more profound terror than anyone had imagined. A dazzling tale of intrigue from the writer Library Journal calls “the reigning king of popular literary historical thrillers,” The Dante Chamber is a riveting journey across London and into both the beauty and darkness of Dante. Expertly blending fact and fiction, Pearl gives us a historical mystery like no other that captivates and surprises until the last page.

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ? This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.