Devenue princesse Sant'Anna par son mariage italien, Marianne n'a jamais cessé de servir l'Empereur, depuis son ancienne liaison avec lui. Quand finiront ces ambassades secrètes et dangereuses aux quatre coins de l'Europe en guerre ? Alors qu'elle se dirige vers la Corne d'or, Marianne mesure les risques de sa dernière mission. Comment déjouer la surveillance des espions anglais, atteindre le Sérail et rencontrer en tête à tête la sultane de Constantinople ? Les désirs de Napoléon sont des ordres : la guerre entre l'Empire ottoman et la Russie doit se Prolonger, afin qu'il puisse marcher librement sur Moscou. C'est alors que pour son bonheur de femme et d'amante réapparaît Jason Beaufort, qui n'a jamais renoncé à elle.

Les dés sont jetés. A la tête de la Grande Armée, inconscient des trahisons et des dangers qui menacent ses arrières, l'Empereur se dirige vers Moscou. Malgré ses rêves de bonheur et de liberté dans les bras de Jason retrouvé, Marianne ne peut rester inactive. Napoléon doit savoir ce qui l'attend à son retour. Pour Marianne aussi, la campagne de Russie a commencé. Devant elle, l'immensité de la steppe et des milliers de kilomètres à parcourir. Au bout de sa route, le Kremlin en flammes et son conquérant désemparé. Pour celle qui lui a toujours tout donné, est-ce le début d'une nouvelle vie ?

Nées dans le faubourg, voire la rue, le pavé ou le ruisseau, ces femmes d'exception ont eu la force, la persévérance et la chance de s'élever jusqu'aux sommets. A leur manière et grâce à leur beauté, elles sont parvenues à incarner leur temps et à susciter auprès des générations suivantes un véritable mythe. Comme toujours avec Juliette Benzoni, on reste dans l'histoire, mais cette fois au cœur de nouveaux univers : les arts, les spectacles, les salons et les boudoirs. Avec un immense plaisir défilent plusieurs visages fort célèbres : Catherine Ire de Russie, la Goulue, Casque d'or, Edith Piaf, Rachel, Blanche d'Antigny (qui inspira à Zola le personnage de Nana), la Du Barry, la Guimard, la Dame aux camélias, mais aussi d'autres courtisanes à qui la fortune a souri : mademoiselle George, Cora Pearl, Lucrezia Cognati, Rose Bertin, Jeanne de Tourbey... Toutes ces femmes ont enchanté leur époque et laissé un souvenir impérissable dans la mémoire collective.

He's always been trouble…Trevelyn and Callie are childhood sweethearts with a taste for ad venture, Until the fateful day her father discovers them embracing in the carriage house and in a furious frenzy drives Trevlyn away in disgrace…Exactly the kind of troubl she's never been able to resist…Nine long, lonely years later, Trevelyn returns. Callie sis shocked to discover he can still make her blood race and fill her life with mischief, excitement, and scandal. He would give her the world, but he can't give her the one thing she wants more than anything- himself…For Trevelyn, Callie is a spark of lights in a world of darkness and deceit. Before he can bear to say his last good-bye, he's determined to sweep her into one last, fateful adventure, just for the two of them…

A sweeping story told in letters, spanning two continents and two world wars, Jessica Brockmole’s atmospheric debut novel captures the indelible ways that people fall in love, and celebrates the power of the written word to stir the heart.March 1912: Twenty-four-year-old Elspeth Dunn, a published poet, has never seen the world beyond her home on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. So she is astonished when her first fan letter arrives, from a college student, David Graham, in far-away America. As the two strike up a correspondence--sharing their favorite books, wildest hopes, and deepest secrets--their exchanges blossom into friendship, and eventually into love. But as World War I engulfs Europe and David volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait for him on Skye, hoping he’ll survive.June 1940: At the start of World War II, Elspeth’s daughter, Margaret, has fallen for a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against seeking love in wartime, an admonition Margaret doesn’t understand. Then, after a bomb rocks Elspeth’s house, and letters that were hidden in a wall come raining down, Elspeth disappears. Only a single letter remains as a clue to Elspeth’s whereabouts. As Margaret sets out to discover where her mother has gone, she must also face the truth of what happened to her family long ago.

When the Titanic started sinking, who would make it off alive? The two cousins who had been so eager to see their first iceberg? The maid who desperately tried to escape with the baby in her care? The young newlyweds who’d booked passage despite warnings not to?One hundred years after that disastrous and emblematic voyage, Elizabeth Kaye reveals the extraordinary, little-known story behind one of the first lifeboats to leave the doomed ship.Told in real time and in the actual voices of survivors, Kaye’s poignant, pulse-pounding narrative includes the story of the Countess of Rothes, the wealthiest woman on the ship, bound for California, where she and her husband planned to start an orange farm. It was the Countess, dressed in ermine and pearls, who took command of Lifeboat No. 8, rowing for hours through the black and icy water. In the words of one of the Titanic’s crew, she was “more of a man than any we have on board.”At the heart of Kaye’s tale is a budding romance between the Countess’s maid, Roberta Maioni, and the Titanic’s valiant wireless operator, Jack Phillips. While Roberta made it safely onto Lifeboat No. 8, holding nothing but a photo of Jack she had run back to her cabin to retrieve, he remained on the ship, where he would send out the world’s first SOS signal. But would it be received in time to save his life?Surviving that fateful night in the North Atlantic was not the end of the saga for those aboard Lifeboat No 8. Kaye reveals what happened to each passenger and crew member and how the legendary maritime disaster haunted them forever.A century later, we’re still captivated by the Titanic and its passengers. With its skillful use of survivors’ letters, diaries, and testimonies, “Lifeboat No. 8” adds a dramatic new chapter to the ongoing story.

Played out against the seething rivalry between Inquisition-torn Spain and Elizabethan England, The Lion Triumphant traces the linked fates of strong-willed Catherine Farland and Captain Jake Pennlyon.Called “The Lion,” Captain Jake Pennlyon is a fearsome and virile plunderer who takes what he wants, and his sights are set on Catherine Farland. Blackmailed into wedlock and haunted by memories of the gentle boy she was forbidden to wed, Cat vows to escape. Fate intervenes when she’s taken prisoner aboard a Spanish galleon... unaware that she’s a pawn in one man’s long-awaited revenge. Beginning as Elizabeth takes the throne of England, and spanning the years until the legendary defeat of the Spanish Armada, The Lion Triumphant follows Cat’s journey from the thrill of a first passion to the ferocity of a mother’s love. Despite the twists of history, her fortunes—and her heart—will remain tied to one seductive buccaneer.

In a 1916 story by Heinz von Lichberg, a man falls in love with his landlady’s daughter—and her name is Lolita.

In 1955 the writer Vladimir Nabokov became world famous with the novel Lolita, the story of a stormy obsession with a nymph that leads a man to his downfall. The work immediately became a contemporary classic.

However, recently it has been discovered that, almost forty years before, a dark German writer, Heinz von Lichberg, had already written and published a story entitled Lolita, in which a teenager from Alicante seduced a German scholar on a trip to Spain. Did Nabokov know this first Lolita? To what extent was he inspired by it?

Ellen Kellaway, orphaned at age five, was raised by wealthy cousins, but was never allowed to forget that her every advantage was owed to the charity of others. However, when the son of a powerful London family asks for her hand in marriage, her world is opened up to untold wealth and social position. She never imagined that such an unlikely dream would come true.Despite these wonderful new developments in her life, Ellen continues to be wracked b the bad dreams that have haunted her since childhood. What is the meaning of the lifelong nightmare—the image of an unfamiliar room, a door opening and behind it a dreadful presence? Perhaps it is a message urging her to uncover the secrets of her long-lost family—the secrets of the ancient home of the Kellaways on the Far Island, off the wild coast of Cornwall.

Adrian Ruxley podrá ser un encantador libertino que hechiza hasta las moscas, pero no es un hombre dado a permanecer quieto mientras una dama es acosada, ni siquiera en una boda organizada por la dama en cuestión, Emma Boscastle, profesora de buenos modales en su academia de Londres para jóvenes damas. Adrian se enfrenta al ofensor, se produce un altercado, y ahora este adulador se encuentra recuperándose bajo el techo de Emma, encantado de la profunda preocupación que refleja su encantador rostro. Ella tiene un encanto que ningún libertino puede resistir.Emma está escandalizada con su propio comportamiento, seducida por un desconocido, atractivo ciertamente, eso sí. ¿Cómo podrá ocultar su indiscreción de la mirada de sus perceptivos hermanos? La pasión que Adrian ha despertado, y los sensuales placeres que le ha mostrado, han convertido los días de Emma en la academia en una exhibición impropia y sus noches en un audaz abismo de sensualidad. Pero cuando su intimidad revela los turbulentos secretos de Adrian, Emma quiere afrontar su más ambicioso plan: reformar a un libertino.

A los diez años Miranda Cheever no muestra signo alguno de convertirse en una gran belleza. Y ni siquiera a esa temprana edad Miranda ha aprendido a aceptar las expectativas que la sociedad tiene depositadas en ella… hasta la tarde en que Nigel Bevelstoke, el guapo y elegante vizconde Turner, besa solemnemente su mano y le promete que un día madurará y se convertirá en una mujer tan hermosa como inteligente.Y ni siquiera a los diez años Miranda sabía que le amaría para siempre.Pero los años siguientes se han mostrado tan crueles para Turner como amables ha sido para Miranda. Ella es tan fascinante como osadamente predijo el vizconde aquel memorable día… y aquel hombre se ha convertido en un hombre solitario y amargado, destrozado por una devastadora pérdida.Pero Miranda jamás ha olvidado la verdad que dejó por escrito en aquel papel tantos años atrás… y no permitirá que el amor que es su destino se le escape de entre los dedos…

Cuando Linnea llega a Alamo, no imagina que el hombre irritado que la recibe en la estación de tren se convertirá en su gran amor. Con sólo dieciocho años, la vehemente y alegre Linnea es la nueva profesora y está decidida a conquistar un lugar en la familia que la acose, así como dentro de la comunidad. Theodore es un granjero de treinta y cuatro años que vive con su madre y su hijo de dieciséis años. Al igual que los demás granjeros, Teddy se ocupa fundamentalmente de la cosecha, y cuando Linnea llega a vivir a su casa, se siente invadido e irritado porque la joven no respeta las reglas tácitas de la comunidad. Lentamente, en medio de las tareas cotidianas, surge entre ellos un amor profundo. Atemorizado por la diferencia de edad entre ambos, Teddy intenta alejarse de Linnea. Pero ella está dispuesta a aceptar el desafío porque sabe que él es su destino.

La saga Sherbrooke continúa con James y Jason Sherbrooke, los gemelos idénticos tan parecidos a su tía Melissande que irrita profundamente al padre de los muchachos, el conde.James, veintiocho minutos mayor que su hermano es el heredero. Tiene unos profundos y sólidos principios, apasionado estudiante de astronomía, le encanta montar a caballo y, al contrario que a su hermano Jason, le encanta aprender los entresijos de la administración de las propiedades que algún día heredará. Nunca se lanza a ciegas a una aventura, como hace su vecina, Corrie Tybourne Barrett, a la que conoce desde que eran pequeños, y a la que nunca ha visto limpia. Tiempo atrás harto de sus gamberradas y travesuras, y tras un intento de arrojarlo por un precipicio, le propino una buena azotaina.Una historia algo desalentadora para ambos. Pero cuando el conde, Douglas Sherbrooke recibe amenazas de muerte que llevan directamente a su pasado, y a un George Cadoudal ya muerto hace años, aunque todo apunte hacia esa historia en particular, Corrie, James y Jason unirán fuerzas para descubrir lo que está pasando.

France eagerly awaits the day the young King, Louis XV, comes of age and breaks free from the rule of his ministers. The country hopes Louis will bring back glory and prosperity to France. However, he is too preoccupied with the thrills of hunting and gambling to notice the power struggle going on in his own court. Soon, the King is introduced to the pleasures of mistresses and a succession of lovers follows. From the gentle persuasions of Madame de Mailley to her overtly ambitious sister, Madame Vintimille, France stands by and watches a King ruled by his women…

Society has strict rules about proper decorum, courtship,romantic etiquette, and bedchamber behavior.But rules are made to be broken…

A Love For All TimeShe is Catriona, Countessof Glenkirk, the dazzling green-eyed beautywhose silken sensuality fires the passion of men'svery souls – making her a pawn in a dangerous gameof royal intrigue. wife to a count, unwilling mistress to theking, she has the undying live of the most courageous lordin all of scotland…He is Francis, Earl of Bothwell, who defies his king to possess the woman he loves. Theirs is a romance in the grand tradition of bestselling author Beatrice Small – and epic tale of love and betrayal that sweeps from the snowy Scottish highlands through the glittering palaces of Europe and exotic pleasures domes of Constantinople to find its magnificent conclusion inthe exquisite fulfillment of love's most passionate desires.

LOVING JACK: Somehow her own fictional brooding hero had turned up in person right under her own roof, and now all romance writer Jackie MacNamara had to do was convince stubborn Nathan Powell that happily-ever-after began at home - and in her arms ...

The second in Sharon Lathan's Darcy Saga (Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy) fails on two levels. Readers new to Darcy and Elizabeth will be bored reading page after page about two paragons—he is a gracious and expert billiards player, she is an excellent manager of the household—while they go about their life, with the occasional dustup with Lady Catherine, all while awaiting the birth of their first child. Meanwhile, Austen lovers may well be insulted to read un-Austenesque conversations, scenes and goings-on. Either way, the brilliance of Austen is notably absent. Too often the day-in-the-life focus seems small, as do the couple's PG-13–level lusty thoughts and behaviors. Yes, it's romantic that in a break of Regency tradition they sleep in the same bed and make love often, but it's a lot of nothing after their 15th bout, as is suffering through Darcy hiding his erections from a jovial, knowing father-in-law-to-be. Austen's characters deserve far better than this.