A Surfeit Of Suitors

Misanthropoetics explores efforts by Renaissance writers to represent social flight and withdrawal as a fictional escape from the incongruous demands of culture. Through the invented term of its title, this book investigates the literary misanthrope in a number of key examples from Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, and the satirical milieu of Marston to exemplify the seemingly unresolvable paradoxes of social life. In Shakespeare’s England a burgeoning urban population and the codification of social controls drove a new imaginary of revolt and flight in the figure of the literary misanthrope. This figure of disillusionment became an experiment in protesting absurd social demands, pitting friendship and family against prudent economies, testimonies of durable love against erosions of historical time, and stable categories of gender against the breakdown and promiscuity of language. Misanthropoetics chronicles the period’s own excoriating critique of the illusion of resolution fostered within a social world beleaguered by myriad pressures and demands. This study interrogates form as a means not toward order but toward the impasse of irresolution, to detecting and declaring the social function of life as inherently incongruous. Robert Darcy applies questions of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, deconstruction and chaos theory to observe how the great deployers of literary form lost confidence that it could adhere to clear and stable rules of engagement, even as they tried desperately to shape and preserve it.

Tempestuous sparks promise to ignite into passionate flames as Darcy and Elizabeth endeavor to sketch each other’s character. Long before he and she meet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet entertains notions of Mr. Darcy as being good-natured, compassionate, and exceedingly handsome. Indeed, everything a gentleman ought to be. In light of the ardent disdain that he incites in her family and friends at the Meryton assembly, reconciling her favorable impression of him proves deeply unsettling. Hence she goes about making out his true nature. Boasting to the gentleman of an acquaintance with his worst enemy hardly recommends her to him.

A book of poems written by Ronald V. Micci, both witty and deeply emotional.

To protect her sister, a lady determined to marry for love must accept a devious suitor’s dubious proposal in this Regency romance series debut. There have been six suitors so far, all vying for the attention—and generous dowry—of the beautiful, elusive Eleanor Sutherland. But what will it take to melt the heart of the so-called Lady Frost? Camden West is determined to find out for himself . . . and he has a secret weapon. Cam knows that Ellie’s sister, Charlotte, harbors a scandalous secret—one that could bring ruin to the Sutherland name. If Ellie marries him, Cam promises to keep mum. But is she willing to sacrifice her own happiness for her sister’s reputation? To Ellie’s surprise, it becomes clear that Cam doesn’t need her money, nor is he interested in her status. Soon, what begins as a sham engagement transforms into something deeper, and more passionate, than Ellie could have imagined. Is it possible that all Cam truly wanted was her? Or could he be hiding something else? Even for a lady in love, only the truth will do.

The hapless inhabitants of Killoyle, Ireland, face all manner of chaos in this comic novel from an author “capable of spinning a fabulous yarn” (Minnesota Daily). After local lush Mick McCreek gets into a car crash with a cross-dressing church sexton, he enlists the help of a lawyer, Tom O’Mallet. As it turns out, the lawyer’s real gig is selling missiles to an IRA splinter group, and he plans to use his clueless client as a patsy. O’Mallet also hoodwinks Anil, an Indian waiter who has found himself the unlikely target of a manhunt. What Tom doesn’t know is that his lucrative weapons are destined for a massive terrorist attack on the Pint-Pulling Olympiad, and that Anil’s sexy cousin Rashmi—a sweatshop worker turned intelligence operative—is hot on the bombers’ trail. With a wink and a nudge, Roger Boylan’s pyrotechnic prose brings to life Ireland at its manic extremes, proving the author a dazzling and distinctive talent in American fiction.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER 2022 A Raven and Fisher Mystery: Book 3 Edinburgh, 1850. This city will bleed you dry. Sarah Fisher is keeping a safe distance from her old flame Dr Will Raven. Having long worked at the side of Dr James Simpson, she has set her sights on learning to practise medicine herself. A notion everyone seems intent on dissuading her from. Across town, Raven finds himself drawn into Edinburgh’s mire when a package containing human remains washes up on the shores of Leith, and an old adversary he has long detested contacts him, pleading for Raven’s help to escape the hangman. Sarah and Raven’s lives seem indelibly woven together as they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.