Beauties Slay The Beasts

Alana Dorset was savagely raped. Zania, Fedilia and others, by chance, become her bonded friends. Each has a story to tell about the lengths men had gone to use them, harm them and even murder those women unable to defend against them. Is it right that because of their undeniable beauty, they should become targets? The women all have the same question ... should those men pay? The power of woman is, more often than not, underestimated by men. When they decide to fight back, men had better run for the hills.

Originally written in 1740, Beauty and the Beast has been reimagined into countless theatrical, print, and film adaptations over the course of two and a half centuries. Its popularity has only grown since its initial publication. The basis for the 2017 film adaptation, this classic fairytale has proven to still appeal to modern-day story-lovers and readers alike. The narrative follows young Beauty, who is forced to live with a beast in an enchanted castle after her father attempts to pick the Beast’s most precious rose and pleads for his life in exchange for one his daughters. After being spoiled by servants and lavish gifts from Beast, Beauty eventually grows homesick. She negotiates a deal with Beast to visit home, but only if she agrees to return in exactly one week. Once she arrives at her father’s home, she considers staying, but soon after looking in her enchanted mirror and seeing Beast heart-broken and half alive in her absence, she realizes that her loyalty and love lie elsewhere—back at the castle. Featuring brand-new, full-color illustrations throughout by renowned artist Ángel Domínguez as well as a foreword by literary scholar Michael Patrick Hearn, this classic tale of how love can soften even the most monstrous of beasts will come to life.

"Guard your secrets. After a centuries-long slumber, the crystallized sleeping beauty finally awakens! Belle is forced to look on helplessly as the Beast is reunited with his beloved fiancée, her unrequited feelings threatening to consume her. Things come to a head when those very feelings are accidentally revealed in front of all the castle residents, but luckily for Belle, an unexpected ally rushes to her aid... ."--Back cover

MACKINLAY KANTOR Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville She had bought many slaves, but none like Beauty Beast. From the moment she saw him—smooth, golden, powerful—she knew she had to own him... This rich, sensual novel of a woman's forbidden love for a magnificent young slave brings to violent life the passion, the decadence, the savagery of the Old South. With masterly skill, MacKinlay Kantor unfolds the hidden lusts and secret dramas of men and women caught between two worlds—chained to their separate destinies by color and by chance. "This is the ante-bellum sex novel to end all ante-bellum sex novels."—Publishers' Weekly

Bettina L. Knapp explores the universal and eternal nature of fourteen French fairy tales, including the medieval Romance of Mélusine, Charles Perrault's seventeenth-century versions of Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard, and Jean Cocteau's film version of Beauty and the Beast. She demonstrates the relevance of these fairy tales for modern readers, both for the psychological problems they address and for the positive resolutions they offer. Through her careful examination of these tales, Knapp shows that people in past eras suffered from such supposedly "modern" problems as alienation and identity crises and went through harrowing ordeals before experiencing some sort of fulfillment. By imparting the age-old wisdom embedded in these works, French Fairy Tales triggers new insights into psychological problems and offers helpful ways of dealing with them.

This book holds classical liberalism responsible for an American concept of beauty that centers upon women, wilderness, and machines. For each of the three beauty components, a cultural entrepreneur supremely sensitive to liberalism’s survival agenda is introduced. P.T. Barnum’s exhibition of Jenny Lind is a masterful combination of female elegance and female potency in the subsistence realm. John Muir’s Yosemite Valley is surely exquisite, but only after a rigorous liberal education prepares for its experience. And Harley Earl’s 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air is a dreamy expressionist sculpture, but with a practical 265 cubic inch V-8 underneath. Not that American beauty has been uniformly pragmatic. The 1950s are reconsidered for having temporarily facilitated a relaxation of the liberal survival priorities, and the creations of painter Jackson Pollock and jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman are evaluated for their resistance to the pressures of pragmatism. The author concludes with a provocative speculation regarding a future liberal habitat where Emerson’s admonition to attach stars to wagons is rescinded.