Beyond The Lavender Fields

1792, France Rumors of revolution in Paris swirl in Marseille, a bustling port city in southern France. Gilles Étienne, a clerk at the local soap factory, thrives on the news. Committed to the cause of equality, liberty, and brotherhood, he and his friends plan to march to Paris to dethrone the monarchy. His plans are halted when he meets Marie-Caroline Daubin, the beautiful daughter of the owner of the factory. An aristocrat and royalist, Marie-Caroline has been called home to Marseille to escape the unrest in Paris. She rebuffs Gilles's efforts to charm her and boldly expresses her view that violently imposed freedom is not really freedom for all. As Marie-Caroline takes risks to follow her beliefs, Gilles catches her in a dangerous secret that could cost her and her family their lives. As Gilles and Marie-Caroline spend more time together, she questions her initial assumptions about Gilles and realizes that perhaps they have more in common than she thought. As the spirit of revolution descends on Marseille, people are killed and buildings are ransacked and burned to the ground. Gilles must choose between supporting the political change he believes in and protecting those he loves. And Marie-Caroline must battle between standing up for what she feels is right and risking her family's safety. With their lives and their nation in turmoil, both Gilles and Marie-Caroline wonder if a révolutionnaire and a royaliste can really be together or if they must live in a world that forces people to choose sides.

This is a 1910 fiction by Mary Elizabeth Braddon based upon the thought that the dead are always with us. It presents how especially for some people this feeling is more powerful, so powerful for that they can never be completely present in the world of the living again. This work has a thrilling storyline and many interesting characters. Each of these characters has an impressive blend of qualities. The novel is both delightful and sad at the same time. The excellent style of writing makes it more enjoyable and easier to comprehend. Mary Braddon (1835 – 1915) was a famous English novelist of the Victorian era. She is best known for her 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley's Secret, which has also been dramatized and filmed many times. She produced more than 80 novels with clever plots and also wrote a number of works of engrossing supernatural fiction.

On a journey begun twenty years earlier, Daryl Farmer, a twenty-year-old two-time college dropout, did what lost men have so often done in this country: he headed west. Twenty years later and seventy pounds heavier, with the yellowing journals from that transformative five-thousand-mile bicycle trek in his pack, Farmer set out to retrace his path. This is his story of pursuing that distant summer and that distant dream of home, where home is endless space, a roof of big sky, and a bed of dry earth. ø Just as the years altered the man, so, too, have they altered the West, and Farmer?s second journey affords a unique perspective on these changes?as well as on what lasts. Whether caught in a Colorado snowstorm or braving a Yellowstone herd of bison, kayaking with orcas in Puget Sound, trading Ninja moves with a homeless man in San Francisco, or getting the lowdown on aliens on Nevada?s Extraterrestrial Highway, Farmer charts a moving landscape of people and places. This is the West where the natural world and personal character are inextricably linked, and where one man?s ride into the past and present takes us to the heart of that ever-evolving connection.

Despite the recent growth in university courses on European Studies and Cultural Studies, and notwithstanding increasing public concern about questions of national identity within Europe, there is currently little material available which explores the diversity of European identities specifically within the context of European literary and filmic culture. In tackling ten novels, six plays, four films, three short stories, three books of travel writing and one diary, covering fifteen nationalities in all, the authors of this volume are seeking to fill this gap. The twelve essays contain detailed textual analysis embedded within a framework of cultural theory whose most celebrated reference points include Freud, Edward Said, Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha. This volume is aimed not only at specialists in identity studies and those concerned with the artistic landscape of a wider Europe - including Russia, the Balkans, Finland and Turkey. It will also interest those preoccupied with building an imaginative and imagined identity for Europe, an identity which might help to sustain it as a political entity and lend it greater popular legitimacy than it enjoys at present.

Despite the recent growth in university courses on European Studies and Cultural Studies, and notwithstanding increasing public concern about questions of national identity within Europe, there is currently little material available which explores the diversity of European identities specifically within the context of European literary and filmic culture. In tackling ten novels, six plays, four films, three short stories, three books of travel writing and one diary, covering fifteen nationalities in all, the authors of this volume are seeking to fill this gap. The twelve essays contain detailed textual analysis embedded within a framework of cultural theory whose most celebrated reference points include Freud, Edward Said, Benedict Anderson and Homi Bhabha. This volume is aimed not only at specialists in identity studies and those concerned with the artistic landscape of a wider Europe - including Russia, the Balkans, Finland and Turkey. It will also interest those preoccupied with building an imaginative and imagined identity for Europe, an identity which might help to sustain it as a political entity and lend it greater popular legitimacy than it enjoys at present.

A lavender farm in summer. A fifteen-year-old girl who loves the colours of sunset. A handsome stranger who begs her to run away with him. It could have been a love story. Except, it is not that kind of a story. When a strange man approaches Rebecca Classion outside her farmhouse in the dead of the night and begs her to not go back inside, she does what any sensible fifteen-year-old would do. She runs straight back into the safety of home and slams the door shut behind her. Only, it turns out to be the worst decision of her life. From that day on, Rebecca Classion fades away. From the memories of all who once knew and loved her. From the perception of everyone she encounters. Not a trace of her persists for more than a fleeting instant. Not her voice. Not a footprint. All she yearns for is to exist again in the world of her loved ones. But oblivion may be the only safe place. After all, to be seen is to be exposed. And some truths are better left hidden.