Blood Beauty

Rooted in the energetic, brutal and corrupt world of 15th-century Italy, Blood and Beauty opens with Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, clever and charismatic, buying his way to the Papal crown. In this he is not unusual. Neither is the fact that he has illegitimate children. What does mark him is his blood; he is a Spaniard in a country run by established Italian families. To thrive, even to survive, he must create his own dynasty using the papacy and his family as the building blocks of power. His son Cesare is his most brilliant pupil. Fearless and calculating (later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince), he provides the driving energy and the muscle. The Pope’s daughter, Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is their marriage tool. Just twelve when the novel opens, she is to have one dynastic union annulled and a second—beloved—husband murdered by her own brother to make way for a third strategic marriage—all before the age of twenty. Hers is a journey from pawn to political player. Using the high-wire tension of a political thriller, this portrait of power and its personal costs is the most thrilling family saga to come out of Italy since The Godfather. The Borgias emerge not as the poisoning sexual monsters of popular myth, but in all their ruthless determination and complex humanity.

Kagari was born with a rare, sweet-tasting blood type known as "honey blood." To protect her from the vampires she attracts, she is accompanied by the country's strongest and most attractive bodyguard, Ryotaro. As payment, he always takes just one sip of her blood. But one day, stirred on by the student council vice president, Saionji, he drank much more than just a sip… bringing Kagari to the brink of death. In volume 2 of this sweet love story, things grow ever more dangerous… and a new character is introduced!

Kagari was born with a rare, sweet-tasting blood type known as "honey blood." For her protection, she is accompanied by a vampire bodyguard, Ryotaro. After a series of recurring murders around town, caused by a vampire tree, Kagari and Ryotaro break into the Saionji Pharmaceutical Company to expose the truth. But what is the true nature of the enemy that lies there in wait for them? And what really happened to Kagari's parents that tragic day? In this climactic final volume, find out if the honey-blood beauty and her vampire will earn their happy ending!

Kagari was born with a rare, sweet-tasting blood type known as "honey blood." For her protection, she is accompanied by the country's strongest and most attractive bodyguard, Ryotaro. Seeking the truth behind the recent vampire rampage at school, Kagari pays a visit to Saionji's mansion. But what will she do when she learns his secret... and its unfortunate implications for the relationship between vampires and pabulums? The sweet love story between servant and master take a serious turn in volume 3!

Kagari Tojyo is smart and beautiful...but what really draws a crowd is her rare "honey blood"—a crowd of vampires, that is! Enter Ryotaro, her bodyguard and a vampire himself...with quite the perverted, sadistic streak! What's Kagari got to do to have a "normal" life?

In these stories representing the last three decades of Albanian writing--especially the burst of creativity in the newfound freedom of the 1990s--readers will encounter work that reflects the literary paradox of Eastern Europe in the late twentieth century: the startling originality of the new uneasily coupled with the strains of history; the sophistication and self-consciousness of late (or post-) modernity married to the simplicity of a literature first finding its voice; a refusal of political influence and pressure expressed through frankly political subject matter.

Warfare, ritual human sacrifice, and the rubber ballgame have been the traditional categories through which scholars have examined organized violence in the artistic and material records of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. This volume expands those traditional categories to include such concerns as gladiatorial-like boxing combats, investiture rites, trophy-head taking and display, dark shamanism, and the subjective pain inherent in acts of violence. Each author examines organized violence as a set of practices grounded in cultural understandings, even when the violence threatens the limits of those understandings. The authors scrutinize the representation of, and relationships between, different types of organized violence, as well as the implications of those activities, which can include the unexpected, such as violence as a means of determining and curing illness, and the use of violence in negotiation strategies.

From Holocaust knife fights to clowns hurling pies, Blood and Beauty offers a dozen opportunities for actresses to display their stage combat expertise. Filling a need in the theatrical canon, these short plays not only provide women with stage fights to perform, but also present severe acting challenges.