Cruel Malady

An enemies-to-lovers romance that explores the darkest chasm of the mind to discover what makes our dark hearts tick. With cameo appearances from London and Grayson from the Darkly, Madly Duet. I was born a psychopath, but he made me a killer. Blakely Vaughn Revenge is a lucrative business, and for a psychopath with zero empathy to inhibit her, it's more than profitable, it's how I achieve that elusive adrenaline rush. My life is structured. Controlled. Meticulously tailored to my needs. Then he botches one of my jobs. Alex is intelligent, sexy in an oblivious way. He's a buttoned-up scientist looking for thrills. And I never saw him coming. His deception was flawless. He used my vain nature against me to lure me into his trap. His fixation with finding a cure has spiraled into a deadly obsession with me-and now I'm at the mercy to a mad scientist whose cruel experiment shatters my mind. Revenge is my ethos. And I vow to have my revenge on Dr. Alex Chambers. Alex Chambers The ticking of the clock is the soundtrack to my life, counting down the precious seconds I have left to discover an antidote. My hunt for the perfect subject leads me to her, and oh, she's a beautiful revelation. I want her. I need her. Blakely's malady is death to her mind. And against society's laws and even the very laws of nature itself, I bring her necrotic, unfeeling humanity to life. I may have gone mad in the process, and after numerous failed attempts, my body count is stacking. I've attracted the attention of the infamous Angel of Maine serial killer-the vile catalyst for my very research. But my sacrifice is worth it, worth her-my lovely creation. It's even worth her exacting revenge on me, the villainous prince of her dark fairy tale. If this is my end, there are far worse ways to die than at the hands of my beautiful monster.

Leo Steinberg was one of the most original and daring art historians of the twentieth century, known for taking interpretative risks that challenged the profession by overturning reigning orthodoxies. In essays and lectures that ranged from old masters to contemporary art, he combined scholarly erudition with an eloquent prose that illuminated his subject and a credo that privileged the visual evidence of the image over the literature written about it. His works, sometimes provocative and controversial, remain vital and influential reading. For half a century, Steinberg delved into Michelangelo’s work, revealing the symbolic structures underlying the artist’s highly charged idiom. This volume of essays and unpublished lectures explicates many of Michelangelo’s most celebrated sculptures, applying principles gleaned from long, hard looking. Almost everything Steinberg wrote included passages of old-fashioned formal analysis, but here put to the service of interpretation. He understood that Michelangelo’s rendering of figures as well as their gestures and interrelations conveys an emblematic significance masquerading under the guise of naturalism. Michelangelo pushed Renaissance naturalism into the furthest reaches of metaphor, using the language of the body and its actions to express fundamental Christian tenets once expressible only by poets and preachers—or, as Steinberg put it, in Michelangelo’s art, “anatomy becomes theology.” Michelangelo’s Sculpture is the first in a series of volumes of Steinberg’s selected writings and unpublished lectures, edited by his longtime associate Sheila Schwartz. The volume also includes a book review debunking psychoanalytic interpretation of the master’s work, a light-hearted look at Michelangelo and the medical profession and, finally, the shortest piece Steinberg ever published.