Longsword S Lady

Spirited away to France after the death of her father, the Earl of Salisbury, young Ela is soon found by a wandering minstrel and taken to the court of Richard Lionheart. Aged nine, she is betrothed to the King's illegitimate half-brother, William Longsword, before being sent for education in the household of Eleanor of Aquitaine.Some years later, Ela and William form a harmonious bond, despite their arranged marriage, and have many children, but their lives are always threatened by uncertainty. King John now rules, and William is his most loyal brother--and his enforcer.When the King tries to seduce Ela while William lies in the dungeons of the fighting Bishop of Bouvines, at last he decides to change his allegiance from the brother he once loved who has now become a tyrant. He returns to the Plantagenet fold only on King John's demise and the accession of his young nephew, King Henry III.But war and strife is never far away, and on a journey from Gascony, William is shipwrecked and believed dead by most, barring Ela. Men of ambition start clamouring to wed the widowed Countess--and claim the earldom of Salisbury through marrying her...LONGSWORD'S LADY is historical fiction based on the life of the remarkable medieval woman who placed a founding stone of Salisbury Cathedral, became the Sheriff of Wiltshire, one of only two female Sheriffs, and ended up a powerful Abbess in the beautiful convent she founded at Lacock.

Flame-haired Mairin of Aelfeah was a ravishing beauty who caught the attention of three extraordinary men—Basil, Prince of Byzantium, who taught her love’s mysterious secrets; Josselin of Combourg, a gallant knight of William the Conquerer; and Eric Longsword, the powerful Viking whose tragic love for Mairin would mark her forever. To these men, Mairin was the Enchantress— and in a world gone mad with savage war and fierce desire, only their love could save her.

“This new novel of the Change is quite probably the finest by an author who has been growing in skill and imagination for more than twenty-five years.” – Booklist (Starred Review) Rudi Mackenzie has journeyed long and far across the land that was once the United States of America, seeking the shore where the sun rises, hoping to find the source of the world-altering event that has come to be known as the Change. His quest ends in Nantucket, an island overrun with forest, inhabited by a mere two hundred people, who claim to have been transported there from out of time. Only one odd stone house remains standing. Within it, Rudi finds a beautifully made sword seemingly waiting for him. And once he takes it up, nothing for Rudi—or for the world that he knows—will ever be the same…

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

By the time Ian Watt published The Rise of the Novel. in 1957, it was clear that many women novelists before Jane Austen had been overlooked in critical studies of literature and that some of them had been completely forgotten by the reading public. In this book, Brian Corman explores the question of how and why this came about. Corman provides a systematic survey of the reputations of early women novelists as canons of the novel developed over a period of roughly two hundred years, and, in so doing, suggests reasons for their frequent exclusion. Women Novelists before Jane Austen challenges the view that exclusion from the canon was a simple function of gender and goes deeper to examine potential reasons why certain women writers were overlooked. In the process, it provides an overview of histories of the British novel from the beginning through to the mid-twentieth century, ending with the publication of Watt's famous text. Further, Corman offers a prolegomenon to the important recovery work of the late-twentieth century in which many revised accounts of the history of the novel appeared, essentially improving the scope covered by Watt. This study historicizes the place of early women novelists in the British canon in order to provide an informed context for current views.

Wace's Roman de Rou is both a valuable historical document and an important work of French literature. Composed during the 1160s and 1170s, it relates the origins of Normandy from the time of Hasting and Rollo (Rou) and continues as far as the battle of Tinchebray in 1106.

Christopher Sinclair goes out for a walk on a mild Arizona evening and never comes back. He stumbles into a freezing winter under an impossible night sky, where magic is real -- but bought at a terrible price. A misplaced act of decency lands him in a brawl with an arrogant nobleman and puts him under a death sentence. In desperation he agrees to be drafted into an eternal war, serving as a priest of the Bright Lady, Goddess of Healing. But when Marcius, god of war, offers the only hope of a way home to his wife, Christopher pledges to him instead, plunging the church into turmoil and setting him on a path of violence and notoriety. To win enough power to open a path home, this mild-mannered mechanical engineer must survive duelists, assassins, and the never-ending threat of monsters, with only his makeshift technology to compete with swords and magic. But the gods and demons have other plans. Christopher's fate will save the world... or destroy it.