Royal Enchantment

She married the king. She wanted the man. Guinevere's marriage to Arthur was a political partnership, never a romance. Merlin knows that the king's court, newly restored at a medieval theme park, will only be complete if Arthur has his lady. Little did anyone suspect that once Guinevere gets a taste of twenty-first-century freedoms that this ancient queen would lose interest in belonging to any man—even a royal one. It takes a dragon, and some passionate nights spent in each other's arms, to lure her back to her husband's side. Arthur is willing to accept Gwen's help in protecting the new Camelot from a fae menace, but the bigger challenge will be wooing back Guinevere for a second chance at love…

In Enchanted Islands, renowned art historian Mary D. Sheriff explores the legendary, fictional, and real islands that filled the French imagination during the ancien regime as they appeared in royal ballets and festivals, epic literature, paintings, engravings, book illustrations, and other objects. Some of the islands were mythical and found in the most popular literary texts of the day—islands featured prominently, for instance, in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso,Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and Fénelon’s, Telemachus. Other islands—real ones, such as Tahiti and St. Domingue—the French learned about from the writings of travelers and colonists. All of them were imagined to be the home of enchantresses who used magic to conquer heroes by promising sensual and sexual pleasure. As Sheriff shows, the theme of the enchanted island was put to many uses. Kings deployed enchanted-island mythology to strengthen monarchical authority, as Louis XIV did in his famous Versailles festival Les Plaisirs de l’île enchantée. Writers such as Fénelon used it to tell morality tales that taught virtue, duty, and the need for male strength to triumph over female weakness and seduction. Yet at the same time, artists like Boucher painted enchanted islands to portray art’s purpose as the giving of pleasure. In all these ways and more, Sheriff demonstrates for the first time the centrality of enchanted islands to ancient regime culture in a book that will enchant all readers interested in the art, literature, and history of the time.

Life as a princess isn’t as glamorous as it seems. For Tia Ashley, it’s a well-hidden secret. One she’s willing to take to her grave. Her step-father, King Balsatra, isn’t a caring ruler or father. He killed her mother and turned Tia into a servant. Her stepbrothers couldn’t help her out of fear of their father’s wrath. The day Tia turned eighteen, she fled the palace and far away from the Kregon Kingdom to a small village where no one knows her. Her new life is short lived when her three stepbrothers and their two guards arrive asking questions about the missing princess. There was no way she was going back to the palace to endure any more of the King’s abuse. Conell, Ayen, Elion, Kieran, and Jonah had other plans. The kind that involved taking the throne and ending the Kings rein of terror.

The Vampire Prince risks it all in the war with the Fae. Callie discovers untold powers, connects with her past, and transforms in a way she never expected. The rescue of her sister teeters in the balance. A centuries-old sorceress, vampire magic, and a horrifying blood exchange thrust her into a new state and unexpected consequences. Logan taps into his supernatural abilities to save Callie and her sister. Yet he meets with forces more powerful than anticipated. A life-changing event releases his strength as never before. The prince must save the woman he loves, and the very world he lives in.

In this acclaimed study of British statehood, identity and culture, Tom Nairn deftly dispels the conviction that the Royal Family is nothing more than an amusing relic of feudalism or a mere tourist attraction. Instead, he argues that the monarchy is both apex and essence of the British state, the symbol of a national backwardness. In this fully updated edition, Nairn’s powerful and bitterly comic prose lays bare Britain’s peculiar, pseudo-modern, national identity—which remains stubbornly fixated on the Crown and its constitutional framework, the “parliamentary sovereignty” of Westminster.

This book concerns the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music, fiction and poetry, before exploring the possibility of a life oriented to enchantment as the activity of art itself. With attention to the complex relationship between wonder in art and the programmatic disenchantment to which it is often subject, the author draws on the thought of a diverse range of philosophers, sociological theorists and artists, to offer an understanding of art through the idea of enchantment, and enchantment through art. An accessible study, richly illustrated with experience – both that of the author and others – Art and Enchantment will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and anyone with interests in the nature of aesthetic experience.

She married the king. She wanted the man.