The Arabian Love Child

Brilliantly evoking the changing attitudes of the time, The Love Child is a novel about love, family, separation, despair, and hope, full of tenderness and deep feeling. A young mother’s sacrifice. A child’s desperate search for the truth... London, 1917 When nineteen-year-old Alice Copeman becomes pregnant, she is forced by her father and stepmother to give up the baby. She simply cannot be allowed to bring shame upon her family. But all Alice can think about is the small, kitten-like child she gave away, and she mourns the father, a young soldier, so beloved, who will never have the chance to know his daughter. Edith and Philip Burns, a childless couple, yearn for a child of their own. When they secretly adopt a baby girl, Irene, their life together must surely be complete. Irene grows up knowing that she is different from other children, but no one will tell her the full truth. Putting hopes of marriage and children behind her, Alice embarks upon a pioneering medical career, striving to make her way in a male-dominated world. Meanwhile, Irene struggles to define her own life, eventually leaving her Suffolk home to find work in London. As two extraordinary stories intertwine across two decades, will secrets long-buried at last come to light?

When Allegra Huston was four years old, her mother was killed in a car crash. Soon afterward, she was introduced to an intimidating man wreathed in cigar smoke -- the legendary film director John Huston -- with the words, "This is your father." So began an extraordinary odyssey: from the magical Huston estate in Ireland to the Long Island suburbs to a hidden paradise in Mexico -- and, at the side of her older sister, Anjelica, into the hilltop retreats of Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal, and Marlon Brando. Allegra's is the penetrating gaze of an outsider never quite sure if she belongs in this rarefied world and of a motherless child trying to make sense of her famous, fragmented family. Then, at the age of twelve, Allegra's precarious sense of self was shattered when she was, once more, introduced to her father -- her real one this time, the British aristocrat and historian John Julius Norwich. At the heart of Love Child is Allegra's search through the unreliable certainties of memory for the widely adored mother she never knew -- the ghost who shadowed her childhood and left her in a web of awkward and unwelcome truths. With clear-eyed tenderness, Allegra tells of how she forged bonds with both her famous fathers, transforming her mother's difficult legacy into a hard-won blessing. Beautifully written and forensically honest, Love Child is a seductive insight into one of Hollywood's great dynasties and the story of how, in a family that defied convention, one woman found her balance on the shifting sands of conflicting loyalties.

A jilted bride turns her honeymoon trip into a steamy fling with no expectations—until she finds herself expecting—in this sexy romance novel. When her fiancé suddenly breaks off their engagement, Isabel Hunt is left with a non-refundable honeymoon on her hands. Rather than let it go to waste, she boldly asks drop-dead gorgeous wedding photographer Rafe St. Vincet to join her on the trip. One look at Rafe, and Isabel knows the arrogant ladies’ man will be the perfect no-strings rebound. But there’s more to Rafe than what pleasingly meets the eye. And their scorching hot honeymoon is about to take an unexpected turn . . . when it suddenly seems that Isabel has gotten pregnant.

This book, the first full-length cross-period comparison of medieval and modern literature, offers cutting edge research into the textual and cultural legacy of the Middle Ages: a significant and growing area of scholarship. At the juncture of literary, cultural and gender studies, and capitalizing on a renewed interest in popular western representations of the Islamic east, this book proffers innovative case studies on representations of cross-religious and cross-cultural romantic relationships in a selection of late medieval and twenty-first century Orientalist popular romances. Comparing the tropes, characterization and settings of these literary phenomena, and focusing on gender, religion, and ethnicity, the study exposes the historical roots of current romance representations of the east, advancing research in Orientalism, (neo)medievalism and medieval cultural studies. Fundamentally, Representing Difference invites a closer look at medieval and modern popular attitudes towards the east, as represented in romance, and the kinds of solutions proposed for its apparent problems.

Wanting his wife...back! Greek tycoon Leandros Petronades married Isobel on the heels of a wild affair. But, within a ear, the marriage crashed and burned. Three years later Leandros wants to finalize their divorce. He's found a girl who will make him a suitable wife...so unlike fiery Isobel! But face-to-face again with Isobel in Athens, Leandros is in for a shock: their all-consuming mutual attraction is just as strong as ever! Suddenly, his plan has changed and he's ready to tame his headstrong wife...by whatevermeans it takes!

To claim his heir, an Arabian king must seduce the beautiful waitress he never forgot in this sexy international romance. Playboy Sheikh Malak assumed he’d never inherit the throne of his home country. But when his brother unexpectedly abdicates, he finds himself King of Khalia! Now past indiscretions must be put aside . . . until he uncovers the hidden consequence of one delicious passion with an innocent waitress. Malak will claim his heir, but fiercely protective Shona won’t let him just take their son. Malak’s only choice is to bind Shona to him—as his Queen!