The Orsini Bride

“I need you to find me a bride.” Marco Orsini demanded this from the etiquette teacher, Francesca Marcolini. His grandfather’s mandate was simple: Present a bride on the day of his 86th birthday—and thereby secure the continuity of his clan and the massive Orsini empire—or he will be disinherited. But Marco doesn’t want just any woman. He wants the perfect woman, and he knew that only Francesca can help him find the perfect bride. She had all the connections to the best women in Italian society after all—She may have even taught them in the ways of the social graces, which intrigues Marco. The two will go to great lengths to find the perfect woman, but how far must they search to find the perfect Orsini bride?

“I need you to go to New York and pretend to be your twin sister.” That was the command Laila Fiorenza’s father gave her when her sister ran away from home just days before she had to meet her betrothed, the handsome, party-going, Greek shipping magnate, Nikos Pallis. But after being jilted in a previous betrothal, Laila had only one wish, which is to never be the second choice in love again. So, eager to go back to her sheltered life in Sicily and unwilling to do what her father commands, Laila comes clean to Nikos about the farce, hoping he would call off the wedding. However, Nikos had other plans, and he might just be willing to grant her wish.

"I will come back for my revenge." That was Tatiana Rostova's promise to herself as she fought for her life one cold night out at sea, after the two people she loved the most betrayed her and watched as the ruthless ocean tried to swallow her whole. She would even sell herself to the devil-even if the ddevil came in the form of a six-foot-two, silver-eyed Italian duke named Lucca Cavelli. She would take everything that was rightfully hers-and this will be the start of the wallflower's revenge.

In Murder of a Medici Princess, Caroline Murphy illuminates the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy, the daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany. Murphy is a superb storyteller, and her fast-paced narrative captures the intrigue, the scandal, the romantic affairs, and the violence that were commonplace in the Florentine court. She brings to life an extraordinary woman, fluent in five languages, a free-spirited patron of the arts, a daredevil, a practical joker, and a passionate lover. Isabella, in fact, conducted numerous affairs, including a ten-year relationship with the cousin of her violent and possessive husband. Her permissive lifestyle, however, came to an end upon the death of her father, who was succeeded by her disapproving older brother Francesco. Considering Isabella's ways to be licentious and a disgrace upon the family, he permitted her increasingly enraged husband to murder her in a remote Medici villa. To tell this dramatic story, Murphy draws on a vast trove of newly discovered and unpublished documents, ranging from Isabella's own letters, to the loose-tongued dispatches of ambassadors to Florence, to contemporary descriptions of the opulent parties and balls, salons and hunts in which Isabella and her associates participated. Murphy resurrects the exciting atmosphere of Renaissance Florence, weaving Isabella's beloved city into her story, evoking the intellectual and artistic community that thrived during her time. Palaces and gardens in the city become places of creativity and intrigue, sites of seduction, and grounds for betrayal. Here then is a narrative of compelling and epic proportions, magnificent and alluring, decadent and ultimately tragic.

Isabella de' Medici was the hostess of a glittering circle in Renaissance Florence. Beautiful and liberated, she not only matched the intellectual accomplishments of her male contemporaries, but sought sexual parity also, engaging in an adulterous affair with her husband's cousin. It was this affair - and her very success as First Lady of Florence - that led to her death at the hands of her husband at the age of just thirty-four. She left behind a remarkable story, and as her legacy a son who became the best of the Orsini Dukes, immortalised by Shakespeare as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. Caroline P. Murphy illuminates this often misunderstood figure, and in the process brings to life the home of creativity, the city of Florence itself.

How did warrior nobles’ practices of violence shape provincial society and the royal state in early seventeenth-century France? Warrior nobles frequently armed themselves for civil war in southern France during the troubled early seventeenth century. These bellicose nobles’ practices of violence shaped provincial society and the royal state in early modern France. The southern French provinces of Guyenne and Languedoc suffered almost continual religious strife and civil conflict between 1598 and 1635, providing an excellent case for investigating the dynamics of early modern civil violence. Warrior Pursuits constructs a cultural history of civil conflict, analyzing in detail how provincial nobles engaged in revolt and civil warfare during this period. Brian Sandberg’s extensive archival research on noble families in these provinces reveals that violence continued to be a way of life for many French nobles, challenging previous scholarship that depicts a progressive “civilizing” of noble culture. Sandberg argues that southern French nobles engaged in warrior pursuits—social and cultural practices of violence designed to raise personal military forces and to wage civil warfare in order to advance various political and religious goals. Close relationships between the profession of arms, the bonds of nobility, and the culture of revolt allowed nobles to regard their violent performances as “heroic gestures” and “beautiful warrior acts.” Warrior nobles represented the key organizers of civil warfare in the early seventeenth century, orchestrating all aspects of the conduct of civil warfare—from recruitment to combat—according to their own understandings of their warrior pursuits. Building on the work of Arlette Jouanna and other historians of the nobility, Sandberg provides new perspectives on noble culture, state development, and civil warfare in early modern France. French historians and scholars of the Reformation and the European Wars of Religion will find Warrior Pursuits engaging and insightful.

Coco Spencer, the heiress of a wealthy, traditional English family, is a modern woman—and proud of it! She can’t cook, but she can pay someone to cook for her. She comes from a rich family, but she makes her own money and takes charge of her own life. She can get any man she sets her eyes upon, but she’s never really needed men to get everything that she could ever want. That is, until her deceased grandfather dangled the entire Spencer fortune in front of her in his will. Suddenly, she needs to find a man to marry or lose everything, including her childhood home.- But she doesn’t want just any man. She wants Rafe Moretti, the notoriously traditional Sicilian man. And what Coco wants, Coco gets.