Sara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First World War, when he was a soldier about to go to battle. When, years later and after the death of her husband, Cedric contacts her out of the blue, Sara finds herself eager to see him again - against the wishes of her in-laws - and to find out the secret of this man she loves yet knows so little about. A poignant tale of thwarted love, 'The Intimate Strangers' explores many of Fitzgerald's favourite themes, such as the constraints of social pressure on romance and the American fascination for Old Europe. This volume also includes other lesser-known stories he wrote from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, revealing new facets to the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.

Intimate Strangers tells the story of the everyday tensions of maids and madams in ways that bring together different worlds and explore various dimensions of servitude and mobility. Immaculate travels to a foreign land only to find her fianc refusing to marry her. Operating from the margins of society, through her own ingenuity and an encounter with researcher Dr Winter-Bottom Nanny, she is able to earn some money. Will she remain at the margins or graduate into DUST - Diamond University of Science and Technology? Immaculate learns how maids struggle to make ends meet and madams wrestle to keep them in their employ. Resolved to make her disappointments blessings, she perseveres until she can take no more.

Fourteen stories on old age. In Crazy Heart, an old man reflects on his failed marriage, while Mr. Alello is on the indignity of a lonely death.

Dark gray clouds had swallowed the rising sun, dawn outlining their ominous shapes in gold. And the skyOC crimson red, the color of fresh blood. Nathalie's blood started to pound with excitement. She could almost taste it. Rain was coming. A storm. Physician Nathalie Arnaud is on her way home to San Francisco from Paris. After living on old bread, studying by oil lamps, and swimming through mischievous opinions about unnatural females, she has finally earned a brand new diploma from L'Ecole de Medicin . On the ship she encounters an enigmatic green-eyed Capitin, a most irritating man who causes her to exhibit symptoms she's not used to diagnosing. When The Silhouette reaches port, Nathalie finds that nothing is quite as she remembered. San Francisco has grown up, and the Civil War hasn't stayed as far away as she'd hoped. Her aunt, Catherine Larsson, is running one of the most luxurious bordellos in town; her brother, Claude, has gone missing in connection with a most disturbing disappearance of the Union's gold; and doctoring on the front has taken a toll on her mentor, Doc James Calhoun, who's since closed his Infirmary for Women and Children. To top off her homecoming, Major William Wolfe, the man with unlimited powers over her fate due to a sin committed years ago, now claims to hold her brother's life in the balance. Nathalie is forced once again to secretly work for the Union, only this time as a physician and not as a spy. Don Miguel Samuelle Cabrillo is not only a powerful man, but also a man with many dark secrets. Nathalie's new assignment is to diagnose and cure Don Miguel of a most mysterious illness, even against his will. As one of the few female doctors, she is used to having trouble performing her duties, but when the young doctora finally comes face to face with Don Miguel Samuelle Cabrillo, the stipulations he imposes promise to make this the most challenging and stimulating assignment she has ever faced. She is determined not only to get to the bottom of the Don's illness, but also to unravel the mystery of the Union's gold disappearance, whatever it takes. And it may very well take her life. She doesn't, however, count on society balls and wartime intrigue being part of her job. Nathalie finds herself drawn further into the mysterious world of the Captain, and discovers that he can teach her a few things medical school could not. When in Don Miguel's arms, his kisses burn up all thought, his caresses wash away all reality, and his body obliterates all truth except the one in their hearts. The place they reach when they are together is softer than silk and brighter than lightning, peaceful and cataclysmic, familiar because they belong there, and foreign because they can never stay long enough. Boson Books also offers Kit Black by Monica Danetiu-Pana. For an author bio, photo, and a sample read visit bosonbooks.com."

When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us.' Reading the archive of early contact in Oceania against European traditions of thinking about intimacy and exchange, Vanessa Smith illuminates the traditions and desires that led Bougainville and other European voyagers to believe that the first word they heard in the Pacific was the word for friend. Her book encompasses forty years of encounters from the arrival of the Dolphin in Tahiti in June 1767, through Cook's and Bligh's voyages, to early missionary and beachcomber settlement in the Marquesas. It unpacks both the political and emotional significances of ideas of friendship for late eighteenth-century European, and particularly British, explorations of Oceania.

When Tudy's first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go study in France. As she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancee has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double. A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald's own dalliance with a French pilot, 'Image on the Heart' is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction.

The Jewish community of Rome is the oldest Jewish community in Europe. It is also the Jewish community with the longest continuous history, having avoided interruptions, expulsions, and annihilations since 139 BCE. For most of that time, Jewish Romans have lived in close contact with the largest continuously functioning international organization: the Roman Catholic Church. Given the church’s origins in Judaism, Jews and Catholics have spent two thousand years negotiating a necessary and paradoxical relationship. With engaging stories that illuminate the history of Jews and Jewish-Catholic relations in Rome, Intimate Strangers investigates the unusual relationship between Jews and Catholics as it has developed from the first century CE to the present in the Eternal City. Fredric Brandfon innovatively frames these relations through an anthropological lens: how the idea and language of family have shaped the self-understanding of both Roman Jews and Catholics. The familial relations are lopsided, the powerful family member often persecuting the weaker one; the church ghettoized the Jews of Rome longer than any other community in Europe. Yet respect and support are also part of the family dynamic—for instance, church members and institutions protected Rome’s Jews during the Nazi occupation—and so the relationship continues. Brandfon begins by examining the Arch of Titus and the Jewish catacombs as touchstones, painting a picture of a Jewish community remaining Jewish over centuries. Papal processions and the humiliating races at Carnival time exemplify Jewish interactions with the predominant Catholic powers in medieval and Renaissance Rome. The Roman Ghetto, the forcible conversion of Jews, emancipation from the Ghetto in light of Italian nationalism, the horrors of fascism and the Nazi occupation in Rome, the Second Vatican Council proclamation absolving Jews of murdering Christ, and the celebration of Israel’s birth at the Arch of Titus are interwoven with Jewish stories of daily life through the centuries. Intimate Strangers takes us on a compelling sweep of two thousand years of history through the present successes and dilemmas of Roman Jews in postwar Europe.

This novel was previously published as Imperfect Women in hardback. FRIENDS TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING. DON'T THEY? 'Love this book' Elisabeth Moss, star of The Handmaid's Tale 'Rare and complex' Marian Keyes 'A dark, delicious thriller. I loved it.' Louise O'Neill, author of Only Ever Yours 'Immersive and unsettling.' Sarah Vaughan, author of Anatomy of a Scandal 'I read this in no time. An excellent twist.' Dorothy Koomson, author of The Ice Cream Girls 'Beautifully written ... should not be missed' Samantha Downing, author of My Lovely Wife 'Immersive, intelligent and gripping' S.E. Lynes, author of Mother Everyone wants perfection. But there is no such thing. Nancy has the perfect life. She is bright, beautiful and rich with an adoring husband and daughter. At least that's what it seems on the outside to her two best friends. But then Nancy is murdered. And as the lies start to unravel, they realise they never knew their perfect friend at all. She clearly had as many secrets as they do...

In order to rescue his beloved Lyudmila, who has been abducted by the evil wizard Chernomor, the warrior Ruslan faces an epic and perilous quest, encountering a multitude of fantastic and terrifying characters along the way.The basis for Glinka's famous opera of the same name, Ruslan and Lyudmila - Pushkin's second longest poetical work - is a dramatic and ingenious retelling of Russian folklore, full of humour and irony.

One of Tolstoy's last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny's irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges.In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy's earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner's Morning.