Although she is accustomed to men who judge her by her looks, Oriel Richmond is furious when she overhears the dark and roguish Blade Fitzstephen describing her in less than flattering terms.

Women find it can be tough to balance changes in our bodies, career moves, family and all our other obligations and activities. The five principles of the Defiant Woman show how to defy outdated stereotypes, self-defeating behaviors and limitations, while maintaining inner peace: • Recognize that your body is changing and be thankful that it continues to work as well as it does • Understand that your relationships are ever evolving and you're a work in progress too • Treasure your friends and draw strength from the community of women • Seek positive role models and strive to be a like example for those younger than you • Know that the world too is continuing to develop and be content because there is always something new and exciting to learn The Tao of the Defiant Woman is a unique and invigorating approach to the challenges modern women face that combines Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy of acceptance, with a healthy dose of defiance.

The book's study of Milton's identification with his female hero, and his advocacy of women's ethical, sexual, and political autonomy, gives a jolt to ongoing debates about Milton and feminism"--Book jacket

"The Maid's Tragedy, The Second Maid's Tragedy, Valentinian, and The Duchess of Malfi appeared on the English stage at a time when disenchantment with King James and nostalgia for Queen Elizabeth cast doubt on the traditional analogy between maleness and authority. In their sensational portrayal of politics and sex, these revenge tragedies challenge the dogmas of patriarchalism and absolutism on which James based his rule." "Focusing initially on the first three plays, Eileen Allman examines the genre's resident tyrants, revengers, androgynous heroes, and virtuous heroines."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

An international volume published every year in hardcover, containing essays and studies as well as book reviews of the many significant books and essays dealing with the cultural history of medieval and early modern England as expressed by and realized in its drama exclusive of Shakespeare.

What are myths and what are they for? Myths are stories that both tell us how to live and remind us of the inescapability and pull of the collective past. The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity explores the continuing power of primal stories to inhabit our thinking. An international range of contributors examine a range of texts and figures from the Bible to Cormac McCarthy and from Thor to the Virgin Mary to focus on the way that ancient stories both give access to the unconscious and offer individuals and communities personae or masks. Myths translated and recreated become, in this sense, very public acts about very private thoughts and feelings. The subtitle of the book, ‘Innovation, Singularity and Alterity,’ reflects the way in which the history of cultures in all genres is a history of innovation, of a search for new modes of expression which, paradoxically, often entails recourse to myth precisely because it offers narratives of singularity and otherness which may be readily appropriated. The individual contributors offer testament to the continuing significance of myth through its own constant metamorphosis, as it both reflects and transforms the societies in which it is (re)produced.

A NEW IDENTITY, A NEW LOVE Ever since Madison Delaney learned she was switched at birth, her life has been in a tailspin. The Hollywood actress arrives in Valentine Bay hesitant to reveal herself to her new family, but she quickly encounters Sten Larson living next door. The down-to-earth shipbuilder makes Madison question everything she thought she wanted. Can a movie star find happiness in small-town Oregon?

Milton's poems invariably depict the decisive instant in a story, a moment of crisis that takes place just before the action undergoes a dramatic change of course. Such instants look backward to a past that is about to be superseded or repudiated and forward, at the same time, to a future that will immediately begin to unfold. Martin Evans identifies this moment of transition as "the Miltonic Moment." This provocative new study focuses primarily on three of Milton's best known early poems: "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus)," and "Lycidas." These texts share a distinctive perceptual and cognitive structure, which Evans defines as characteristically Miltonic, embracing a single moment that is both ending and beginning. The poems communicate a profound sense of intermediacy because they seem to take place between the boundaries that separate events. The works illuniated here, which also include Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, are all about transition from one form to another: from paganism to Christianity, from youthful inexperience to moral maturity, and from pastoral retirement to heroic engagement. This transformation is often ideological as well as historical or biographical. Evans shows that the moment of transition is characteristic of all Milton's poetry, and he proposes a new way of reading one of the seminal writers of the seventeenth century. Evans concludes that the narrative reversals in Milton's poetry suggest his constant attempts to bring about an intellectual revolution that, at a time of religious and political change in England, would transform an age.

Can an impoverished earl find treasure with the aid of a runaway bride and a ghost? Refusing to fill her drunken stepfather’s coffers by marrying a wealthy American, Lady Iona Malcolm Ross flees her Highland estate for Wystan castle, a home for stray Malcolm females. She’s quite content to tend her precious queen bee and hives there—until the day the castle’s owner returns. Unless Gerard, Earl of Ives and Wystan, can squeeze more income out of his estate, he’ll have to close the family’s deteriorating castle and evict the tenants. The sharp-tongued beekeeper who nearly kills him with her bees is simply another good reason. But lately, an artifact in his pocket weirdly whispers of treasure at Wystan, in the knowledgeable voice of a Roman soldier. A busy man with interests in law and archeology, Gerard isn’t much inclined to believe that he’s one of his family’s psychic eccentrics. Until news of a ten-thousand pound reward for the return of Lady Iona, a runaway bride, introduces a whole new perspective to the word treasure. Even if he weren’t allergic to Iona’s bees, he needs to marry money, and she is penniless. But surely, between them, they can claim the reward and still turn her wicked stepfather’s plot on its head—without endangering their lives or hearts. The School of Magic series: Lessons in Enchantment A Bewitching Governess An Illusion of Love The Librarian’s Spell Entrancing the Earl Captivating the Countess