In the middle of the night, New York policeman Scott Dewitt answers a desperate phone call from his sister Larissa, who is living in Paris. Her boyfriend Claude has abruptly disappeared, and she can convince no one that foul play may be involved. Scott rushes to her and discovers the couple has become involved in a sinister conspiracy dating back centuries. Scott learns that the story of the Man in the Iron Mask is more than just a classic novel. It is a long-unsolved mystery at the center of a blackmail plot threatening the oldest, richest and most powerful families of Western Europe. Scott and Larissa must unveil the identity of the famous anonymous prisoner to find the missing man and save their own lives. They chase down a trail of clues, hidden messages and enigmatic symbols across France, England, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland and the Vatican, all the while pursued by a band of shadowy assassins. They discover shocking revelations about the crowned heads of Europe while fighting to survive. Inspired by true events, and based on extensive historical and scholarly research, the Black Prince of France takes the reader on a thrilling quest from the halls of 17th century palaces to the midst of a modern secret society. It is a plot deeper than the Da Vinci Code and darker than the Lost Symbol. It is the actual solution to the mystery of the Man in the Iron MaskLearn the lengths to which the elite will go in order to ensure that their secrets, no matter how ancient, will remain secret!

This “taut narrative” of the fourteenth-century conflict between England and France offers “a detailed, climactic account of a legendary battle” (Publishers Weekly). The epic fourteenth-century Battle of Poitiers marked a major turn in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Prince Edward, known to all as the Black Prince, not only won a surprising victory in his first campaign as commander, but managed the nearly impossible feat of taking the French monarch, King Jean II, prisoner. In the summer of 1356, Prince Edward drove toward the Loire Valley, deep in French territory. There, he met the full French army led by King Jean and a number of French nobles, including veterans of the defeat at Crécy ten years before. Outnumbered, the Prince fell back, but in September, he turned near the city of Poitiers to make a stand. Historians Witzel and Livingstone provide a day-by-day description of the campaign of July to September 1356, climaxing with a vivid description of the Battle of Poitiers itself. The detailed account and analysis of the battle and the campaigns that led up to it has a strong focus on the people involved in the campaign: ordinary men-at-arms and noncombatants, as well as princes and nobles.

A close study of clothes worn by aristocratic families and their households at the time of the Black Prince - and of Chaucer - showing Europe-wide influences. 1340 to 1363 were years remarkable for dramatic developments in fashion and for extravagant spending on costume, foreshadowing the later luxury of Richard II's court. Stella Mary Newton broke new ground with this detailed study, which discusses fourteenth-century costume in detail. She draws on surviving accounts from the Royal courts, the evidence of chronicles and poetry (often from unpublished manuscripts), and representations in painting, sculpture andmanuscript illumination. Her exploration of aspects of chivalry, particularly the choice of mottoes and devices worn at tournaments, and of the exchange of gifts of clothing between reigning monarchs, offers new insights into thesocial history of the times, and she has much to say that is relevant to the study of illuminated manuscripts of the fourteenth century. STELLA MARY NEWTON's lifelong interest in costume has been the mainspring of her work, from early days as a stage and costume designer (including designing the costumes for the first production of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral) to her later work at the National Gallery advising on the implications ofcostume for the purpose of dating, and at the Courtauld Institute where she set up the department for the study of the history of dress.

National Book Award Finalist: A stunning collection of Southern short fiction by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Keepers of the House. A family hides its poverty behind a façade of gentility. A mysterious stranger sows discord in a backwoods hamlet. A man leaves prison only to be drawn back into the darkness of his past. A young bride faces the choice of informing on her husband and his family or enduring a lifetime of deceit. These nine stories by Pulitzer Prize winner Shirley Ann Grau traverse the landscape of the American South, from New Orleans to the Louisiana bayou to the pine woods of Alabama, but their true territory is universal: the mysteries of the human heart. A dazzling portrait of the lovers and the criminals, the rich and the outcasts of the Deep South, these tales of passion, conflict, and destiny come from “a born writer if ever there was one . . . One reads these haunting, strikingly original stories with pleasure and excitement, enthralled by their power, amused by their melancholy irony” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Shirley Ann Grau, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince is an invaluable collection of contemporary source material, seen through the eyes of the men involved.