Cornelius von Baerle lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win a magnificent prize for its creation. But when his powerful godfather is assassinated, the unwitting Cornelius becomes caught up in a deadly political intrigue. Falsely accused of high treason by a bitter rival, Cornelius is condemned to life in prison. His only comfort is Rosa, the jailer's beautiful daughter, who helps him concoct a plan to grow the black tulip in secret....

"In 1486, Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers in Murano, Italy. As a woman, she is not meant to blow glass--but when her father dies, she teaches herself to make beads in secret, and her work becomes the cornerstone of the Rosso family fortunes. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague rearing its head over Venice...

Even before the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the country, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, and has often been blamed for its own wretchedness. But as the author, a historian makes clear, its difficulties are rooted not only in its founding revolution, the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; but also in the hostility that this rebellion generated among the colonial powers and the intense struggle...

The year is 1348. The Black Death has begun to ravage Europe. Ten young Florentines―seven women and three men―escape the plague-infested city and retreat to the countryside around Fiesole. At their leisure in this isolated and bucolic setting, they spend ten days telling each other stories―tales of romance, tragedy, comedy, and farce―one hundred in all. The result, called by one critic "the greatest short story collection of all time" (Leonard...

"Plain Tales From the Hills" is a classic collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Contained here in this volume are the following tales: Lispeth, Three and-an Extra, Thrown Away, Miss Youghal's Sais, 'Yoked with an Unbeliever', False Dawn, The Rescue of Pluffles, Cupid's Arrows, The Three Musketeers, His Chance in Life, Watches of the Night, The Other Man, Consequences, The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin, The Taking of Lungtungpen, A Germ-Destroyer,...

After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the aging Doctor Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There the lives of two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil roads of London, they are drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained...

A superstitious schoolmaster, in love with a wealthy farmer's daughter, has a terrifying encounter with a headless horseman.

This book traces the rise and fall of Spartan society and explores the influence the Spartans had on their world and even on ours. Paul Cartledge brings to life figures like legendary founding father Lycurgus and King Leonidas, who embodied the heroism so closely identified with this culture, and he shows how Spartan women enjoyed an unusually dominant and powerful role in this hyper-masculine society. --From publisher's description.

"In this book, Richard W. Bulliet focuses on three major phases in the evolution of the wheel and their relationship to the needs and ambitions of human society. He begins in 4000 B.C.E. with the first wheels affixed to axles. He then follows with the innovation of wheels turning independently on their axles and concludes five thousand years later with the caster, a single rotating and pivoting wheel. Bulliet's most interesting finding is that a simple...