English Renaissance

Toby Lester, author of the award-winning The Fourth Part of the World, masterfully crafts yet another century-spanning saga of people and ideas in this epic story of Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic drawing of a man inscribed in a circle and a square. Over time, the nearly 550-year-old ink-on-paper sketch has transformed into a collective symbol of the nature of genius, the beauty of the human form, and the universality of the human spirit.

Heiress to the red rose of Lancaster, Margaret Beaufort never surrenders her belief that her house is the true ruler of England and that she has a great destiny before her. Her ambitions are disappointed when her sainted cousin Henry VI fails to recognize her as a kindred spirit, and she is even more dismayed when he sinks into madness.

Isabella d'Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, born into privilege and the political and artistic turbulence of Renaissance Italy, is a stunning black-eyed blonde and a precocious lover and collector of art. Worldly and ambitious, she has never envied her less attractive sister, the spirited but naive Beatrice, until, by a quirk of fate, Beatrice is betrothed to the future Duke of Milan.

In this audiobook, John Pruskin takes us from the fall of the Roman Empire to the cusp of the Italian Renaissance. You have a ringside seat as the remnants of the Roman Empire emerge from the tangled chaos of the barbarian conquests.

Elle Newmark's richly seductive prose brings to life the color and scandal of 15th-century Venice. Through Luciano, a street urchin apprenticed to a great chef in the palace of the doge, Newmark tells a wicked tale of political and papal intrigue. In Venice where every whisper is a secret or a lie, Luciano's initiation into the chef's spicy world makes for deliciously suspenseful listening.

One of the first true novels in the English language, Robinson Crusoe is the famous adventure of a castaway and his desert-island companion, Friday.

This city is going to ruin you. Just like it ruined your mother. Rose Fraser is nervous yet excited at the idea of a London season. Her excitement fades away when she starts receiving threats in the form of intricately folded, anonymous notes. Nerves turn to fear as the threats escalate. Feeling trapped, unable to go to the police, she turns to the only person she thinks can help her, her most serious suitor, private investigator James Grey. But will he uncover the truth before things take a turn for the worst?

Who cares if they're not normal? Neither am I. Life has not been easy for Alex Winters since he used his Pyrokinetic powers to take control of the Russian district. Violence and betrayal have become a way of life, but he's somehow managed to keep the gangsters in line. At barely sixteen, he thinks he's seen it all. He hasn't. Things spiral out of control when the latest double cross takes a turn for the supernatural. The new group muscling in on his territory turn out to be a brutal gang of vampires.

London, 1607. As dawn breaks, Daniel Pursglove rides north, away from the watchful eye of the King and his spies. He returns, disguised, to his childhood home in Yorkshire - with his own score to settle. The locals have little reason to trust a prying stranger, and those who remember Daniel do so with contempt. When a body is found with rope burns about the neck, Daniel falls under suspicion. On the run, across the country, he is pursued by a ruthless killer whose victims all share the same gallows mark.

When the curtains rise on Angelina Weld Grimké’s devastating drama, the Lovings—a Black family from the South—have settled into a small but immaculate apartment in an unnamed northern city. The widowed matriarch, Mary; her daughter, Rachel; and her son, Tom anticipate a more promising future here, but Rachel, a sensitive young woman, has a sudden reckoning with the past that throws her future into serious doubt.

Zora Neale Hurston is best remembered today for her work as a novelist, but she was also an accomplished dramatist, short story writer, and folklorist. That range of interests and styles is on full display in this collection.

August 1556. Jack Blackjack is on a simple mission: make it back home to his beloved London. It should be simple, right? Wrong. He's made it as far as Exeter, but before he can secure a fresh steed in that hellish city, he's faced with a dead priest, ruthless thieves, and a devious Dean who's determined to see the back of Jack. That suits Jack just fine - he wants to leave! So when wealthy merchant Wolfe, offers passage to London via sea, Jack jumps at the chance...and unwittingly into further danger!

Rome, 1520. The Eternal City is in mourning. Raphael Sanzio, beloved painter and national hero, has died suddenly at the height of his fame. His body lies in state at the Pantheon. At the nearby convent of Sant'Apollonia, a young woman comes to the Mother Superior, seeking refuge. She is Margherita Luti, a baker's daughter from a humble neighborhood on the Tiber, now an outcast from Roman society, persecuted by enemies within the Vatican. Margherita was Raphael's beloved and appeared as the Madonna in many of his paintings. But now that Raphael is gone, the convent is her only hope.

How far would you go to keep a deathbed promise? Surrounded by the bodies of slain monarchs, a dying prince extracts a promise from his friend, Horatio: “Tell my story”. Rival kings of warring nations strive to lay claim to the throne, now vacant, but what will happen to the people who live there, at Helsingør’s Krogen Castle? How will Horatio preserve his honor and the prince’s legacy while surviving this murderous kingdom and the men who would rule it? This historical adventure story tells the fictional tale of how Horatio’s oath gave birth to the legend of Hamlet.

When stylish young bibliophile Julia Kydd returns to 1920s New York, she’s determined to launch her own private press. Julia’s aspirations take her into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement unlike any she’s known - where notions of race, sexuality, and power are slippery, and identities can be deceptively fluid.

In the wake of her father's death, Rose Newlin finds solace in her work as a book restorer. Then, one rainy Connecticut afternoon, a struggling painter appears at her door. William Lomazzo brings with him a 16th-century treatise on art, which Rose quickly identifies as a palimpsest: a document written over a hidden diary that had purposely been scraped away. Yet the restoration sparks an unforeseen challenge when William - a married man - and Rose experience an instant, unspoken attraction.

This friendly, fun biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great - the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of an icon in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction listeners and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. This book features Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance artist and inventor.

It’s 1605 in London, and Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, is finding life a struggle. With his career waning and his patron, Lord D’Aubigny, growing tired of him, he throws caution to the wind and writes a satirical play, Eastward Ho! But its laughs at the expense of the monarch cost Jonson dearly, and he lands in jail with his reputation in tatters. On his release, he searches for his estranged wife and discovers that his own long absences and the deaths of their three children from the plague have led her to take comfort with a furtive crew of ardent papists.

Brilliantly read by Nigel Gore, this audiobook joins together George Robert Minkoff’s three critically acclaimed historical novels about the founding of the first English colony at Jamestown - The Weight of Smoke, The Dragons of the Storm, and The Leaves of Fate. The novels are visionary epics chronicling lesser-known aspects of the Elizabethan world, including the importance of alchemy to Queen Elizabeth and her court. The canvas is vast, intertwining the life of John Smith, as a narrator, with that of Sir Francis Drake, the great Elizabethan explorer.

Orphaned at birth, Eliza lives with her beloved Grandparents in a waterlogged Somerset cottage surrounded by willow beds where she ekes out a living making laundry baskets and eel traps. Although poor she is content, until childhood friend Clem regales her with tales of his adventures along the river and she begins to wonder what life is like beyond the Droves. When fate brings handsome, wealthy Theo to her workshop she is instantly attracted and a rosy future beyond the Droves beckons.