Renaissance Fiction

With her drunk of a father missing and her mother dead, it falls upon Celeste to protect her younger brothers and sister from starvation. When the burden becomes overwhelming, and Celeste makes plans to escape her wretched life, her wealthy aunt appears and whisks her off to work as a nanny to young Federigo Benetto. One day, as Celeste escorts Federigo to his art lesson with Maestro Luciano Vicente, the maestro discovers a sketch drawn by Celeste. He immediately recognizes her raw artistic talent and begs her to become his secret protégé.

In una fredda notte in cui la Storia faceva le prove generali di Rinascimento, mentre i signori d’Italia s’annientavano a vicenda per l’effimero controllo dei labili confini dei propri Stati, un giovane diplomatico pontificio dal passato misterioso preferiva di gran lunga cimentarsi nell’arte della seduzione più che in quella bellica. Chi era costui?

Der vierte Teil der historischen Erfolgsroman-Serie "Die Wanderapothekerin" aus dem 18. Jahrhundert um eine junge mutige Heldin in einer aufregenden Zeit vom Bestseller-Duo Iny Lorentz! Lena, die älteste Tochter der Wander-Apothekerin Klara, darf den Fürsten Friedrich auf einer Reise nach Venedig begleiten. Die begabte Malerin hat schon lange davon geträumt, Italien zu sehen, und ahnt nicht, dass Friedrichs wahres Ziel ganz wo anders liegt: Der wagemutige junge Fürst will in Palästina das Wasser für die Taufe seines Kindes höchstpersönlich aus dem Jordan schöpfen.

Das klingt nach Ärger. Es geht das Gerücht um, dass Violanta, die Herzogin von Palliano, einen Geliebten hat. Wäre dies der Fall, bleibt die Frage, ob Violantas Gatte, Don Juan de Palliano, seiner Frau den Ehebruch vergeben kann. Schließlich ist der Onkel von Don Juan de Palliano kein geringerer als Papst Paul IV. Auch Carafa, Don Juans Bruder, scheint bei der Geschichte ein Wörtchen mitreden zu wollen und Diana Brancaccio, Hofdame und geschickte Kupplerin, scheint Schicksal spielen zu wollen. Bleibt die Frage, ob sich am Ende wirklich alles zum Guten wendet.

Raised by her aunt and uncle amidst the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside, young orphan Virginia Tacci has always harbored a deep love for horses - though she knows she may never have the chance to ride. As a shepherdess in sixteenth-century Italy, Virginia's possibilities are doubly limited by her peasant class and her gender.

Red, Stan, and Sunny O’Brian, three baby boomer brothers in their 60s, are faced with a four-pronged invasion of the country and each must do what they can to defend the US, in his own way.

Along with their sons, grandchildren and extended family, they do whatever it takes to stop this invasion by forces that would destroy it from within by using systems and infrastructure that were designed to make our lives easier.

A rich English gentleman thinks he has found the perfect caretaker for an isolated cottage near the sea: a veteran sailor with a taste for solitude. But when he returns to the cottage months later, the gentleman can find no trace of the caretaker. Then he is savagely attacked by a seagull, normally the most pacifistic of creatures.

London, England. A revolutionary decryption program known as TETRA emerges, revealing a cipher with immeasurable power. However, as quickly as the cipher surfaces, it goes missing. Jack's friend and fellow classicist, Egan Church, pursues the cipher by following a mysterious note written five hundred years before by Niccolo Machiavelli. Church ends up in Italy, descending deep into the path of a shadowy brotherhood known as The Prince's Order.

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.

On May 30, 1593, London's most popular playwright was stabbed to death. The royal coroner ruled that Christopher Marlowe was killed in self-defense, but historians have long suspected otherwise, given his role as an "intelligencer" in the queen's secret service.

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.

Sabina Rossi's forced marriage comes to an abrupt end during the infamous Pazzi Conspiracy. Wealthy beyond her dreams, the young widow is free to pursue her passions - with the utmost discretion, of course. The patriarchal society of Florence is full of secrets, and women who don't follow the rules suffer dire consequences. An unexpected betrayal leaves Sabina facing a potential scandal. Now, she must pick up the pieces of her shattered life and save her reputation.

Allegra Castagno harbors a secret so big that it can ruin her life and her father's reputation. Exceptionally talented, yet banned from the Florentine guilds, she devises a clever ruse in order to secretly ply her beloved craft. In time, the exquisite jewelry designs of "La Castagna" are being praised in noble courts from Venice to Rome.

Nella Milano del 1630 infuria la peste, ma Alma Osio non ha paura, è convinta che non morirà prima di aver compiuto la sua missione: vendicare sua madre e suo padre. Alma infatti è figlia della relazione proibita tra Virginia de Leyva, la Monaca di Monza, murata viva, e Giovan Paolo Osio, signore di Usmate, torturato e ucciso nelle segrete di un traditore. Dopo una vita di fughe e molti compromessi con il destino, oggi Alma è una donna libera e ricca che può permettersi il maggiore dei lussi, la verità.

The Disembodied Man was published only once, in the legendary SF pulp zine Imagination in the early 1950s. Off-beat and humorous, like much of Maddock's work, it is at once a unique tale of an unconventional romance and an intricate puzzler with two O'Henry-like twists, resulting in a delightfully human and touching short story.

Henry Dumas' fiction is a masterful synthesis of myth and religion, culture and nature, mask and identity. From the Deep South to the simmering streets of Harlem, his characters embark on surreal and mythic quests armed only with wit, words, and wisdom. Championed by Toni Morrison, Walter Mosley, and Quincy Troupe, Dumas' books have long been out of print. All of his short fiction is collected here, for the first time, and includes several previously unpublished stories.

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.

The first African American poet to achieve international fame, Paul Laurence Dunbar used his prodigious literary gifts to chronicle and celebrate Black life as he saw it. He utilized both traditional poetic forms and contemporary dialect in a range of styles—lyrical, conversational, and playful—as diverse as his themes. This collection, containing the entirety of Dunbar’s poetry, captures his still vital expressions of love, work, and family. It also serves as a revelatory expression of Dunbar’s frustrations with racial injustice and oppression.

Georgia Douglas Johnson was a key contributor to the Harlem Renaissance - hosting an influential salon, breaking new ground as a Black playwright, and playing an important role as an anti-lynching activist. Her poetry, however, is what first brought her to national attention, and in the early works collected here, her wide-ranging talents are already quite evident. In The Heart of a Woman, Johnson’s exquisite verse captures the full emotional terrain of womanhood. These are poems about love and disillusionment, empowerment and fulfillment, loneliness and joy.

Eric Walrond was a singular voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and Tropic Death is his most famous work - a collection that highlights his particular strength as a writer of short fiction. Over the course of these ten stories, Walrond vividly details the punishing realities of life and labor across the Caribbean, and yet the overall effect is far from grim. These are unsentimental yet startlingly beautiful portraits of the migrant experience, full of distinctive voices striving for an audience in a seemingly implacable world.