Michelle Lovric Book order

When I think of Venice as she was in 1782, I think of a hundred thousand souls all devoted to pleasure. Souls like that become insubstantial and faintly luminous. You see, we were in the phosphorescent stage of decay... Richly imagined and as irresistible as its magical setting, Carnevale evokes the three great loves of the painter Cecilia Cornaro: Casanova, Byron and La Serenissima herself.

It's rural Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century, the age of the Pre-Raphaelites, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. So when seven sisters, born into fatherless poverty, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognize their potential. Soon, they're a singing and dancing septet: Irish jigs kicked out in dusty church halls. But it is not their singing or their dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. In an Ireland still hungry and melancholy with the Great Famine, the Swiney hair is a rich offering. And their hair will take dark-hearted Darcy, bickering twins Berenice and Enda, plain Pertilly, gentle Oona, wild Ida, and fearful, flame-haired Manticory-the writer of their on- and off-stage adventures-out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price.

This is going to be a little uncomfortable...

A stunning debut in which Venice is dying - and a long-ago prophecy of an enchanted child has been awakened from the canal's poisoned waters.

Set against the backdrop of 18th-century Venice and London, the novel intricately explores the lives of three interconnected characters amidst a world of murder and intrigue. Mimosina Dolcezza, a Venetian actress, navigates her role as an agent provocatrice while entangled with Valentine Greatrakes, a charismatic figure in London's medical scene. Their relationship is further complicated by Pevenche, an enigmatic child-woman whose mysterious fate is central to the unfolding narrative. Lovric's vivid prose brings this haunting tale to life.

Mimosina Docezza, a Venetian actress and spy, and Valentine Greatrakes, leader of London's medical underworld, carry on a turbulent love affair and find themselves involved with a mysterious young girl, Pevenche, whose true identity is a secret.

Elusive and fantastical, Venice is a many-layered confection of history. The writers here have captured what is most important to them in pieces ranging from the city's foundation up to the present time. The voices, entirely diverse, are both international and native: here we meet Hans Christian Andersen, Paolo Barbaro, Bernard Berenson, Mary Braddon, Casanova, Chekov, Thomas Coryate, Gabriele D'Annunzio, John Evelyn, Hans Habe, Hermann Melville, Claude Monet, Margaret Oliphant, Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francesco Sansovino, Frances Trollope and Elio Zorzi. Variously a City of the Soul, The Watery City, The Merchant City, City Afloat, City at Play, The Cruel City, City of Courtesans, City of Arts, City of Flavours, The Haunted City and City of the Future, Venice is captured here in all her moods.

A potted version of Ambrose Bierce's deliciously wicked Devil's Dictionary. Written almost a 100 years ago, Bierce's work remains a masterpiece of cynicism and emotional depravity. Who said it was a modern malaise? B: BORE: A person who talks when you wish him to listen D: DISTANCE: The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep M: MARRIAGE: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, two slaves, making in all two S: SAUCE: The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has a thousand vices. A people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety nine. For every sauce invented and accepted, a vice is renounced and forgiven

Venice, 1468. The beautiful yet heartless Sosia Simeon is making her mark on the city, driven by a dark compulsion to steal pleasure with men from all walks of life. Across the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer has just arrived from Germany, bringing with him a cultural revolution: Gutenberg's movable type. Together with the young editor Bruno Uguccione and the seductive scribe Felice Feliciano, he starts the city's first printing press. Before long a love triangle develops between Sosia, Felice, and Bruno -- who has become entranced by the verse of Catullus, the Roman erotic poet. But a far greater scandal erupts when Wendelin tempts fate by publishing the poet -- and changes all of their lives forever. Sosia, the heartless sensualist; Felice, a man who loves the crevices of the alphabet the way other men love the crevices of women; Lussieta, whose anguish gives the story its soulful heart: these and many other characters make The Floating Book an unforgettable experience for lovers of romance, history, and the printed word.

Christmas began with a good but harassed woman giving birth in difficult domestic circumstances. Somewhere between then and now, the circumstances have changed, but for women today, Christmas is still a time of joys garnered against the odds. We have moved on from stables and mangers to supermarkets and microwaves; palm fronds and shepherds have given way to a spangled conifer and a fat man in a red suit. In this anthology, reflecting the experiences of more than 50 women at Christmas, Ntozake Shange and Agatha Christie rub shoulders with Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. Curl up with a tantalizing volume that gives full reign to the seditious humor, peculiar discomforts, and exquisite social tortures of the season.