English Renaissance

While creating his famous bronze of David and Goliath, Donatello’s passion for his enormously beautiful model and part time rent boy, Agnolo, ignites a dangerous jealousy that ultimately leads to murder. Luca, the complex and conflicted assistant, will sacrifice all to save Donatello, even his master’s friend--the great patron of art, Cosimo de’ Medici. John L’Heureux’s long-awaited novel delivers both a monumental and intimate narrative of the creative genius, Donatello, at the height of his powers. With incisive detail, L’Heureux beautifully renders the master sculptor’s ...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Thomas Cromwell by Diarmid MacCulloch, read by David Rintoul. Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey's fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King.

Angelic Essie Belle Johnson and devilish Laura Reed both agree that they need to do something to spice up their lives and earn more money. So, they start their own church on the street in front of their Harlem apartment. With Laura's gift for performing and Essie's melodious voice, the two quickly become a hit and must move their services into a renovated theater. But as their congregation grows, a host of misfits enter the scene - some honest, but others who just want a piece of the pie.

It is generally accepted that the European Renaissance began in Italy. However, a historical transformation of similar magnitude also took place in northern Europe at the same time. This "Other Renaissance" was initially centered on the city of Bruges in Flanders (modern Belgium), but its influence was soon being felt in France, the German states, England, and even in Italy itself. Following a sequence of major figures, Paul Strathern tells the fascinating story of how this "Other Renaissance" played as significant a role as the Italian Renaissance in bringing our modern world into being.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is the famous Spanish author of Don Quixote and many other works, including plays and short stories. This book is the first of several anticipated volumes taking us on a journey through all of Don Quixote of La Mancha, which was published by Cervantes late in life in 1605 (a second part was published in 1615). Don Quixote is a lengthy and rich work--hence several volumes are needed. Why Cervantes? It is an almost universal judgment that Cervantes was the pioneer of the modern novel and also the writer of the greatest work of Western literature. As in ...

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.

Neva Friezland is born into a world of trickery and illusion, where fortunes can be won and lost on the turn of a card. She is also born with an extraordinary gift. She can predict the weather. In Regency England, where the proper goal for a gentlewoman is marriage and only God knows the weather this is dangerous. It is also potentially very lucrative.

Adored only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon, young Princess Mary grows up as the sole heiress to the English throne. But her father wants a son, and soon Mary's world begins to fall apart. With her parents' marriage - and England - in crisis, Mary is banished from the court and kept apart from the mother she adores. The King promises to restore his daughter to favour, but first Mary must do something for which she will never forgive herself. She seeks solace in her faith.

Gianni is only twelve and thus the most insignificant member of a Florentine merchant family in Medici times; but his life already seems clearly mapped out. In the early days of Italian Renaissance, however, the future is anything but certain. The loss of his fiancée is just one of the things that do not go according to plan. Gianni's path leads him through the beginnings of the art of printing, the workshops of sculptors and artists, up to the politics of Lorenzo the Magnificent. All the while, he is haunted by the same mystery: what truly happened to his young bride who disappeared ...

England, July 1540: it is one of the hottest summers on record, and the court of Henry VIII is embroiled once again in political scandal. Anne Cleves is out. Thomas Cromwell is to be executed and, in the countryside, an aristocratic teenager named Catherine Howard prepares to become fifth wife to the increasingly unpredictable monarch.

Georgio Vasari's original vision of the arts was to see the artist as divinely inspired. He describes the lives of 45 artists, including Giotto, Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Titian, with striking immediacy conveyed through character sketches, anecdotes, and detailed recording of conversations.

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.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Henry VIII: The Quest for Fame by John Guy, read by John Banks. Henry VIII's reign transformed the physical and spiritual landscape of England. Magnificent, tyrannical, a strong ruler, a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most notorious of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome, a talented, charismatic, imposing figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people's eyes when he talked to them.

Cesare Borgia, former cardinal, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, has been a figure of awe and scorn for generations. Seemingly compelled to explore this fascinating historical figure's true nature, Rafael Sabatini brought Borgia life as no one had before. Drawn to the passion, suspicion, betrayal, and ambition of Borgia's brief but exciting life, Sabatini penned seven short stories set during the Italian Renaissance: "The Honour of Varano", "The Test", "Ferrante's Jest", "Gisimondi's Wage", "The Snare", "The Lust of Conquest", and "The Pasquinade". These stories are collected here.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" is perhaps the greatest original work of philosophy written by an American. This specially-prepared edition includes a foreword on the origin and significance the book.

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.

Hassan Clarke is a self-proclaimed ladies' man with his eyes set on the prize. With his jovial ways and gift for gab, he has managed to weasel his way into the lives of two women - his wife, Destiny, and his mistress, Imani. His mistress is a gold-digging, self-serving side chick determined to be with her married lover even if it means losing everything, including her soul, to get to him. However, after putting years of hard work and her hard-earned money into building her husband's firm, Destiny doesn't plan to forgo all the benefits without a fight.

It's been two months since the Kaplan family hunted down the Serpens relic. But when the evil Galina Krause suddenly and violently reappears, Wade, Darrell, Lily, and Becca have no choice but to face her again.

Beatrice is the convent's librarian. For years, she has shunned the company of her sisters, finding solace only with her manuscripts. Then, one carnival night, two women, bleeding and stricken, are abandoned outside the convent's walls. Moments from death, one of them presses something into Beatrice's hands: a bewitching book whose pages have a dangerous life of their own.

Travel back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to the sounds of jazz in nightclubs and the 24-hours-a-day bustle of the famous Black neighborhood of Harlem in uptown Manhattan. It was a dazzling time when there was an outpouring of the arts of African Americans - the poetry of Langston Hughes; the novels of Zora Neale Hurston; the sculptures of Augusta Savage; and that brand-new music called jazz as only Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong could play it.