RIT Libraries Recent Acquisitions - Literature

An Anthology of Modern Italian Poetry in English Translation, with Italian Text / Edited and Translated By Ned Condini ; Introduction and Notes By Dana Renga

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Description: Italian poetry of the last century is far from homogeneous: genres and movements have often been at odds with one another, engaging the economic, political, and social tensions of post-Unification Italy. The thirty-eight poets in this anthology, some of whose poems are translated here for the first time, represent this literary diversity and competition: they include symbolists (Gabriele D'Annunzio), free-verse satirists (Gian Pietro Lucini), hermetic poets (Salvatore Quasimodo), feminist poets (Sibilla Aleramo), twilight poets (Sergio Corazzini), fragmentists (Camillo Sbarbaro), new lyricists (Eugenio Montale), neo-avant-gardists (Alfredo Giuliani), and neorealists (Pier Paolo Pasolini). Poets in the volume: Sibilla Aleramo, Carlo Betocchi, Dino Campana, Cristina Campo, Giorgio Caproni, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Sergio Corazzini, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Milo De Angelis, Luigi Fontanella, Franco Fortini, Alfredo Giuliani, Corrado Govoni, Guido Gozzano, Amalia Guglielminetti, Giorgio Guglielmino, Gian Pietro Lucini, Mario Luzi, Valerio Magrelli, Anna Malfaiera, Fausto Maria Martini, Eugenio Montale, Arturo Onofri, Aldo Palazzeschi, Alfredo de Palchi, Giovanni Pascoli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sandro Penna, Antonia Pozzi, Salvatore Quasimodo, Amelia Rosselli, Umberto Saba, Roberto Sanesi, Edoardo Sanguineti, Camillo Sbarbaro, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Andrea Zanzotto

Added: Thursday, Nov 5 2009

An Anthology of Nineteenth-century Women's Poetry From France : in English Translation, with French Text / Edited By Gretchen Schultz ; Translated By Anne Atik ... [et Al.]

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Description: Women poets in nineteenth-century France made important contributions to major stylistic innovations--from the birth of elegiac Romanticism to the inauguration of free verse--and many were prominent in their lifetime, yet only a few are known today, and nearly all have been unavailable in English translation. Of the fourteen poets of this anthology some were wealthy, others struggled in poverty; some were socially conventional, others were cynical or defiant. Their poems range widely in style and idea, from Romantic to Parnassian to symbolist. Gretchen Schultz, author of The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-Century French Poetry, provides literary history and biographical notes to show the crucial role women played in nineteenth-century French poetry and to explain why they were criticized and--in the creation of the canon--often eclipsed. The translators are Anne Atik, Michael Bishop, Mary Ann Caws, Melanie Hawthorne, J. S. A. Lowe, Rosemary Lloyd, Laurence Porter, Christopher Rivers, Gretchen Schultz, Patricia Terry, and Rosanna Warren.

Added: Thursday, Nov 5 2009

An Anthology of Nineteenth-century Women's Poetry From Spain : in English Translation, with Original Text / Introduction By Susan Kirkpatrick ; Edited By Anna-Marie Aldaz ; Translated By Anna-Marie Aldaz and W. Robert Walker

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST

Description: "The woman poet...must sing, just as birds fly and rivers flow," wrote Carolina Coronado in 1846. In Spain of that time, a group of women had begun to publish poetry. Their verse Romantic, predominantly lyric, and often linked to liberal reform was novel and controversial, because few women had ventured into print. The poets collected in this anthology asserted in different ways their imagination and literary voice. Susan Kirkpatrick provides an overview of the period, and Anna-Marie Aldaz adds a discussion of Spanish versification as well as biographical sketches of the twenty-one poets whose works bring alive the first decades of women s emergence as a force in the Spanish literary world. Poets in the volume: Rosario de Acuña, Concepción Arenal de Carrasco, Robustiana Armiño, Eladia Bautista y Patier, Patrocinio de Biedma, Manuela Cambronero, Sofía Casanova, Rosalía de Castro, Carolina Coronado, Concepción Estevarena, Amalia Fenollosa, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, ángela Grassi, Rogelia León, María Josepa Massanés, Eduarda Moreno Morales, María del Pilar Sinués, Blanca de los Ríos de Lampérez, Victorina Sáenz de Tejada, Faustina Sáez de Melgar, Josefa Ugarte Barrientos

Added: Thursday, Nov 5 2009

Sugar Comes From Arabic : a Beginner's Guide to Arabic Letters and Words / By Barbara Whitesides ; Book Design By Geoffrey Piel

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: A user-friendly Arabic alphabet-and-culture book for complete beginners "This book makes the Arabic alphabet much more approachable for the complete beginner, and can generate enthusiasm for expanded study of the language." --Paul Beran, Director, The Outreach Center, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard UniversityNo other Arabic alphabet book demystifies the letters in such a comfortable way, by introducing them in English alphabetical order of the Roman alphabet and using the spelling of English names and words as a way to learn the Arabic. Look up matching letters, follow the directions, and soon you'll be writing your own name in Arabic!Clear, concise illustrations show how to draw and remember each letter. Color photographs and explorations of individual words reveal important and often unrecognized connections between the West and the Arab world, such as the delicious gift of sugar. Sugar Comes from Arabic is an exciting entry into the language of more than twenty countries and more than 300 million people.Simple stick-figure cartoons show you how to draw and remember each letter. Winning illustrations of words reveal important and too-often-unrecognized connections between our cultures, such as the delicious gift of sugar we received from the Arab world. This book is an irresistible way to raise cultural literacy.

Added: Thursday, Oct 29 2009

A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse / Edited By Ingo Cornils

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Today, forty years after Timothy Leary's suggestion that hippies read Hermann Hesse while "turning on," Hesse is once again receiving attention: faced with ubiquitous materialism, war, and ecological disaster, we discover that these problems have found universal expression in the works of this master storyteller. Hesse explores perennial themes, from the simple to the transcendental. Because he knows of the awkwardness of adolescence and the pressures exerted on us to conform, his books hold special appeal for young readers and are taught widely. Yet he is equally relevant for older readers, writing about the torment of a psyche in despair, or our fear of the unknown. All these experiences are explored from the perspective of the individual self, for Hesse the repository of the divine and the sole entity to which we are accountable. This volume of new essays sheds light on his major works, including Siddhartha, Der Steppenwolf, and Das Glasperlenspiel, as well as Rohalde, Klingsors letzter Sommer, Klein und Wagner, and the poetry. Another six essays explore Hesse's interest in psychoanalysis, music, and eastern philosophy, the development of his political views, the influence of his painting on his writing, and the relationship between Hesse and Goethe. Contributors: Jefford Vahlbusch, Osman Durrani, Andreas Solbach, Ralph Freedman, Adrian Hsia, Stefan Höppner, Martin Swales, Frederick Lubich, Paul Bishop, Olaf Berwald, Kamakshi Murti, Marco Schickling, Volker Michels, Godela Weiss-Sussex, C. Immo Schneider, Hans-Joachim Hahn. Ingo Cornils is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Leeds, UK.

Added: Friday, Oct 23 2009

The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: “More than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.”—William Boyd The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a “writer of enormous inventive powers,” who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, “like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination.” Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard rose to fame as the “ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity” (The Observer). Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word—Ballardian—had to be invented. Ballard, who wrote that “short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available,” regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost its ability to appreciate them. With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard's inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as “being enervated and corrupted by the modern world” (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in “Billenium,” a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan's face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard's heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story, including two new ones for this American edition. So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts, the import and insight of J. G. Ballard's deeply humanistic and transcendent works can only grow in years to come. .

Added: Friday, Oct 23 2009

Refusing War, Affirming Peace : a History of Civilian Public Service Camp #21 at Cascade Locks / Jeffrey Kovac ; Foreword By Paul S. Boyer

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: One of the untold stories of America's World War II experience belongs to the thousands who refused military service for reasons of conscience, instead serving their country through non-military alternate service. Refusing War, Affirming Peace offers an intimate view of a single Civilian Public Service Camp, Camp #21 at Cascade Locks, Oregon, one of the largest and longest-serving camps in the system— and one of the most unusual. Under the leadership of a remarkable director, Rev. Mark Y. Schrock, and some outstanding camp leaders, the men at Camp #21 created a vibrant community. Despite the requisite long days of physical labor, the men developed a strong educational program, published a newspaper and a literary magazine, produced plays and concerts, and participated in a special school and research project called the School of Pacifist Living. They also challenged the Selective Service System in two political protests—one concerning the threatened removal of a Japanese American, George Yamada, and a second concerning a warrelated work project. Their story shows the CPS system at its best.

Added: Friday, Oct 23 2009

Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek : Allegories of Desire in the Television Series and Films / David Greven

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Studying the Star Trek myth from the original 1960s series to the 2009 franchise-reboot film, this book challenges frequent accusations that the Star Trek saga refuses to represent queer sexuality. Arguing that Star Trek speaks to queer audiences through subtle yet provocative allegorical narratives, the analysis pays close attention to representations of gender, race, and sexuality to develop an understanding of the franchise's queer sensibility. Topics include the 1960s original's deconstruction of the male gaze and the traditional assumptions of male visual mastery; constructions of femininity in Star Trek: Voyager, particularly in the relationship between Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine; and the ways in which Star Trek: Enterprise's adoption of neoconservative politics may have led to its commercial and aesthetic failure.

Added: Friday, Oct 23 2009

A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka / Edited By James Rolleston

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: No other 20th-century writer of German-language literature has been as fully accepted into the canon of world literature as Franz Kafka. The unsettlingly, enigmatically surreal world of Kafka's novels and stories continues to fascinate readers and critics of each new generation, who in turn continue to find new readings. One thing has become clear: although all theories attempt to appropriate Kafka, there is no one key to his work. The challenge to critics has been to present a strong point of view while taking account of previous Kafka research, a challenge that has been met by the contributors to this volume. CONTRIBUTORS: JAMES ROLLESTON, CLAYTON KOELB, WALTER H. SOKEL, JUDITH RYAN, RUSSELL A. BERMAN, RITCHIE ROBERTSON, HENRY SUSSMAN, STANLEY CORNGOLD, BIANCA THEISEN, ROLF J. GOEBEL, RICHARD T. GRAY, RUTH V. GROSS, SANDER L. GILMAN, JOHN ZILCOSKY, MARK HARMAN JAMES ROLLESTON is Professor of German at Duke University.

Added: Thursday, Oct 22 2009

Clarice Lispector / Por Emanuel Brasil

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Writing was, to Clarice Lispector , a natural act, such as breathing and walking. The book casts an overview on the works of one of the greatest Brazilian female writers, with critical texts about her work.

Added: Thursday, Oct 22 2009

The Little Black Fish / By Samad Behrangi ; English Translation By Hooshang Amuzegar ; Illustrations By Allison Remick

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: banned, anti-authoritarian kids' story, bilingual

Added: Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Language for a New Century : Contemporary Poetry From the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond / Edited By Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: A landmark anthology, providing the most ambitious, far-reaching collection of contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern poetry available. Language for a New Century celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing today in the East, bringing together an unprecedented selection of works by South Asian, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian poets as well as poets living in the Diaspora. Some poets, such as Bei Dao and Mahmoud Darwish, are acclaimed worldwide, but many more will be new to the reader. The collection includes 400 unique voices—political and apolitical, monastic and erotic—that represent a wider artistic movement that challenges thousand-year-old traditions, broadening our notion of contemporary literature. Each section of the anthology—organized by theme rather than by national affiliation—is preceded by a personal essay from the editors that introduces the poetry and exhorts readers to examine their own identities in light of these powerful poems. In an age of violence and terrorism, often predicated by cultural ignorance, this anthology is a bold declaration of shared humanity and devotion to the transformative power of art. .

Added: Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Our Savage Art : Poetry and the Civil Tongue / William Logan

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: The most notorious poet-critic of his generation, William Logan has defined our view of poets good and bad, interesting and banal, for more than three decades. Featured in the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Criterion, among other journals, Logan's eloquent, passionate prose never fails to provoke readers and poets, reminding us of the value and vitality of the critic's savage art.Like The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Our Savage Art features the corrosive wit and darkly discriminating critiques that have become the trademarks of Logan's style. Opening with a defense of the critical eye, this collection features essays on Robert Lowell's correspondence, Elizabeth Bishop's unfinished poems, the inflated reputation of Hart Crane, the loss of the New Critics, and a damning-and already highly controversial-indictment of an edition of Robert Frost's notebooks. Logan also includes essays on Derek Walcott and Geoffrey Hill, two crucial figures in the divided world of contemporary poetry, and an attempt to rescue the reputation of the nineteenth-century poet John Townsend Trowbridge. Short reviews consider John Ashbery, Anne Carson, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Louise GlÃ¼ck, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, and dozens of others. Though he might be called a cobra with manners, Logan is a fervent advocate for poetry, and Our Savage Art continues to raise the standard of what the critic can do.

Added: Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Philosophers on Shakespeare / Edited By Paul A. Kottman

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: A number of the most influential thinkers of the past two hundred and fifty years, Herder, Goethe, Hegel, Benjamin, Marx, Schmitt, Lukács, Derrida, Cavell, Agnes Heller, and others, have grappled with Shakespeare. This is the first volume to bring together their engagements with his drama, which are part of an underexplored philosophical tradition. Philosophers on Shakespeare comes at a time when the critical paradigm of Shakespeare studies in the academy is shifting from a historicist and cultural materialist model toward a renewed interest in theoretical readings of the plays. Shakespeare's work is currently being taught and performed more than ever, and there is a proliferation of new critical editions of the plays themselves to which this volume will serve as a timely and much-needed companion. It is useful for the light it sheds on individual plays as well as for its survey of literary criticism, aesthetic theory, theories of tragedy and dramatic criticism since the mid-eighteenth century.

Added: Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Fearless Confessions : a Writer's Guide to Memoir / Sue William Silverman

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Everyone has a story to tell. Fearless Confessions is a guidebook for people who want to take possession of their lives by putting their experiences down on paper--or in a Web site or e-book. Enhanced with illustrative examples from many different writers as well as writing exercises, this guide helps writers navigate a range of issues from craft to ethics to marketing and will be useful to both beginners and more accomplished writers. The rise of interest in memoir recognizes the power of the genre to move and affect not just individual readers but society at large. Sue William Silverman covers traditional writing topics such as metaphor, theme, plot, and voice and also includes chapters on trusting memory and cultivating the courage to tell one's truth in the face of forces--from family members to the media--who would prefer that people with inconvenient pasts and views remain silent. Silverman, an award-winning memoirist, draws upon her own personal and professional experience to provide an essential resource for transforming life into words that matter. Fearless Confessions is an atlas that contains maps to the remarkable places in each person's life that have yet to be explored.

Added: Wednesday, Oct 14 2009

Going Away Shoes : Stories / Jill McCorkle

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Jill McCorkle, a master of the short story whose work has been compared to that of Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore, is a writer whose characters insist on our immediate and total attention. Here, in her first collection in eight years, are eleven new stories bristling with her signature wit and weight. One way or the other, all of these stories are about women looking love in the face without flinching. Some of them are confronting the reality of domestic disruption; others are simply flirting with the possibilities—and dangers—of change. McCorkle's characters make mistakes but aren't interested in hiding behind them. They get divorced or quit their jobs or tell people to step aside, and they move on. From the first story, about a modern-day Cinderella contemplating escape, to the last, "Me and Big Foot," an idyll about finding the perfect prince, McCorkle's collection is the genuine article, the work of a great storyteller who knows exactly how—and why—to pair longing and laughter.

Added: Friday, Oct 9 2009

Song Yet Sung / James McBride

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Color of Water comes a powerful page-turner about a runaway slave and a determined slave catcher. Nowhere has the drama of American slavery played itself out with more tension than in the dripping swamps of Maryland's eastern shore, where abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, born less than thirty miles apart, faced off against nefarious slave traders in a catch-me-if-you-can game that fueled fear and brought economic hardship to both white and black families. Trapped in the middle were the watermen, a group of America's most original and colorful pioneers, poor oystermen who often found themselves caught between the needs of rich plantation owners and the roaring Chesapeake, which often claimed their lives. The powerful web of relationships in a small Chesapeake Bay town collapses as two souls face off in a gripping page-turner. Liz Spocott, a young runaway who has odd dreams about the future of the colored race, mistakenly inspires a breakout from the prison attic of a notorious slave thief named Patty Cannon. As Cannon stokes revenge, Liz flees into the nefarious world of the underground railroad with its double meanings and unspoken clues to freedom known to the slaves of Dorchester County as "The Code." Denwood Long, a troubled slave catcher and eastern shore waterman, is coaxed out of retirement to break "The Code" and track down Liz. Filled with rich history-much of the story is drawn from historical events-and told in McBride's signature lyrical storytelling style, Song Yet Sung brings into full view a world long misunderstood in American fiction: how slavery worked, and the haunting, moral choices that lived beneath the surface, pressing both whites and blacks to search for relief in a world where both seemed to lose their moral compass. This is a story of tragic triumph, violent decisions, and unexpected kindness.

Added: Monday, Oct 5 2009

Seen it All and Done the Rest : a Novel / Pearl Cleage

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: For Josephine Evans, home was on the stages of the world where she spent thirty years establishing herself as one of the finest actresses of her generation. Josephine was the toast of Europe, and her fabulous apartment in Amsterdam's theater district was a popular gathering place for an international community of artists, actors, and expatriates who considered themselves true citizens of the world. Josephine lived above and beyond the reach of conventional definitions of who and what an African American diva could be, and her legions of loyal fans loved her for it. She had a perfect life and enough sense to live it to the hilt, but then a war she didn't fully understand turned everything upside down, thrusting her into a role she never wanted and was not prepared to play. Suddenly the target of angry protests aimed at the country she had never really felt was her own, Josephine is forced to return to America to see if she can create a new definition of home. Camping out with her granddaughter, Zora, who is housesitting in Atlanta's West End; and trying to avoid the unwanted attentions of Dig It!, the city's brand-new gossip magazine, Josephine struggles to reclaim her old life even as she scrambles to shape her new one. Hoping her friend Howard Denmond is as good as his word when he promises to engineer her triumphant return to the European stage, Josephine sets out to increase her nest egg by selling the house her mother willed her, only to find the long-neglected property has become home to squatters who have no intention of leaving. But an unexpected reunion with an old friend offers Josephine a chance to set things right. Spurning an offer from unscrupulous land developer Greer Woodruff, Josephine gathers new friends around her, including Victor Causey, a lawyer whose addictions left him homeless but still determined to protect his mother; Louie Baptiste, a displaced New Orleans chef hoping to return to the city he loves; and Aretha Hargrove, recovering from her role in the same scandal that sent Zora running for cover. As Greer gets serious about her plan to tear the community apart, Josephine finds herself playing the most important role of her life, showing her neighbors what courage really is and learning the true meaning of coming home.

Added: Monday, Oct 5 2009

Songs Without Words / Ann Packer

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: Ann Packer's debut novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, was a nationwide best seller that established her as one of our most gifted chroniclers of the interior lives of women. Now, in her long-awaited second novel, she takes us on a journey into a lifelong friendship pushed to the breaking point. Expertly, with the keen introspection and psychological nuance that are her hallmarks, she explores what happens when there are inequities between friends and when the hard-won balances of a long relationship are disturbed, perhaps irreparably, by a harrowing crisis. Liz and Sarabeth were childhood neighbors in the suburbs of northern California, brought as close as sisters by the suicide of Sarabeth's mother when the girls were just sixteen. In the decades that followed—through Liz's marriage and the birth of her children, through Sarabeth's attempts to make a happy life for herself despite the shadow cast by her mother's act—their relationship remained a source of continuity and strength. But when Liz's adolescent daughter enters dangerous waters that threaten to engulf the family, the fault lines in the women's friendship are revealed, and both Liz and Sarabeth are forced to reexamine their most deeply held beliefs about their connection. Songs Without Words is about the sometimes confining roles we take on in our closest relationships, about the familial myths that shape us both as children and as parents, and about the limits—and the power—of the friendships we create when we are young. Once again, Ann Packer has written a novel of singular force and complexity: thoughtful, moving, and absolutely gripping, it more than confirms her prodigious literary gifts.

Added: Friday, Oct 2 2009

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade / Diana Gabaldon

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Description: In her much-anticipated new novel, the New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander saga brings back one of her most compelling characters: Lord John Grey—soldier, gentleman, and no mean hand with a blade. Here Diana Gabaldon brilliantly weaves together the strands of Lord John's secret and public lives—a shattering family mystery, a love affair with potentially disastrous consequences, and a war that stretches from the Old World to the New. . . . In 1758, in the heart of the Seven Years' War, Britain fights by the side of Prussia in the Rhineland. For Lord John and his titled brother Hal, the battlefield will be a welcome respite from the torturous mystery that burns poisonously in their family's history. Seventeen years earlier, Lord John's late father, the Duke of Pardloe, was found dead, a pistol in his hand and accusations of his role as a Jacobite agent staining forever a family's honor. Now unlaid ghosts from the past are stirring. Lord John's brother has mysteriously received a page of their late father's missing diary. Someone is taunting the Grey family with secrets from the grave, but Hal, with secrets of his own, refuses to pursue the matter and orders his brother to do likewise. Frustrated, John turns to a man who has been both his prisoner and his confessor: the Scottish Jacobite James Fraser. Fraser can tell many secrets—and withhold many others. But war, a forbidden affair, and Fraser's own secrets will complicate Lord John's quest. Until James Fraser yields the missing piece of an astounding puzzle—and Lord John, caught between his courage and his conscience, must decide whether his family's honor is worth his life.

Added: Friday, Oct 2 2009