"Manuela Beltrán, a poet haunted by a troubled childhood, is bent on revenge for the wrongs she suffered at the hands of her mother's lover. Her vendetta will draw together a cast of enigmatic characters, the inhabitants of Gamboa's 'dark valley.' There is Tertullian, an Argentine who claims to be the Pope's son, ready to consort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society. There is Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary...

"A contemporary story about the insular world of writers, centering on a notable female poet and the young woman to whom she reveals her long-guarded secret about a famous manuscript"--

Inspector Ian Rutledge is quickly sent to investigate the sudden deaths of three members of the same eminent Cornwall family, but the World War I veteran soon realizes nothings about this case is routine. Including the identity of one of the dead, a reclusive spinister unmasked as O.A. Manning, whose war poetry helped Rutledge retain his grasp on sanity in the trenches of France. Guided by the voice of Hamish, the Scot he unwillingly executed on the...

"From the author of Star-Crossed...Behind every great love song is a great love story. It's been seven years and Diana is finally ready to marry her long-time fiancé, Arie; she's even composing a beautiful love song for him, working on it in hotels and concert halls as she criss-crosses the world as a classical pianist. Before she can finish it, though, tragedy strikes--and Diana is lost to Arie forever. But her song might not be... In Australia,...

"A young, aspiring poet in a quiet Irish village thinks her life of books suits her perfectly until a charismatic newcomer from America broadens her horizons. Siobhan Doyle grew up with her Uncle Kee at their family pub The Leeside, in rural Ireland. Kee has been staunchly overprotective of Siobhan ever since her mother's death in an IRA bombing, but now that she's an adult, it's clear that in protecting her Kee has unwittingly kept her in a state...

"The daughter of a Venetian musician, Aemilia Bassano came of age in Queen Elizabeth's royal court. The Queen's favorite, she developed a love of poetry and learning, maturing into a young woman known not only for her beauty but also her sharp mind and a quick tongue. When Aemilia becomes the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, she fears her mind will languish--until she crosses paths with an impetuous playwright named William Shakespeare and begins an impassioned...

Night and Day, Virginia Woolf's second novel, is both a love story and a social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen; yet it also questions that tradition, recognizing that the goals of society and the individual may not necessarily coincide. At its centre is Katharine Hilbery, the beautiful grand-daughter of a great Victorian poet. She must choose between becoming engaged to the oddly prosaic poet William Rodney and her attraction to Ralph Denham,...

A fictionalized biography of the 18th-century German poet, Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg, who wrote under the nom de plume, Novalis. The novel centers on his philosophy ("My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it") and on his romance with Sophie von Kuhn, 12, who became his muse, but who died of tuberculosis before they could marry.

"June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, arrives in France with her college roommates. They are in search of an escape, and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College where they were expected to find an impressive husband, a quiet life, and act accordingly. But the world is changing, and as they explore the City of Light, the larger threats of fascism...

Disguising herself as a man to escape her loveless marriage and enjoy the exclusive freedoms of men, aspiring writer Aemilia Lanier falls in love and runs away with ragged poet William Shakespeare, with whom she secretly writes plays that bring him fame years later.