A hero in disguise… When a mystery man saves her from bandits, Emily Carrington cannot deny that she’s intrigued. Perhaps infatuated is the better word. But she’s got no time for such fancies. She has to marry quickly before her family’s secrets are exposed and she is ruined. The problem is that no matter how hard she attempts to pay attention to her parade of suitors, one set of glittering dark eyes haunts both her waking and sleeping hours. Who is Emily’s hero and will she ever get to see him again? A lady in need… Lord Brandon Winthrop, Duke of Lancaster, fell in love with Emily Carrington the moment he first laid eyes on her. She’s everything he’d ever dreamed of and the one woman he can never have. The daughter to his missing business partner, he’s sworn to protect her from the very forces attempting to take his livelihood and his life. For her sake, he has to stay away. But fate has other plans.

What society considers blasphemy - a verbal assault against the sacred - is a litmus test of the standards it believes to be necessary to preserve unity, order, and morality. Society has always condemned as blasphemy what it regards as an abuse of liberty

A lonely young man discovers a new home—and a frightening secret—in an isolated English manor, in this “riveting [and] suspenseful” historical novel (School Library Journal). Young Geraint does not know what to expect when he enters the remote, crumbling estate of Rhuddesmere. The unloved illegitimate son of the cold and scheming Baron of Wallestoke, Geraint has been sent to serve the beautiful, melancholy lady of the house and her brilliant, crippled son, and the warm welcome he receives surprises and pleases him greatly. But even as his affection grows for these strangers who have accepted him without question, the boy becomes ever more troubled with the passing of days. A suffocating atmosphere of tension and mystery surrounds this place and its mistress. When Geraint stumbles on the dark secret that the Lady of Rhuddesmere so carefully guards, he is forced to flee, setting in motion a series of devastating events that could have dire consequences for everyone who dwells within the castle walls. Nominated for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, Victoria Strauss’s acclaimed debut novel bridges the gap between historical fiction for youth and adults with a chillingly provocative Gothic tale that sheds a stark, revealing light on human cruelty, ignorance, and intolerance.

Our world is steeped in attitudes and concepts derived from a sacred worldview, and this book helps us understand why. Alain Cabantous shows that blasphemy is a battlefield where religious dogma and secular rule clash, with their respective agents (the priest and the judge) competing for the proper reaction to a variety of curses. The book takes us on a journey through the Christian West with braggarts, craftsmen, soldiers, sailors, and their coarse, forbidden exchanges. More than simply an exhaustive inventory of the uses of and bans on blasphemy, the book is a lively analysis of the relationship between the blasphemer, the machinery of language, and that of repression. Beginning with a review of acts and crimes of blasphemy in biblical times, including the second commandment's injunction against taking God's name in vain, Cabantous reviews the close relationship between religious authority and royal authority in the sixteenth century, when the king ruled by divine right and attacks against God were implicit attacks on the nature of kingship. Punishing blasphemy was a way for the king to rule as God's representative and an occasion for the church to take control of language. The narrative continues with an exploration of acts of blasphemy, as well as related acts of desecration and profanation, which were regarded as civil and religious offenses up to the French Revolution of 1789 and afterward. The book then explores blasphemy through the mid-nineteenth century, when Catholic opponents of the French Revolution claimed that revolution itself was a blasphemy and a profanation.