A celebration of sexy scoundrels includes Bertrice Small's story in which Princess Zuleika of Dariyabar, in an attempt to defy her family, marries the enemy and, in his arms, finds passion beyond her wildest dreams.

Rogues: Alpha Male Short Story Collection

"Those at the periphery of society often figure obsessively for those at its center, and never more so than with the rogues of early modern England. Whether as social fact or literary fiction-or both, simultaneously-the marginal rogue became ideologically central and has remained so for historians, cultural critics, and literary critics alike. In this collection, early modern rogues represent the range, diversity, and tensions within early modern scholarship, making this quite simply the best overview of their significance then and now." -Jonathan Dollimore, York University "Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is an up-to-date and suggestive collection on a subject that all scholars of the early modern period have encountered but few have studied in the range and depth represented here." -Lawrence Manley, Yale University "A model of cross-disciplinary exchange, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture foregrounds the figure of the rogue in a nexus of early modern cultural inscriptions that reveals the provocation a seemingly marginal figure offers to authorities and various forms of authoritative understanding, then and now. The new and recent work gathered here is an exciting contribution to early modern studies, for both scholars and students." -Alexandra W. Halasz, Dartmouth College Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is a definitive collection of critical essays on the literary and cultural impact of the early modern rogue. Under various names-rogues, vagrants, molls, doxies, vagabonds, cony-catchers, masterless men, caterpillars of the commonwealth-this group of marginal figures, poor men and women with no clear social place or identity, exploded onto the scene in sixteenth-century English history and culture. Early modern representations of the rogue or moll in pamphlets, plays, poems, ballads, historical records, and the infamous Tudor Poor Laws treated these characters as harbingers of emerging social, economic, and cultural changes. Images of the early modern rogue reflected historical developments but also created cultural icons for mobility, change, and social adaptation. The underclass rogue in many ways inverts the familiar image of the self-fashioned gentleman, traditionally seen as the literary focus and exemplar of the age, but the two characters have more in common than courtiers or humanists would have admitted. Both relied on linguistic prowess and social dexterity to manage their careers, whether exploiting the politics of privilege at court or surviving by their wits on urban streets. Deftly edited by Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, this anthology features essays from prominent and emerging critics in the field of Renaissance studies and promises to attract considerable attention from a broad range of readers and scholars in literary studies and social history.

From one of contemporary poetry’s most playful and original minds, an enchanting and harrowing journey through the landscape of dreams and twenty-first century hopes and disillusions. “Your dreams have no hidden agenda to be wise they are made to be forgotten so something can be known” I Love Hearing Your Dreams is a book of reveries, of failed elegies, of “the last time that things were real” and the moments that come afterward. These are dream songs for an age of insomnia, where the poet is always awake “at that oddest hour / that does not end, / the crooked, unnumbered one” and the future seems to be “just the past in a suit / that will never be in style.” Yet dreams in Matthew Zapruder’s poems are also a place of possibility, of reality envisioned anew—sleep shows us not merely what the world is, but what it could be. From a poet celebrated for his “razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture” (The New York Times), I Love Hearing Your Dreams is a startlingly beautiful and deeply vulnerable book where lives journey into a mystifying place and emerge transformed.

He made a dangerous wager…and won himself a wife Gambling hells are Sir Develin Dundrake's forte. Hunting risk, craving victory, he's surprised by nothing. Until the woman whose dowry Develin has claimed in a card game proposes the only solution that will rescue her from ruin: a wedding. Wicked Develin isn't made for matrimony, but all Lady Theodora Markham demands is a convenient arrangement. He must avoid falling for his wife's sensual charms—there are secrets hidden behind her beguiling gaze—yet neither can resist surrendering to the passion their marriage bed promises!

(First Book in the T wisted Design Series) To look at beautiful, confident, eighteen-year-old warrior, Bellamy Carrington, one would never expect the dark tragedies that had formed her. The blood spilled, the lives lost, the pain and hopelessness that shaped her childhood. Orphaned at six, the young rogue born alpha vowed vengeance on the men who took her parents from her. The men who stole happiness and love from her life. And she did. Training under the tutelage of vampires, witches, rogue wolves, and other shapeshifters, for six years; Bellamy became a deadly and formidable force in the supernatural world. But, no one is perfect. After killing the hunters, she was captured by a dark witch. Beaten, poisoned, collared in silver, and slated for sacrifice in one of the witch’s spells. Bellamy made one last push for life and escaped. She was hopelessly lost, in pain, weak, and broken in so many ways. Bellamy gave up. She decided her death would be on her own terms. Fate had other ideas. A young future pack Alpha found her, half-drowned, in a pond and saved her life. He didn’t care that she was a rogue. Warrick of the Hunter’s Moon Pack only cared about preserving the life of the little girl. Warrick helped her find the life she deserved. He found her an adoptive family and became a true and compassionate friend to her. Valuing her strengths and supporting her completely. Bellamy found new purpose, new hope, and a new life. All she was missing was what she saw her friends and pack mates finding every day. Love, a mate, someone to be entirely hers. She never thought she'd find a male worth offering for, until she allowed herself to be taken captive by vampires. When she met the man who could change everything. The other half of her broken heart.