After a blighted childhood, young Laura finds peace and purpose in the home of a midwife and healer. Later, she enrolls in Salerno's famed medical school-the first in the world to admit women. Laura and her adoptive mother hope that Laura can build a bridge between women's herbal healing and the new science of medicine developing in thirteenth century medieval Italy. The hardest lessons are those of love; Laura falls hard for a fellow student who abandons her for a wealthy wife. Worse, her mother rejects her as "impure." Shattered, Laura devotes herself to her work, becoming a respected medico. But her heart is still bitter, and when she sees a chance for revenge, she grabs it-and takes for her own Bieta, the newborn daughter of a woman whose husband regularly raided the physician's garden for bitter herbs to satisfy his pregnant wife's cravings. Determined to protect her adored daughter from the ravages of the world, Laura isolates the young woman in a tower. Bieta, as determined as her mother, escapes, and finds adventure-and love-on the streets of Salerno. Bieta's betrayal of her mother's love comes at a terrible price as lives are ruined and families are torn apart. Laura's medical knowledge cannot heal her broken heart; only a great act of love can bring everyone forgiveness and peace, in Madeleine E. Robins's imaginative novel set during the Middle Ages, Sold for Endless Rue,

This swooningly gorgeous collection of poems celebrates love in all its guises from silent admiration through heart-stopping passion to tearful resignation. Whether you are star-crossed lovers, kindred spirits or smitten by the boy next door these exquisite verses speak of the universal experiences of the heart and prove that love transcends time itself. from In My Sky At Twilight In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud And your form and colour are the way I love them. You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips And in your life my infinite dreams live. Pablo Neruda

If you enjoy art and architecture, you may be surprised to discover a distinct similarity between a great work of art and a magnificent building, as well as to that of a wonderful, fulfilling long-term relationship between a man and a woman. Although, you will learn, if you are not already aware, you cannot rely on luck alone to achieve happiness in marriage. The art of choosing a mate requires as much forethought as designing a building or creating an oil painting. The Architect: Time Out of Mind will help you know whether a person you date is worth pursuing after two dates or less. Perhaps, during your next first date with someone new of interest, you will want to ask a few specific and relevant personal questions. After considering the answers thoroughly, you now have more information to decide whether your date is worth pursuing. After dating awhile and before bonding or considering a long-term commitment, shouldn’t you also have a clear understanding of your special person’s relational “needs,” beginning perhaps as early as the end of the first date? You will find the answer to that question and many others you may have never thought to ask, in this captivating novel about two young people, Ed Decker and Camilla Holmes. Their story spans forty years, beginning in the late 1950s and how their early “boy-girl” relationship influenced their lives.

A.E. Housman's poetry (especially A Shropshire Lad) remains well-known, widely read and often quoted. However, Housman did not view himself as a professional poet, always making quite clear that his 'proper job' was as a Professor of Latin. Housman's fame as a poet has often obscured the fact that he was the leading British classical scholar of his generation, and a Cambridge Professor. It has also sometimes been suggested that Housman's two areas of activity are the sign of a flawed or 'divided' personality. A.E. Housman: A Single Life argues that there is no fundamental tension between Housman the poet and Housman the scholar, and his career is presented very much as that of a working academic who also wrote poetry. The book gives a full account of what Housman described as 'the great and real troubles of my early manhood', and in particular his unrequited and life-long love for his undergraduate friend Moses Jackson. It resists the temptation to classify Housman too exclusively as a melancholic, and is sceptical about Housman's reputed rudeness and misanthropy, pointing out that, though Housman was famously aloof in manner, he was notably loyal and generous, courteous in his daily dealings and generally liked by those who knew him. He also possessed a highly developed sense of the absurd and a ready and often disconcerting wit, features which characterised not only his letters and miscellaneous writings, but also, famously, much of his scholarly work.

Contains poems chosen to foster a love of language in students of any age level, including works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Longfellow, Frost, and Yeats; and includes dictation selections to help improve writing ability, and study questions for many of the poems.