It's been four years since seventeen-year-old Mitchell Johnson was hit by a bus and inexplicably ended up in the Underworld. Hell is miserable, but Mitchell knows things could be worse. After all, he has the coveted job of The Devil's intern--plus three close friends who keep him from dwelling too much on his untimely demise. Still, he'd rather be living. So when Mitchell discovers that his boss is in possession of a legendary time-travel mechanism called a Viciseometer, he starts forming a plan. With a device like that, Mitchell realizes, he could escape Hell, revisit his death, and prevent it altogether. Getting his hands on the device turns out to be easy. But preventing his friends from accompanying him--and protecting them from whatever it is that's stalking them through time--is going to be impossible.

Public masquerades were a popular and controversial form of urban entertainment in England for most of the eighteenth century. They were held regularly in London and attended by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people from all ranks of society who delighted in disguising themselves in fanciful costumes and masks and moving through crowds of strangers. The authors shows how the masquerade played a subversive role in the eighteenth-century imagination, and that it was persistently associated with the crossing of class and sexual boundaries, sexual freedom, the overthrow of decorum, and urban corruption. Authorities clearly saw it as a profound challenge to social order and persistently sought to suppress it. The book is in two parts. In the first, the author recreates the historical phenomenon of the English masquerade: the makeup of the crowds, the symbolic language of costume, and the various codes of verbal exchange, gesture, and sexual behavior. The second part analyzes contemporary literary representations of the masquerade, using novels by Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Inchbald to show how the masquerade in fiction reflected the disruptive power it had in contemporary life. It also served as an indispensable plot-catalyst, generating the complications out of which the essential drama of the fiction emerged. An epilogue discusses the use of the masquerade as a literary device after the eighteenth century. The book contains some 40 illustrations.

Beware the devil in disguise... The year is now 1685 and Maggie's father has just been crowned King of Great Britain, but that doesn't mean trouble is over for the Duke and Duchess of Dunwoody. Rather than cool the flames of hatred between Papists and Protestants, the coronation of a Catholic monarch has only added accelerant to the already raging blaze. Two-faced devils lurk in every corner of the royal court, as do diseases with the power to kill and maim. When Robert falls prey to the smallpox virus, it looks as though Maggie will lose the two people most precious to her-her beloved husband and their only child-the son she bore three months before after five years of heartbreaking miscarriages and stillbirths. The one person in London who can help save her son demands a steep price in exchange her services. Will Maggie trade Robert's hard-won fidelity to save her only child...or offer the apothecary an even more scandalous alternative? This book is intended for mature readers.

Ever since The Devil’s wife left him to "go find herself," the overlord of Hell has had a hard time replacing her. As his dreamcatcher, she protected all realms of the afterlife by filtering his most insidious imaginings. Now, The Devil thinks he’s found a viable substitute in Elinor Powell, the kindest of the four teen friends known as Team DEVIL. Team DEVIL will do anything to protect Elinor—especially Alfarin, the bighearted Viking prince who loves her. But the only way to save her is to find The Devil’s wife—a banshee who has concealed herself somewhere within the Nine Circles of Hell. In Team DEVIL’s third quest, narrated hilariously and poignantly by Prince Alfarin, the four friends brave Dante’s old stomping grounds for an adventure they’ll never forget . . . if their dead souls can survive it.

Nick Jayzon has battled many enemies, and has defeated them all. But now he faces the ultimate evil. A brutal Savage of his own blood who will stop at nothing to control him, to Poison Nick, and to harden his heart forever. Many have tried to stop Asmodeus and many have died in the process. But now, he will try, and he isn't coming alone. They won't all survive. And the one soul Savage fears, is scared and is considering running away with her children before they are murdered too. But there is one Jayzon ally, which Savage has long forgotten that will come back to help them as well as a much stronger and deadlier ally, will consider turning against her own and siding with the Jayzons. But together, can they destroy the devil? Free Nick before it's too late? Before the Masquerade seals his fate?

“The Devil holds the strings which move us!” (Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, 1857.) Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer... the Devil has many names and faces, all of which have always served artists as a source of inspiration. Often commissioned by religious leaders as images of fear or veneration, depending on the society, representations of the underworld served to instruct believers and lead them along the path of righteousness. For other artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch, they provided a means of denouncing the moral decrepitude of one’s contemporaries. In the same way, literature dealing with the Devil has long offered inspiration to artists wishing to exorcise evil through images, especially the works of Dante and Goethe. In the 19th century, romanticism, attracted by the mysterious and expressive potential of the theme, continued to glorify the malevolent. Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, the monumental, tormented work of a lifetime, perfectly illustrates this passion for evil, but also reveals the reason for this fascination. Indeed, what could be more captivating for a man than to test his mastery by evoking the beauty of the ugly and the diabolic?