A 2017 RT Reviewer's Choice Nominee for Best Digital Historical! One of Goodreads' Best Romances of July A RT Book Review Top Pick! “Sebastian proves she is a new force to be reckoned with in historical romances.”—Booklist Rogue. Libertine. Rake. Lord Courtenay has been called many things and has never much cared. But after the publication of a salacious novel supposedly based on his exploits, he finds himself shunned from society. Unable to see his nephew, he is willing to do anything to improve his reputation, even if that means spending time with the most proper man in London. Julian Medlock has spent years becoming the epitome of correct behavior. As far as he cares, if Courtenay finds himself in hot water, it’s his own fault for behaving so badly—and being so blasted irresistible. But when Julian’s sister asks him to rehabilitate Courtenay’s image, Julian is forced to spend time with the man he loathes—and lusts after—most. As Courtenay begins to yearn for a love he fears he doesn’t deserve, Julian starts to understand how desire can drive a man to abandon all sense of propriety. But he has secrets he’s determined to keep, because if the truth came out, it would ruin everyone he loves. Together, they must decide what they’re willing to risk for love.

A collision on the road to London sparks unexpected passion between a young widow and a rakish Marquess in this enthralling Regency romance. Following the sudden death of his parents, Dominic Crawford, the Marquess of Aubrey, has inherited a prestigious title and a life of luxury. On his way to London to celebrate another season of high society with drinking and carousing, his travels are interrupted by a collision with a young widow’s carriage. It is not in Juliana’s nature to lie. Yet, the only way to convince her overworked brother to join her in London is to insist that she is looking to marry again . . . even though she will forever belong to her dear Will who died in battle shortly after their marriage. Rattled by a carriage accident that leaves her gazing into Dominic’s blue eyes, Juliana is even more shaken when a kiss between them leaves her senseless! But it is this kiss, so different from Will’s, that awakens feelings Juliana never knew she had. As she is dangerously drawn into his world, will Juliana be one more of Dominic’s conquests—or the woman who changes his rakish ways? “A talented author with a real gift for linking the modern reader to the glamorous past.” —RT Book Reviews

The Rake's Progress is Stravinsky's biggest work and one of the few great operas written since the 1920s, rare too for the unusual quality of its libretto, by Auden and Kallman. Its importance is undisputed, but so too are the problems it raises: problems of both performance and understanding, caused by the irony with which it is so thoroughly permeated. In aspects of style and operatic convention it looks back to the eighteenth century, and in particular to the operas of Mozart and da Ponte, while making references also to other periods, to operas from Monteverdi to Verdi. Yet at the same time it is wholly a work of the twentieth-century, and indeed it is centrally concerned with the impossibility of return, artistic, psychological or actual, as well as with the nature and limitation of human free will. The Rake's Progress is not one of unbridled dissipation but rather, more interestingly, one of attachment to naive notions of freedom and choice, and his tragedy is that he can never go back.

"The Rake's Progress" by Marjorie Bowen Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, who used the pseudonyms Marjorie Bowen and Joseph Shearing, was a British author who wrote historical romances. In this book, she follows a so-proclaimed rake, a womanizer who was perfectly set in his ways. However, even the most charming playboy isn't immune to the magic that happens when stricken by true love and the desire for romance.