In this magical retelling of the lives of thirteen saints, we meet Lucy, Margaret, and eleven other courageous young girls who chose purity as a shield against devils, dragons, and devious suitors and earned their halos the hard way. Wonderfully told and illustrated, this lovely gift book is a potent tribute to female strength throughout time and a beautiful book to read and share. 90 full-color illustrations.

In Fifteenth-Century Lives, Karen A. Winstead identifies and explores a major shift in the writing of Middle English saints’ lives. As she demonstrates, starting in the 1410s and ’20s, hagiography became more character-oriented, more morally complex, more deeply embedded in history, and more politically and socially engaged. Further, it became more self-consciously literary and began to feature women more prominently—and not only traditional virgin martyrs but also matrons and contemporary holy women. Winstead shows that this literature placed a premium on scholarship and teaching. Hagiography celebrated educators and scholars to a greater extent than ever before and became a vehicle for educating readers about Christian dogma. Focusing both on authors well known, such as John Lydgate and Margery Kempe, and on others less known, such as Osbern Bokenham and John Capgrave, Winstead argues that the values promoted by fifteenth-century hagiography helped to shape the reformist impulses that eventually produced the Reformation. Moreover, these values continued to influence post-Reformation hagiography, both Protestant and Catholic, well into the seventeenth century. In exploring these trends in fifteenth-century hagiography, identifying the factors that contributed to their emergence, and tracing their influence in later periods, Fifteenth-Century Lives marks an important contribution to revisionary scholarship on fifteenth-century literature. It will appeal to students and scholars of late medieval English literature and late medieval religion.

Elle is just a college student living a new life away from her past. Elias was her best friend. She thought she was figuring out this life of hers. Until Everett came into the coffee shop and her entire world changed. Everett was a young son of a chieftain with a prophecy. He had been searching for his mate for years. And when he found her, she was a human. How was he going to introduce her to the world of dragon and quite possibly have to change her? Feel free to leave comments! Constructive criticism only please! I want to get better!

The arts.