She'd fled the bed of the duke of Deighton and returned to her life of quiet respectability. But VerityDavis-Jones could never forget Galen Bromney, "her" notorious duke,for she saw him daily in the face of their child—the daughter shemust deny him, along with her heartfelt love!Ten years of self-imposed exile had done little to dissuade GalenBromney of the rightness of being with Verity. Yet how would he everconvince the woman of his dreams that a life together raising theirdaughter was his deepest desire?

A reckless duke meets his match in a determined young woman – and throws her future into jeopardy with one stolen kiss. Miss Anna Hawkins, the daughter of a poor country doctor, knows the mysterious stranger who kissed her at the ball cannot really be the Duke of Beaumont. Dukes are virtuous and noble, and this man is arrogant, impudent… and dangerously seductive. When she discovers he is telling the truth, it only makes matters worse. Anna has more important problems than romance – a handsome duke is the last thing she needs. Beaumont cannot forget Anna Hawkins. It’s not only her sharp mind and delicate features. It’s not only the flame-red hair he longs to caress. It’s not even that she is the only woman in England to say no to a duke. Anna is not afraid to chastise Beaumont for his lack of virtue, and he has never wanted anyone more. Before long, he has only one desire: to make her his duchess. But it takes more than a dukedom to win a woman’s heart. This is the second book in the series Scandals of Scarcliffe Hall. You do not have to read the first book to enjoy this one! However, there are some connections between the books which will reward readers of the whole series.

In her first book Lou Charnon-Deutsch looked at the representation of women in male-authored texts. This book deals with women-authored texts of the same period. While women are unveiled as monstrous and are chastised or abandoned in male-written texts, novels written by women teach women how to deal with abandonment and undeserved punishment. In approaching her subject, Charnon-Deutsch draws on modern theorists such as Jessica Benjamin, Nancy Chodorow, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Lawrence Lipking, Luce Irigaray, Carol Gilligan, and Teresa de Lauretis. Charnon-Deutsch explores women's domestic fiction as the product of a patriarchal society dependent upon the enforcement of certain sexual arrangements to sustain itself. She contends that the production of sexual identity is crucial to the exercise of power by a conservative patriarchy and that the domestic novel was a particularly productive genre in this regard. At the same time, she argues that feminine desire accommodates itself even within the most repressive power relations that women writers sometimes imagined as fostering rather than hindering feminine maturity. With a recognition of the contradictions inherent in women's fiction, she examines different psychological desires underlying the cult of domesticity. While some desires seem subversive to the ideal of femininity as promoted in Spanish culture, Charnon-Deutsch concludes that most promote sexual arrangements that reinforce repressive norms of feminine conduct.

Seven novels by the New York Times–bestselling author,“a romance writer who deftly blends humor and adventure” (Booklist). From a bride whose scandalous secret is revealed on her wedding day by a talking mynah bird, to a duke seduced by love letters secretly written by someone else, to an ingénue and a vicar’s wife drawn unexpectedly into the whirlwind of the London season, these seven novels are set in a world of high society scheming and passions hidden behind nineteenth-century propriety. The Dukes and Desires Series includes: The Desirable Duchess; Her Grace’s Passion; Pretty Polly; The Sins of Lady Dacey; My Dear Duchess; Lady Lucy’s Lover; and The Scandalous Marriage. “The best of the Regency writers.” —Kirkus Reviews

He was only supposed to keep an eye on his friend’s sister . . . now he’s about to lose his heart . . . When Thomas Heathmore, Duke of Coventry, agrees to steer his friend’s inexperienced younger sister through society, he doesn’t expect the lady in question to be so infernally stubborn. Amelia Matthews seems to have little interest in balls or suitors at all. Instead, she intends to open a school, and against his better instincts, Thomas offers to help. Yet somewhere along the line, Amelia ceases to be a simple responsibility . . . and becomes an undeniable temptation. Since her brother inherited a dukedom, Amelia’s prospects have transformed. But though she’s long been secretly infatuated with Thomas, she refuses to heed the arrogant aristocrat’s advice. If only it were as easy to ignore his heated touch. And as Amelia soon learns, the ton is a minefield, where one moment’s indiscretion can unleash a scandal—or entice her to surrender everything to the duke of her desire . . .

Presenting selections from medieval Latin, Welsh, English, French and German literature, Richard White traces the Arthurian legend from the earliest mentions of Arthur in Latin chronicles to Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Many of these selections are translated here for the time into English. Bringing together an extensive range of diverse material which reveals the development of the figure of Arthur, this anthology enables the reader to understand how the Arthurian legend developed over a period of more than five hundred years. King Arthur in Legend and History also includes a chronology of key Arthurian texts, an appendix of the Arthurian Courts, a list of sources, suggestions for further reading and bibliography. Also inlcludes five maps.