The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance—incest, political assassination, papal sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, unscrupulous power grabs. Yet, as bestselling biographer Sarah Bradford reveals in this breathtaking new portrait, the truth is far more fascinating than the myth. Neither a vicious monster nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day.Drawing from a trove of contemporary documents and fascinating firsthand accounts, Bradford brings to life the art, the pageantry, and the dangerous politics of the Renaissance world Lucrezia Borgia helped to create.

A series of suspicious deaths have rocked Hull, a port city in England as old and mysterious as its bordering sea. They have captured the attention of Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. He notices a pattern missed by his fellow officers, who would rather get a quick arrest than bother themselves with finding the true killer. Torn between his police duties and his aching desire to spend more time with his pregnant wife and young son, McAvoy is an unlikely hero: a physically imposing man far more comfortable exploring computer databases than throwing around his muscle. Compelled by his keen sense of justice, he decides to strike out alone—but in the depths of the dark winter, it’s difficult to forget what happened the last time he found himself on the wrong side of a killer’s blade…From BooklistStarred Review Cops in the economically ravaged northern England city of Hull don’t know what to think of the new detective who has joined the force. Aector McAvoy is a veritable giant, and there are vague rumors that he was nearly killed bringing down a rogue cop and a contract killer. But in Hull, he is a shy computer wizard who silently wishes he could spend all his time with his pregnant wife and young son. Then there’s his name; Hull cops don’t know it’s a Scots spelling of Hector. But Aector is on the scene when a teenage girl is savagely murdered in Hull’s most historic church, and it is Aector who discovers that the girl and subsequent victims were all survivors of previous fatal tragedies. And it is Aector who must end the murderous rampage. First-novelist Mark shrewdly makes Aector an enigma for readers, too, slowly building the conflicted hero throughout the book. Equally shrewdly, he gives Aector a tough and insightful female supervisor, who, after puckishly remarking he should have come with an “owner’s manual,” ultimately unpacks her complex charge. Mark’s years as a Hull journalist, his descriptions of a blighted city “on the bones of its arse,” and winter weather that ranges from merely dismal to brutal burnish an impressive debut. John Harvey readers should take note. --Thomas Gaughan ReviewPraise for THE DARK WINTER by David Mark: “British crime reporter Mark’s outstanding first novel, a suspenseful whodunit, introduces Det. Sgt. Aector McAvoy…Readers will want to see more of the complicated McAvoy, who well deserves a sophisticated and disturbing plot.”—Publisher’s Weekly (Starred)“[A]n impressive debut. John Harvey readers should take note.”—Booklist (starred)“With a poetic intensity in its prose, an unpredictable plot and a Scottish detective, Mark’s novel gripped me from its opening pages.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “It will not be long until new voices in the genre are hailed as the ‘next David Mark.’”—Bookpage.com“Fast moving and tightly plotted, with strong characterization and a likeable protagonist, this is an extremely promising debut.”—The Guardian “The Dark Winter is a promising debut by David Mark… certainly provides a trip to Hull and back.”—The Telegraph  Dark Winter is a fantastic debut of a police procedural series that takes place in northern England. Just as Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy seems to be able to put himself in the mind of a killer, David Mark has developed his characters so completely that the reader can almost put himself in the mind of McAvoy as he is connecting dots that no one else even sees. McAvoy may be a gentle giant of a man but he is also determined to get at the truth even if his job is in jeopardy. Luckily, he finds a believer in his boss, another dedicated officer who also is fighting to keep her job.—Nancy McFarlane, Fiction Addiction “The Dark Winter is an exceptional debut from an exciting new talent. David Mark is an original and captivating new voice.”—Val McDermid

The events told in Black Easter have run their course. Now God is dead, and Satan has dominion over the earth …

Loretta Young (1913-2000) was an Academy Award-winning actress known for devout Catholicism and her performances in The Farmer's Daughter, The Bishop's Wife, and Come to the Stable, and for her long-running and tremendously popular television series. But that was not the whole story.Hollywood Madonna explores the full saga of Loretta Young's professional and personal life. She made her film debut at age four, became a star at fifteen, and many awards and accolades later, made her final television movie at age seventy-six. This biography withholds none of the details of her affair with Clark Gable and the daughter that powerful love produced. Bernard F. Dick places Young's affair in the proper context of the time and the choices available to women in 1935, especially a noted Catholic like Young, whose career would have been in ruins if the public knew of her tryst. With the birth of a daughter, who would have been branded a love child, Loretta...

For four of the best summers of his young life, Luke Harris was in love with Sydney Donovan, a wealthy seasonal visitor to Gansett Island. Then Sydney went off to college and never came back. She married another man and had two children while Luke remained on the island, working at McCarthy's Gansett Marina and wondering what had gone wrong between him and the only woman he ever loved. Fifteen months after Sydney suffers the tragic loss of her husband and children, she's returned to Gansett to figure out what's next, and that may very well be a rekindled love affair with the one man from her past she’s never forgotten. But is she ready for a second chance at love?

The electric finale in New York Times bestselling author Lili St. Crow's Strange Angels series! Nobody expected Dru Anderson to survive this long. Not Graves. Not Christophe. Not even Dru. She's battled killer zombies, jealous djamphirs , and bloodthirsty suckers straight out of her worst nightmares. But now that Dru has bloomed into a full-fledged svetocha—rare, beautiful, and toxic to all vampires-the worst is yet to come. Because getting out alive is going to cost more than she's ever imagined. And in the end, is survival really worth the sacrifice? DRU ANDERSON'S NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK. BUT SHE SHOULD BE.

If someone gave you a chair and said it was made by Jesus Christ, would you believe them? When an elderly lady shows up in Corin Roscoe's antiques store and gives him a chair she claims was crafted by Jesus, he scoffs. But when a young boy is miraculously healed two days after sitting in the chair, he stops laughing and starts wondering . . . could this chair heal the person whose life Corin destroyed twelve years ago? As word spreads of the boy's healing, a mega-church pastor is determined to manipulate Corin into turning over the chair. And that mysterious woman who gave him the piece flits in and out of his life like a shadow, insinuating it's Corin’s destiny to guard the chair above everything else. But why? Desperate, he turns to the one person he can trust, a college history professor who knows more about the legend of the chair than he'll reveal. Corin's life shatters as he searches for the truth about the artifact and the unexplained phenomena surrounding it. What’s more, he's not the only one willing do almost anything to possess the power seemingly connected to the chair.Acclaim for The Chair:"James Rubart is one of my new favorite authors. The Chair has the same depth and creativity as Rooms, and it was impossible for me to think of anything else until I finished it. I can't wait for his next book!"--Terri Blackstock, author of Intervention and Vicious Cycle"The Chair is a compelling story that will draw the reader's attention immediately and hold onto it until the end. I've enjoyed all of James L. Rubart's books, but this may be my favorite."--Tracie Peterson, best-selling author of the Striking a Match series"My kind of story: Thought provoking, filled with the truth of humanity and the compassion of Christ."--Bill Myers, best-selling author of Eli"Romance, danger, mystery, betrayal . . . and most of all, a message of healing and restoration. Taking readers far beneath the surface, Rubart masterfully paints a picture of God's depth of love and longing for relationship with even those who are running away from Him as fast as they can. A tale of unimaginable sacrifice and unconditional love that will tug at your heart long after you've completed the last page."--Kathi Macias, award-winning author of Deliver Me from Evil"Rubart has a stellar ability to communicate spiritual truth through a highly original, well-told story. Relatable characters and a fast-paced plot provide all of the key elements for a compulsively readable tale."--Romantic Times (4 1/2 stars out of 5)"The message in the story is very powerful . . . the ending brought a huge smile to my face."-- Kissed by Literature"If you're not carrying all three of (James Rubart's) titles, you don't really have a fiction section."--Christian Book Shop Talk

 It's the age-old tale of boy meets alien abductor. Boy meets stun-gun. Boy learns he's the only one in the Universe who can save the Earth from extreme world makeover by inter-stellar landlords. (Yeah: he thinks it's a bit much, too.) Like everyone else on his planet, Bertram Ludlow hasn't paid much attention to fluctuations in the intergalactic real estate market. But as a cognitive psychology grad student, he has given some thought to what a complete mental breakdown looks like. And this is pretty close. Now he's discovering space is a mad and mind-boggling place where interspecies communication rests on the power of a gumball. Where androids demand better work/life balance. Where crime is Art, technology still has its bugs, and lasers don't go "pyew-pyew." It's also surprisingly easy to get on the Universe's Most Wanted list. So with the weight of the world on his shoulders and the cosmic law on his tail, can Bertram outrun, outwit, and out-bid to save the Earthling squatters from one spaced-out redevelopment plan?