Jules Massenet

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Connecticut

Libretto

Manon

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Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

Barbiere Di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)

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Giuseppe Verdi

La Traviata

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Der Rosenkavalier 

Lorenzo Da Ponte

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

The Complete Libretto

(Amadeus). For a long time, Cosi fan tutte was considered scandalous which is not entirely surprising, if you look at its story. After seeing their fiances, Guglielmo and Ferrando, go off to war, two sisters, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, all too rapidly overcome their grief and agree to marry two attractive strangers within the space of just a couple days. Little do the sisters know that the strangers are in fact those same fiances in disguise! The whole thing is a plot masterminded by a cynical old philosopher, Don Alfonso, and a clever maid, Despina. Scandalous or not, Cosi fan tutte has remained one of opera's most contemporary comedies.

Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte

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Sonya Friedman

George Bizet's Carmen

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Dover Opera Guide and Libretto Series

Don Giovanni

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Island Queen

Geraldine Brooks

A Novel

People of the Book

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Alan Bennett

From Alan Bennett, the author ofThe Madness of King George, come two stories about the strange nature of possessions...or the lack of them. In the nationally bestselling novelThe Clothes They Stood Up In, the staid Ransomes return from the opera to find their Regent’s Park flat stripped bare—right down to the toilet-paper roll. Free of all their earthly belongings, the couple faces a perplexing question: Who are they without the things they’ve spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly a world of unlimited, frightening possibility opens up before them. In “The Lady in the Van,” whichThe Village Voicecalled “one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced,” Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades’ worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author’s driveway for more than fifteen years. A mesmerizing portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, this biographical essay is drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion.

The Clothes They Stood up In; The Lady in the Van

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Wilkie Collins

B`..melodrama is perennial and the craving for it is perennial and must be satisfied' T. S. Eliot ('Wilkie Collins and Dickens') Collins's ability to construct a gripping situation and to create an atmosphere of mystery and menace is fully evident in the three novellas reprinted here. All proceed through a series of dramatic scenes to a climax that in one case at least is literally explosive. The fast-paced Miss or Mrs? (1871) opens on a yacht, features a remarkably unconventional heroine, and entails murder attempts, blackmail, clandestine marriage and commercial fraud. Dramatic and psychologically absorbing, the action of The Haunted Hotel (1878) takes place in an ancient Venetian palazzo converted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secreI. Lastly, set in a beautiful water-mill, The Guilty River (1886) depicts a group of alienated characters, whose relationships threaten to erupt in violence and murder. Varied in setting and tone, these stories demonstrate Collins's plot-making skill at its most succinct and intricate. *Introduction * Textual Note * Bibliography * Chronology * * Explanatory Notes *Appendix: Collins's prefaces

Miss or Mrs?, the Haunted Hotel, the Guilty River

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Hallie Rubenhold

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Henrietta Lightfoot, an orphan raised with her cousins, learns to fend for herself on the streets of eighteenth-century London as a courtesan, a gambler, and a feisty intellectual.

Mistress of My Fate

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For fans of TV dramas like 'Victoria', 'Downton Abbey' and 'Poldark' 'A riveting novel of female intrigue, betrayal and revenge in the French Revolution. Read it!' LUCY WORSLEY PARIS, 1792 It was a head, but one so bloodied, so rolled in filth, that it was scarcely recognisable but for its long red curls. It had been stuck on a pike like a lump of bread upon a toasting fork ... Henrietta Lightfoot trips on her silk gown as she runs for her life along the bloodstained streets of revolutionary Paris. She finds refuge in the lavish home of Grace Dalyrmple Elliott, one of the old regime's most powerful courtesans. But heads are beginning to roll. Outside, the guillotine mercilessly claims its victims, while inside society's gilded salons, Henrietta becomes a pawn in a vicious power game. How will she survive in a world where no one can be trusted? 'A gleefully modern retelling of a juicy chapter in history' The Times 'Rubenhold unfolds a complicated plot with great dexterity' Sunday Times 'Compelling, operatic, modern' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'Dark and delicious' Red Magazine

The French Lesson

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Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Barry Squires, Full Tilt 

Susan Stokes-Chapman

An Immersive and Gripping Historical Novel Set in Georgian London

There is a fine line between coincidence and fate... In London 1799, Dora Blake is an aspiring jewellery artist who lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents' famed shop of antiquities. When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle's suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young man seeking acceptance into the Society of Antiquaries. Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future. Dora sees it as her chance to restore her parents' shop to its former glory, and to escape her uncle. But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has ever known, about her life, her family and the world as she knows it. As Dora uncovers the truth she starts to realise that some mysteries are buried, and some boxes are locked, for a reason. Gorgeously atmospheric and deliciously page-turning, Pandora deals with themes of secrets and deception, love and fulfilment, fate and hope.

Pandora

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Sara Collins

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London—a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests. All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore. But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship. Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself. The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a breathtaking debut: a murder mystery that travels across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history. A brilliant, searing depiction of race, class, and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see her unmade.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

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Chéri

Colette

Antonia White

Judith Thurman

Claudine at School; Claudine in Paris; Claudine Married; Claudine and Annie

Colette, prodded by her first husband, Willy, began her writing career with Claudine at School, which catapulted the young author into instant, sensational success. Among the most autobiographical of Colette's works, these four novels are dominated by the child-woman Claudine, whose strength, humor, and zest for living make her seem almost a symbol for the life force. Janet Flanner described these books as "amazing writing on the almost girlish search for the absolute of happiness in physical love . . . recorded by a literary brain always wide awake on the pillow."

The Complete Claudine

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Roger Senhouse

Three Short Novels

Two volumes of Colette's most beloved works, with a new Introduction by Judith Thurman.

Perhaps Colette's best-known work,Gigiis the story of a young girl being raised in a household more concerned with success and money than with the desires of the heart. But Gigi is uninterested in the dishonest society life she observes all around her and remains exasperatingly Gigi. The tale of Gigi's success in spite of her anxious family is Colette at her liveliest and most entertaining. Written during the same period asGigi,Julie de Carneilhan, based on Colette's last years with her second husband, focuses on a contest of wills between Julie, an elegant woman of forty, and her ex-husband.Chance Acquaintances, a novella, involves an invalid wife, her philandering husband, and a music-hall dancer whose odd meeting at a French spa affects and indelibly marks each one of their lives.

Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances

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Maggie Shipstead

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE - A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK - The unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost--Great Circle "soars and dips with dizzying flair ... an expansive story that covers more than a century and seems to encapsulate the whole wide world" (Boston Globe). "A masterpiece ... One of the best books I've ever read." --J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

Great Circle

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March

Waverley

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Austen J

Northanger Abbey tells the story of a young girl, Catherine Morland who leaves her sheltered, rural home to enter the busy, sophisticated world of Bath in the late 1790s. Austen observes with insight and humour the interaction between Catherine and the various characters whom she meets there, and tracks her growing understanding of the world about her.

Northanger Abbey

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Browse by categories

Jules Massenet

Manon

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

Barbiere Di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)

Giuseppe Verdi

La Traviata

Richard Strauss, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Alfred Kalisch

Der Rosenkavalier

Lorenzo Da Ponte; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte

Sonya Friedman

George Bizet's Carmen

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Ellen Bleiler

Don Giovanni

Vanessa Riley

Island Queen

Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book

Alan Bennett

The Clothes They Stood up In; The Lady in the Van

Wilkie Collins

Miss or Mrs?, the Haunted Hotel, the Guilty River

Hallie Rubenhold

Mistress of My Fate

Hallie Rubenhold

The French Lesson

Heather Smith

Barry Squires, Full Tilt

Susan Stokes-Chapman

Pandora

Sara Collins

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Colette

Chéri

Colette; Antonia White; Judith Thurman

The Complete Claudine

Colette; Roger Senhouse; Judith Thurman

Gigi, Julie de Carneilhan, and Chance Acquaintances

Maggie Shipstead

Great Circle

Geraldine Brooks

March

Sir Walter Scott

Waverley

Austen Jane

Northanger Abbey

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