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A novel of seduction, mystery, and danger set in New York’s Hudson Valley in the nineteenth century, by the author of Foxfire. There was, on the Hudson, a way of life such as this, and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck . . . In the spring of 1844, the Wells family receives a letter from a distant relative, the wealthy landowner Nicholas Van Ryn. He has invited one of their daughters for an extended visit at his Hudson Valley estate, Dragonwyck. Eighteen-year-old Miranda, bored with her local suitors and commonplace life on the farm, leaps at the chance for an escape. She immediately falls under the spell of both the master and his mansion, mesmerized by the Gothic towers, flowering gardens, and luxurious lifestyle—but unaware of the dark, terrible secrets that await. Anya Seton masterfully tells the heart-stopping story of a remarkable woman, her remarkable passions, and the mystery that resides in the magnificent hallways of Dragonwyck.
First published in 1944, this national bestseller was made into a major motion picture starring Gene Tierney and Vincent Price in 1946. A classic gothic romance, the story features an 18-year-old Miranda Wells who falls under the spell of a mysterious old mansion and its equally fascinating master.
Colonial America holds friendship, hardship, and love for a bold woman in this classic historical romance from the bestselling author of Green Darkness. In 1631 Elizabeth Winthrop, newly widowed with an infant daughter, set sail for the New World. Against a background of rigidity and conformity she dared to befriend Anne Hutchinson at the moment of her banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony; dared to challenge a determined army captain bent on the massacre of her friends the Siwanoy Indians; and, above all, dared to love a man as her heart and her whole being commanded. And so, as a response to this almost unmatched courage and vitality, Governor John Winthrop came to refer to this woman in the historical records of the time as his “unregenerate niece.” Anya Seton’s riveting historical novel portrays the fortitude, humiliation, and ultimate triumph of the Winthrop woman, who believed in a concept of happiness transcending that of her own day. “The Winthrop Woman is that rare literary accomplishment—living history. Really good fictionalized history [like this] often gives closer reality to a period than do factual records.”—Chicago Tribune “A rich and panoramic narrative full of gusto, sentimentality and compassion. It is bound to give much enjoyment and a good many thrills.”—Times Literary Supplement (UK) “Abundant and juicy entertainment.”—New York Times
A popular phenomenon since antiquity, the image of the haunted house is one that has translated elegantly into the modern medium of film. The haunted house transcends genre, appearing in mysteries, gothic romances, comedies and horror films. This book is the first comprehensive historical and critical study of themes surrounding haunted houses in film. Covering more than 100 films, it spans from the Mystery House thrillers of the silent era to the high-tech, big budget productions of the 21st Century. Included are the works of such acclaimed directors as D.W. Griffith, Robert Wise, Mario Bava, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro. The book also covers the real-life "haunted house" phenomenon and movies based on paranormal case files, including those featured in films like the Conjuring series.
A novel of England during the Viking era, from an author who “has vividly and colorfully portrayed life during the tumultuous Dark Ages” (Historical Novels Review). The last quarter of the tenth century was a time of conflict and exploration—while the Anglo-Saxons fought against the Vikings, Norsemen voyaged into the unknown looking for new lands to pillage, and so discovered America. Prince Rumon of France, descendant of Charlemagne and King Alfred, was a searcher. He had visions of the Islands of the Blessed, perhaps King Arthur’s Avalon, “where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.” Merewyn grew up in savage Cornwall—a lonely girl, sustained by stubborn courage and belief in her descent from great King Arthur. Chance—or fate—in the form of a shipwreck off the Cornish coast brought Rumon and Merewyn together, and from that hour their lives were intertwined. Bound by his vow to her dying mother, Rumon brings Merewyn safely to England, keeping hidden the shameful secret of her birth. He considers his responsibility ended. At court, he is dazzled by the beautiful Queen Alfrida—but when a murderous truth is revealed, he turns to Merewyn, only to discover that he may have lost her. And he will journey across the Atlantic to find her again . . . From the beloved bestselling author of Katherine and Dragonwyck, this is a romantic tale of history and adventure “characterized by an authentic sense of time” (The New York Times Book Review).
Anya Seton’s Foxfire makes the desert Southwest of the Great Depression come alive in all its rich strangeness and passion-filled glory. Amanda Lawrence, a charming, sheltered New York socialite, falls in love with Jonathan Dartland, a part-Apache mining engineer who belongs to the vastness of the Arizona desert. Amanda responds to his strength and self-reliance, but has nothing and nobody to guide her when she follows him to the grim town of Lodestone. “Not many authors succeed so well as Mrs. Seton in combining adventure and romance in a modern setting. Above all it is the driving and relentless pursuit of a treasure which keeps the people and the episodes at pitch throughout.” — Library Journal
In this historical novel by the author of Green Darkness, Theodosia’s romantic life is controlled by her domineering father, the infamous Aaron Burr. Anya Seton’s best-selling first novel, originally published in 1941, captures all the drama of the short life of Theodosia Burr (1783–1813). Her father, Aaron—Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, most famous for his great duel with Alexander Hamilton—holds sway over young Theodosia’s heart. But his arrogance forces her to choose between the man he insists she marry and her love for a young soldier who will turn out to play a decisive role in her father’s fate. Persuaded by Aaron that through his treasonable plans she will soon be crowned princess of the Kingdom of Mexico, she is received like royalty on Blennerhassett Island, only to end up trying to exonerate her father as he awaits trial in a Richmond jail, repudiated by his fickle son-in-law and friends. Theodosia remains a haunting figure in American history, still lovely, still imperious, never vanquished. “Anya Seton’s portraits of Aaron and Theodosia Burr alike are vivid and credible…The narrative is well sustained, and provides as background an entertaining account of the manners, the ways of living and traveling and entertaining followed during the early years of the nineteenth century.”—New York Times
A historical novel based on a true story of the Jacobite rebellion, from “a writer who has a special feeling for the dramatic” (Chicago Tribune). This fiercely beautiful novel tells the true story of Charles Radcliffe, a Catholic nobleman who joined the short-lived Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and of Jenny, his daughter by a secret marriage. Set in the Northumbrian wilds, teeming London, and colonial Virginia—where Jenny eventually settled on the estate of the famous William Byrd of Westover—Jenny’s story reveals one young woman’s loyalty, passion, and courage as she struggles in a life divided between the Old World and the New. “Miss Seton’s narrative is richly buttressed with the results of scrupulous research on the personages and the period. Her sole purpose is to tell a rousing good tale plainly and simply and this she does admirably.” —New York Herald Tribune
Anya Seton was the bestselling author of ten historical novels, including the masterpieces Katherine and The Winthrop Woman, which are still widely beloved over sixty years after their original publication. Yet there has never before been a book-length biography of this great American writer. Author Lucinda MacKethan, with the support of Seton's daughters and unprecedented access to the novelist's decades' worth of journals detailing her writing throughout her career, has crafted an intimate look at the writer in her own words. Ann Seton was born in 1904 the daughter of two celebrity writers: Ernest Thompson Seton, a renowned naturalist and illustrator, and Grace Gallatin Seton, a women's suffrage leader who received medals for her volunteer work in France during World War I. The pair's literary output gave them enduring fame, but as a teenager Ann explicitly rejected her parents' careers—because, she said, they showed her the drudgery of a writer's life. Still, she was always confident that she had inherited her parents' talent. At age thirty-six and self-renamed Anya, she placed her first novel with a major publisher. Anya the author was protective of her private life yet also mused, "I suppose I write myself over and over again in the heroines" of her books. She reinvented herself within carefully researched historical settings and biographical frameworks that provided both escape and wish fulfillment. Through Seton's own journal entries, letters, and self-analyses, MacKethan provides an intimate study of what it meant to her to be a writer. She details Seton's creative process, as well as the difficulties she faced balancing writing with the duties of homemaking and raising three children, and the gratitude or more often frustration she felt toward editors and reviewers. A compelling portrait emerges of a deeply dedicated writer whose life was full of inner turmoil, most of it self-inflicted.
Author : Will Scheibel Publisher : Wayne State University Press Page : 281 pages File Size : 54,7 Mb Release : 2022-09-12 Category : Performing Arts ISBN : 9780814348222
Ageless. Sexless. Deathless. Timeless. Pilgrim is a man who cannot die, an astounding character in a novel of the cataclysmic contest between creation and destruction. Pilgrim is Timothy Findley’s masterwork, a finalist for the Giller Prize, and a national bestseller that has smashed the author’s own impressive sales records. It is 1912 and Pilgrim has been admitted to the Burghölzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zürich, Switzerland, having failed—once again—to commit suicide. Over the next two years, it is up to Carl Jung, self-professed mystical scientist of the mind, to help Pilgrim unlock his unconsciousness, etched as it is with myriad sufferings and hopes of history. Is Pilgrim mad, or is he condemned to live forever, witness to the terrible tragedy and beauty of the human condition? Both intimate and expansive in its scope, with an absorbing parade of characters—mythic, fictional and historical—Pilgrim is a fiercely original and powerful story from one of our most distinguished artists.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz by Cheryl Bray Lower,R. Barton Palmer Pdf
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Barefoot Contessa, and All About Eve -- just three of the most well-known films of writer, director, and producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz. This work contains, first, critical essays about the man and his work, and then presents a guide to resources, an annotated bibliography, and a filmography. The essays on each of his films are categorized under Mankiewicz's Dark Cinema, The Mankiewicz Woman, Filmed Theatre, and Literary Adaptations.
The Catskills by Stephen M. Silverman,Raphael D. Silver Pdf
The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard. Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.
