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From the critically acclaimed author of All That's Bright and Gone comes an atmospheric thriller that unearths a cache of age-old secrets--and a hidden danger--in the Florida Keys.Magda Trudell is the present-day caretaker of Whimbrel Estate, the Key West home of the famous poet Isobel Reyes. Isobel's suicide at the residence in 1918 has nearly overshadowed her creative legacy--but Magda, a botanist and avid historian, is determined to protect it. Over the past decade, Magda has lovingly restored the house to the exact condition Isobel would have known. And even though a fierce October hurricane is headed straight for the Keys, she isn't about to abandon her life's work to evacuate.As the mighty storm makes landfall, the dangers mount. First, a fire and flood threaten to destroy the house. Then the storm claims most of Magda's supplies. When part of the house collapses, she unearths an old steamer trunk in the rubble that contains a woman's remains. Is there more to Isobel's story than Magda knows?The unexpected appearance of a teenage girl and her father seeking shelter from the storm poses unnerving new questions. Are they really who they seem? And could they have a connection to the house's shadowy past? As the storm rages, Magda desperately tries to solve the real mystery of Isobel's death--and keep the living in one piece.

When the Earl of Althorpe dies, his daughter Julia is horrified to learn that the new earl is an American. Her father has left their estate, Stoverton, burdened with enormous debt and the only good news about the new earl is that he's a millionaire. Julia's hope is that he will bail out the estate and go back home to America, leaving her to run Stoverton, as she always has.Evan Marshall, the new earl, has no use for the British and certainly does not want to be an English earl. However, he finds not only has he inherited enormous debts, but he is now the guardian of two girls—Julia and her younger sister Maria.On the advice of his aunt, he agrees to give Julia a London Season so she can catch a husband and take care of Maria. Then he'll be able to go home to America, where he belongs.Nothing goes according to either of these very determined people's plans.

This book is a collection of novels Castle Rackrent, Irish Bulls, and Ennui by Maria Edgeworth that will be of much use to scholars, students and general readers interested in family fiction. Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 – 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults'and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe.[2] She held advanced views, for a woman of her time, on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Irish writer and is considered to be a significant figure in how novels have evolved in Europe. Edgeworth's novels are known for moral and social themes. This edition of Castle Rackrent includes a table of contents.

Excerpt:'PREFACE The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes...'

Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Irish writer and is considered to be a significant figure in the evolution of modern novels. Edgeworth's works are known for moral and social themes. This edition of The Absentee includes a table of contents.

The novel is set prior to the Constitution of 1782 and tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward, Thady Quirk. The heirs are: the dissipated spendthrift Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the cruel husband and gambling absentee Sir Kit Stopgap, and the generous but improvident Sir Condy Rackrent. Their sequential mismanagement of the estate is resolved through the machinations - and to the benefit - of the narrator's astute son, Jason Quirk.

Just before coming of age, Lord Colambre, the sensitive hero of the novel, finds that his mother Lady Clonbrony's attempts to buy her way into the high society of London are only ridiculed, while his father, Lord Clonbrony, is in serious debt as a result of his wife's lifestyle. Colambre falls in love with his mother's companion, his supposed cousin, Grace Nugent.

With her satire on Anglo-Irish landlords in Castle Rackrent (1800), Maria Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverley (1814). Politically risky, stylistically innovative, and wonderfully entertaining, the novel changes the focus of the conflict in Ireland from religion to class, and boldly predicts the rise of the Irish Catholic bourgeoisie.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years“The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.”—The New York Times“The work of a virtuoso with prose... His intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce's Ulysses.”—Chicago Tribune“A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force.”—San Francsisco ExaminerThe highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy.When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.

Just before coming of age, Lord Colambre, the sensitive hero of the novel, finds that his mother Lady Clonbrony's attempts to buy her way into the high society of London are only ridiculed, while his father, Lord Clonbrony, is in serious debt as a result of his wife's lifestyle. Colambre falls in love with his mother's companion, his supposed cousin, Grace Nugent.

Ever since high school, Rebi Lucas has not led a discreet lifestyle. She has grown accustomed to using her body as a bargaining tool. Although more than a few men have known her physically, only one man has dared to love her as a true friend. Now Rebi must return to her hometown after her mother's death to face that man.William Donovan is now the assistant pastor of Grace Apostle Methodist Church, adjacent to her family's home estate. He's devoted to helping Rebi heal old wounds and rediscover her passion when she returns home. As they are settling her mother's estate, Rebi and William unearth a generational curse that threatens to dismantle their carefully built love affair.The Land of Promiscuity is a story of unrequited love that will leave you wondering whether there are circumstances that make it impossible for even love to survive. Land of Promiscuity boasts bold, rich characters and a fresh voice. Ms. Kiser-Jackson skillfully invokes both sympathy and disdain for her protagonist. Readers will thirst for revelation and resolution at the gentle prod of her pen for these complex yet relatable characters. ---Norma L. Jarrett, Essence Bestselling Author Land of Promiscuity by Sherryle Kiser Jackson has a host of interesting characters. Secrets threaten to alter several characters'lives in this dramatic tale of a woman who comes face to face with her past. I recommend this book for those who are looking for something different yet interesting. ---Shelia M Goss, author of Delilah and Ruthless

A nurse is enlisted to care for the mysterious patriarch of a country estate in this “elegant and gripping” novel from a New York Times–bestselling author (The Washington Post). No sooner does young Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist arrive for her live-in position at Lydstep Old Hall, an isolated estate deep in the Essex countryside, than she's warned: “There's madness in the family.” Specifically, it's that of her patient, John Cosway, the disoriented family patriarch. True, he does appear to haunt the labyrinthine home, rather than inhabit it. But Kerstin's graver concerns are with the five women who seem to be closing in on her charge like the web of Virginia creeper that chokes the manor house itself. John's mother and four sisters—all nasty pieces of work—snipe, gossip, and whisper about the man they hope to have declared insane and locked up. After all, he's the source of the morbid Cosway history, the monster in their maze. But Lydstep Old Hall has too many shadows for just one secret, and to save John, Kerstin is determined to unearth them. But she'd better be careful, because she's already starting to lose her way in the dark. In The Minotaur, Edgar Award winner Ruth Rendell “drolly sends up the 19th-century Gothic novel.... Even without the allusions to The Woman in White and Jane Eyre, readers will spot the genre trappings of the Victorian sensation novel—from the skeletons in the closet to the bats in the belfry” (The New York Times Book Review).

Major Michael Moore has been playing a very dangerous part in the Great Game in India where he foils a plot to kill the Viceroy who tells Michael he is now a marked man and that he must return to England immediately. To his astonishment on his way home he reads in a newspaper that following the death of his grandfather he has become the Duke of Grangemoore. When he reaches England he decides he will not announce his arrival to the family Solicitors as he wishes to visit Grangemoore Hall under another name to see for himself what the situation is before he takes up his new position as Duke. While he is driving there he is stopped in the countryside by a beautiful young girl who begs him frantically to save her. Adela is running away from her stepmother and she is so persistent that Michael agrees to take her with him. When Adela and Michael arrive in disguise he discovers an appalling situation because a distant cousin has taken over the house and filled it with his friends who are nothing but drunken criminals. How Michael is saved by Adela from a horrible death and how they both escape and find happiness is told in this exciting romance by BARBARA CARTLAND.

The Castle Rackrent estate is owned by four generations of Englishmen, each dissipated, cruel or improvident in some way. Their lives are chronicled by the estate's Irish steward, Thady Quirk. He is one of the first examples in literature of the unreliable narrator, and as the story progresses we see how the estate is kept from ruin by Quirk's son - to his own advantage and benefit.

From the author Time magazine calls “the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world,” comes an elegant and gripping new novel that blurs the line between psychological suspense and Gothic horror. Kerstin Krist arrives at the vine-covered Lydstep Old Hall in rural Essex to care for John Cosway, a former mathematical genius, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and kept under heavy sedation. John is the sole heir of the immense Cosway estate. As he takes his daily walks or sits quivering in a labyrinthine library, the rest of the family plots their own ways of coming into the fortune. It is classic Barbara Vine–an absolutely enthralling tale that keeps turning and twisting until the very last page.

An often hilarious, always moving novel that explores love and fate and the ways we lie to ourselves to get by in a sometimes overwhelming world.When a mishap in the mail brings Geena into Ellis's life, neither realizes how much they need each other. With her marriage in tatters, Geena is still recovering from the sudden loss of her son. Ellis has been alone in the world since the death of his mother, and as he approaches his twilight years, the routine of everyday life has replaced the relationships he might once have known. When that routine is thrown into disarray by changes at the Thomas Edison estate, where Ellis works as a tour guide, he is lost until Geena brings courage and independence back into his life. For Geena, caring for Ellis is the salve on her own wounds. In a fascinating tale of fate and second chances, Ad Hudler weaves an intricate web showing the importance of friendship, family, and the need to accept one another, flaws and all.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In the musty attic of an upstate New York house, a woman finds a clasped box, hidden away for over a century. Inside, wrapped in cambric and tied with a green ribbon, is an old manuscript written by a girl dreaming of a better life, fighting for survival, and coming of age in a time of chaos and danger. This wondrously told tale is a stirring adventure set in nineteenth-century England, a novel of rich history and vibrant imagination.Amid the lush fields and gardens of an English estate, in a kitchen where every meal is a sumptuous feast, a young servant called Paddy anxiously hides her true identity. Using coal soot and grease, she conceals her flaming head of red hair and covers her body, desperate to keep the job she needs to survive. But the girl, whose real name is Mina, cannot conceal from herself the pain of her past or the beauty of an Ireland she remembers with love and grief—until she meets a man who convinces her to trust him, a man hiding sorrows of his own.To the mysterious Mr. Serle—the estate's skilled and quiet chef—Mina dares to confess her true identity and reveal a shattered past: her flight from the blighted fields of her homeland to the teeming streets of Liverpool...her memories of the family she lost and dreams for the future. And as Mina and Mr. Serle begin to know each other, an extraordinary journey begins—a journey of faith and identity, adventure and awakening, that will alter the course of both their lives.The sights and sounds of nineteenth-century England come vividly to life in Jonatha Ceely's magnificent novel, a tale that explores the intricate relationship forged by two people in hiding. Moving and unforgettable, Mina is historical fiction at its finest—a novel that makes you think, feel, and marvel…until the last satisfying page is turned.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A well-told story of love and redemption” (The Washington Post Book World) from the bestselling author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs “A polished gem of a novel... lovingly crafted, beautifully written.”—The Miami Herald Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard house on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work at Blessings are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep her, while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present, what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides, and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. Blessings is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer.

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs - Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the litigating fiend; Sir Kit, the brutal husband and gambling absentee; and Sir Condy, the lovable and improvident dupe of Thady's own son, Jason. With this satire on Anglo-Irish landlords Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverly (1814). She also changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicted the rise of the Irish Catholic Bourgeoisie. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.