Hay libros que no se leen, sino que se habitan. Hortus Vitae es uno de ellos. Estas páginas nos ofrecen una meditación delicada sobre el arte de vivir.Publicado por primera vez en 1923, con la autoría de Vernon Lee, seudónimo de Violet Paget, este libro reúne veinticuatro ensayos que, más que observar el mundo, lo acarician con la mirada. El jardín, lejos de ser metáfora decorativa, es aquí territorio espiritual: un espacio que se cultiva con lo bueno y lo...

El tétrico cuadro de una hermosa mujer consume la cordura de un estudiante que no puede despegarse de él. La misteriosa presencia de una joven náufraga trastorna a los habitantes de un pequeño pueblo en las costas de Italia. Una pareja se ve acechada por un espíritu en busca de venganza. El fantasma de un famoso castrato atormenta a un frívolo compositor.Estas son las historias que, oscilando entre la locura y el terror sobrenatural, integran Embrujada, un libro inquietant...

The death of a humble clergyman in 1877 leads amateur cleuths Violet Paget and John Singer Sargent into a medieval world of saints and kings--including the legendary Arthur--as they follow a trail of relics and antiquities lost since the destruction of Glastonbury Abbey in 1539. Written in alternating chapters between the two time periods, The Spoils of Avalon creates a sparkling, magical mystery that bridges the gap between two worlds that could hardly be more different: the indu...

John Singer Sargent has fled Paris after the debacle of "Madame X", the painting that destroyed his reputation—but he begins to heal and paint again in the Cotswolds village of Broadway. There, in a Bohemian enclave of American and British artists, writers, illustrators, poets and actors, he begins to create a painting that will make him famous once again—the luminous portrait of two little girls in a garden: "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose". But all is not well in the garden, and when the my...

It's Paris in the Spring of 1881—John Singer Sargent's portraits are garnering praise and attention at the Salon, and Violet Paget (aka writer Vernon Lee) is on her way to a literary rendezvous in London. But their lives are interrupted by a dramatic murder at the Musée de Cluny, where a medieval tapestry is being restored--it may hold the clue to murder! Time-travel through the centuries in France as the two intrepid sleuths unravel a mystery that began in 1480. This is the third book in ...

This second mystery finds amateur sleuths John Singer Sargent and Violet Paget afloat in murder in the fabled City of Venice during the darkest days of the year (1879). Secrets and long-held grudges surface at Ca' Favretto, an ancient palazzo on the Grand Canal, which has been recently purchased and refurbished by an Italian artist and good friend of Sargent--but will the ghosts of the past allow the new inhabitants to live in peace? Join the ever-engaging duo in their latest detecting adv...

Nearly 150 years have passed since Moses Shapira, an antiquarian book dealer in Jerusalem, up-ended the Victorian world of biblical scholars and archaeologists by declaring he had discovered the earliest Bible text in the world—an original Book of Deuteronomy, which included the Commandments—eleven of them.He offered fifteen leather-like fragments to the British Museum for one million pounds—the London papers could talk of nothing else for weeks in the summer of 1883, and Shapira w...

In these more welcome days of equality between the sexes we usually forget that the often cited ‘Gentler Sex’ can have dark and disturbing trains of thought that are more than the equal of their male brethren. Indeed, they can manipulate words in a matter of lines from comforting and loving to dark, foreboding and utterly terrifying. These femme fatales really do create stories that leech vile characters into dark and disturbing quite horrific narratives.

Let’s be clear. We are all equal under the law. However, even in these more modern times that is not an absolute and still remains a distant ambition for many.In the days when Britain ruled the waves and bestrode the world as its policeman and plunderer in chief it also subjugated half of its own people to second class status. Women were chattel and property. There were some exceptions based on wealth and birthright but for the overwhelming majority your lot was to fall in with the...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?The theme ...