Lo studente americano Pip Durrant arriva in Romania per continuare le ricerche del compianto dottor Marcu nel villaggio transilvano di Arva, dove un’alta incidenza di malattie mentali tra la popolazione femminile sembra collegata a una storia sconvolgente di stupro rituale di bambine e omicidi. Ma una volta lì, si rende conto ben presto che i misteri che circondano il villaggio sembrano essere in qualche modo collegati agli eventi traumatici della sua infanzia. Può essere davvero caduto pr...

Nella Romania post Ceauşescu del 1990, lo psichiatra Sasha Marcu ha in cura Irina Petrescu, una donna di Arva, i cui abitanti nascondono un misterioso segreto. Irina manifesta una sindrome schizofrenica dovuta alla morte della figlia, vittima sacrificale di un rito propiziatorio, poiché una misteriosa entità tiene in scacco il paese. Di secolo in secolo, di terra in terra, essa ha viaggiato mossa solo da un unico scopo: uccidere più bambini possibile. I personaggi si trovano dunque a comba...

Nell'anno 2024, Pip Durrant è diventato un autore di successo e si è preso un anno sabbatico dal lavoro di insegnante all'università di Oxford, ma è ancora turbato da visioni strazianti della figura soprannaturale che lo ha perseguitato fin dall'infanzia: il ripugnante Pifferaio. Decide così di imbarcarsi in una missione per trovare l’autobiografia del Pifferaio, il Codice, nella speranza che lo aiuti a superare finalmente l’antico demone. Gli eventi riconducono lui e i suoi amici al villa...

Best known as the author of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill remains a canonical figure in liberalism today. Yet according to his autobiography, by the mid-1840s he placed himself "under the general designation of Socialist." Taking this self-description seriously, John Stuart Mill, Socialist reinterprets Mill's work in its light.Helen McCabe explores the nineteenth-century political economist's core commitments to egalitarianism, social justice, social harmony, and a...

Harriet Taylor Mill is an overlooked figure in the history of political philosophy, ethics, economics and politics, over-shadowed by the fame of her writing partner, and eventual husband, John Stuart Mill. Given that they met at a very early age (when Taylor Mill was twenty-two), and wrote together for over a quarter of a century, it can be hard to distinguish what is 'hers' and what is 'his'. Indeed, maybe we should consider much of Mill's canon as being 'theirs'. Taylor Mill inputted int...

When India Melling decides to move out of her ancestral home, Selby Hall, she places the sale with Quinton Holdings and the capable hands of her niece, Laura Fenton, who works for its owner, the pushy Nick Quinton. Laura loves Selby and is unhappy that her aunt is selling, especially as the most interested potential buyer turns out to be a property company, O’Neill Developments.Laura knows it is wise never to mix business with pleasure, but with Jack O’Neill, she finds it increasin...

In the year 2024, middle-aged Pip Durrant has become a successful author on sabbatical at Oxford University, but is still troubled by harrowing visions of the supernatural figure who has dogged him since childhood: the loathsome Piper. He is now on a quest to find the Piper’s blasphemous autobiography, the Codex, in the hope that it will help him finally to overcome this ancient evil. But as events lead him and his friends back to the Romanian village of Arva, with its gruesome history of ...

Ella is the new English teacher in a small mountain village on the island of Rhodes. When she has a car accident on the mountain road, she is rescued by a young man who is efficient yet gruff, and angry with her for risking the treacherous route in the dark. Later, she learns that her savior, Loukas, has withdrawn from local life since a tragedy left him a widowed father. Drawn to Loukas, Ella raches out to the small family. But the Chairman of the school governors, whose persistent advanc...

Alys Symons’ beloved father seems too weak to shield her from her cruel mother’s plan to marry her off to the odious Alexander Huston – and in Elizabethan England, a young woman is expected to do as she is told in such matters! Then brothers Tom and Nicholas Merson pay them a visit, and Alys instantly falls for the handsome Nicholas. Could he be her saviour? But there is a strange mystery surrounding the Merson family, and it seems that Alys must put her own life on the line for the sake o...

The year is 1903, and young Mary Flynn has voyaged from her native Ireland to America to find her fortune in New York. But the aunt who promised to meet her on her arrival fails to appear, and she is stranded on Ellis Island … One of Mary’s fellow passengers, the handsome Sean Mullen, offered her his help if she needed it, but can she trust him? He is a young man with a dark side, and secrets, and a past that haunts him … Will Mary be able to make her way in this new and unfamiliar country...

Newly qualified as a horticulturalist, young Cathy Murdoch is spending the summer in her mother’s childhood home, the ancient French town of Chinon, on the banks of a sleepy tributary of the River Loire. When she receives an offer to restore part of the local chateau garden to its former glory, she jumps at the chance, as garden design is her intended speciality. However, Cathy quickly finds that her holiday is anything but relaxing. Intrigue and a man called Luc soon come to fill her time...

Rafe Perez’s greatest love is for the rainforests of his native Brazil, so when he is faced with acting as a guide for the headstrong Gina Matheson, whose father is the boss of the logging company that he despises, it seems unlikely they will get along. Rafe’s task is to ensure that Gina makes it safely through the forest and gets the photographs she needs for a book she is writing. But, as an unlikely relationship grows between them, nature isn’t the only enemy they have to face, and thei...