Plunder combined three of my favorite things in one unputdownable story: art history, Italy, and the Napoleonic Era.
Veronese's enormous Wedding Feast at Cana, painted for the refectory wall at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, was seized with other masterpieces when Napoleon overcame the Austrians and wouldn't take Venice's neutrality as an answer. To this day it hangs in the Louvre, largely (pun intended) ignored because it’s opposite the Mona Lisa.
Salzman traces the common historic habit of swooping in like vultures during wartime to build one’s art collection, and for the first time I understood why Hitler thought himself justified in his own artistic pilfering!
One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May
"A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two.” ―Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal
A captivatingstudy of Napoleon’s plundering of Europe’s art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from Venice
Cynthia Saltzman’s Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from…
As a romance writer, Eva Ibbotsen is who I want to be when I grow up. Her quirky, hilarious, educated, swoony books are peopled with delightful characters, and Magic Flutes is a perfect example.
Tessa works as the wardrobe mistress and general lackey of a Viennese opera company, but she's really the Princess Theresa-Maria of Pfaffenstein. Millionaire Guy Farne buys Pfaffenstein for his beloved fiancee and hires the opera company to put on—what else?—Mozart's The Magic Flute. Love ensues. Absolutely delightful.
Tessa is a beautiful, tiny, dark-eyed princess - who's given up her duties to follow her heart, working for nothing backstage at the Viennese opera. No one there knows who she really is, or that a fairytale castle is missing its princess, and Tessa is determined to keep it that way.
But secret lives can be complicated. When a wealthy, handsome Englishman discovers this bewitching urchin backstage,Tessa's two lives collide - and in escaping her inheritance, she finds her destiny. . .
I’ll be honest: Framley Parsonage was a re-read because I return to Trollope’s Barchester series every few years.
When I’m seeking the comfort of a good Austenesque love story within a richly imagined community of characters, Trollope is Jane Austen’s true heir. In this one, a clergyman gets in financial hot water and tries to hide the situation from his patroness Lady Lufton. Meanwhile Lady Lufton’s son falls for the clergyman’s younger sister.
The well-meaning Lady Lufton runs away with this book, in my opinion. I loved her character so much that I basically stole her for one of my books!
She craves respectability. He’s honorable to a fault. When their hearts harmonize, can they avoid a scandal to form a perfect pairing?
Florence Ellsworth reluctantly lives in the shadow of her family’s notoriety. Mortified that her widower father is on the hunt for his fourth wife, she accepts an engagement to a staid clergyman in the desperate hope for propriety. But she’s unprepared when her sire’s newly hired attorney proves to be young, sincere, and handsome.
Robert Fairchild feels a bit awkward in society. Aware of how his modest background is perceived, the humble lawyer is surprised by his longings when he gains the confidence of his client’s lovely daughter. But with her already betrothed to another, he dares not be dishonorable by confessing his interest and losing her respect.
Disturbed by her growing feelings for the charming solicitor, Florence works all the harder to find the appeal in her sober intended husband. Meanwhile Fairchild is inadvertently pulled into a lady’s schemes and fears any chance with the object of his affection has been forever lost.
Will they find a way out of their tender traps to capture happily ever after?
Tempted by Folly is the delightful first book in The Ellsworth Assortment clean Regency romance series.
