"Benedick and Beatrice are engaged in a "merry war"; they both talk a mile a minute and proclaim their scorn for love, marriage, and each other. In contrast, Claudio and Hero are sweet young people who are rendered practically speechless by their love for one another. By means of "noting" (which sounds the same as "nothing," and which is gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other,...

William Shakespeare's comedic play about love, mistaken identities, and magic is reimagined by Shakespeare's Globe as a picture book for children. The story is told from the perspective of Puck the sprite in language that is true to the original play but also accessible. This retelling is a magical way to introduce children to one of the best-loved works of the world's greatest playwright. -- Book jacket.

Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her. Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous, if beautiful,...

Teenager, Jessie Bartlett Nungarrayi, takes us on a journey from Alice Springs to the ancestral homelands of her Pintubi grandmothers where the old ladies propose to teach her about relationships with men, the lore of love, the traditional way. With her teenage skin sister, Lizzie, Jessie travels into the remote area around the dried salt-bed of Lake Mackay, straddling the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia, where her grandfather...

Washington Square (1881), by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the plain, obedient daughter of the widowed, well-to-do Dr. August Sloper of Washington Square. When a handsome, feckless man-about-town proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage because he believes the man to be after Catherine's fortune and future inheritance. The conflict between father, daughter, and suitor provokes consequences in the lives of all three...

The acclaimed comedian teams up with a New York University sociologist to explore the nature of modern relationships, evaluating how technology is shaping contemporary relationships and considering the differences between courtships of the past and present.

"England, 1820. Rosalind Newbury is counting down the days until her wedding to the Duke of Marlow, a man she has only met twice. The marriage is more an agreement between two families and less a romantic connection between two hearts, but Rosalind becoming a duchess will elevate her family's status to dizzying heights. And the duke is a kind man who will care for Rosalind, even if he doesn't love her. She only has three weeks before her life changes...

When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in the winter of 1840, he is on no one's short list to be president. A country lawyer living above a dry goods shop, he is lacking both money and manners, and his gift for oratory surprises those who meet him. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with an interest in debates and elections, at first finds him an enigma. “I can only hope,” she tells his roommate, the handsome, charming Joshua...

Ever since she met him, Caroline has intended to wed Mr. Darcy. Intelligent and well educated, Caroline is an ambitious rising star in fashionable societysome might say connivingbut in Regency England, what can she do to better her situation but marry well? Surely, Mr. Darcy is aware that Caroline will make the perfect wife and hostess at Pemberley, his grand estate. Now, all she need do is await his proposal. Carolines brother, Charles, takes a country...

"She knows a liar when she sees one. He knows a fraud when he meets one. In a steam-powered world, Miss Constance Haltwhistle is the last in a line of blue-blooded rogues. Selling firearms under her alias, the 'Brass Queen,' she has kept her baronial estate's coffers full. But when US spy J. F. Trusdale saves her from assassins, she's pulled into a search for a scientist with an invisibility serum. As royal foes create an invisible army to start a...