Can love grow between a reluctant duke and an illegitimate shop girl?Read Book 4 in the bestselling "The St. Clairs" series for free with Kindle Unlimited!Anthony Godwin, trusted staff officer to the Duke of Wellington, returns from the Napoleonic Wars to learn both his father and brother are dead and he is the new Duke of Linfield. His anger and bitterness have grown through the years and he despises the Linfield name-because his father gave Anthony away when he was eight years old. Now he finds himself a part of the ton, with men seeking his advice and women vying to become his new duchess, all because of a title he now holds and never wanted.Laurel Wright grew up in poverty. When her mother dies, Laurel learns she and her twin brother are the illegitimate offspring of the deceased Duke of Everton. Penniless and starving, she turns to the new Duke of Everton in desperation. Suddenly, Laurel is swept into a glittering, unfamiliar world as she is launched into the Season. Navigating her way proves daunting and when she is discovered in a compromising position with a man she's only met, it leads to a quick marriage in which both partners agree that love will never be a part of their relationship.Anthony never wanted a wife and is abruptly saddled with one. He tries to keep his distance from the raven-haired beauty who is now his duchess, but Laurel proves to be irresistible. Passion erupts between them and he finds himself longing for a child, though he fights growing closer to this new wife.Will Laurel and Anthony be able to put the past behind them-and let love rule their future?Find the answer in bestselling author Alexa Aston's fourth book of The St. Clairs, Defending the Duke.Each book in The St. Clairs Trilogy is a standalone story that can be enjoyed out of order.The St. ClairsBook #1 Devoted to the DukeBook #2 Midnight with the MarquessBook #3 Embracing the EarlBook #4 Defending the DukeBook #5 Suddenly a St. Clair (Coming soon!)

Biological immunity as we know it does not exist until the late nineteenth century. Nor does the premise that organisms defend themselves at the cellular or molecular levels. For nearly two thousand years “immunity,” a legal concept invented in ancient Rome, serves almost exclusively political and juridical ends. “Self-defense” also originates in a juridico-political context; it emerges in the mid-seventeenth century, during the English Civil War, when Thomas Hobbes defines it as the first “natural right.” In the 1880s and 1890s, biomedicine fuses these two political precepts into one, creating a new vital function, “immunity-as-defense.” In A Body Worth Defending, Ed Cohen reveals the unacknowledged political, economic, and philosophical assumptions about the human body that biomedicine incorporates when it recruits immunity to safeguard the vulnerable living organism. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces the migration of immunity from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies that percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. He shows that by the late nineteenth century, “the body” literally incarnates modern notions of personhood. In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.

"Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.” —Gloria Steinem A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. “Don’t touch that girl, she’ll burn your fingers,” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke’s billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon’s Lair overlooking Beverly Hills. Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights. In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.

The steamy first book in The Pleasure Wars series by USA Today Bestselling Historical Romance Author Jess Michaels Amid all the lies and scandals that fuel Society’s gossip mill, one truth has stood out: House Rothcastle and House Windbury have always hated each other. Lady Ava Windbury prays the feud will someday end, to no avail. One dreadful night, her brother accidentally causes the death of Christian Rothcastle’s sister, a tragedy that leaves both men maimed. Consumed by grief, Christian makes a grim decision. He will kidnap Lady Ava so that her family will feel the pain of loss as keenly as he feels the loss of his own sister. But once he has Ava in his clutches, desire takes unexpected hold. Even more surprising, she willingly surrenders to his every sexual whim—after haggling over the terms of giving up her virginity. Too late, he realizes she is using her body for peace, not war. But just as their affair of revenge turns into an affair of the heart, the past rears its ugly head to take matters into its own hands… Length: Full Length Novel Heat Level: Naughty, naughty CW: Violent accident (on page), abuse (described) This book is the first book in The Pleasure Wars series.

From bestselling Historical Romance author Alexa Aston comes a stunning new Regency Historical Romance saga!Book One in the exciting new St. Clair series has arrived. A lady with a dark secret refuses to marry the man of her dreams in order to protect him... but will he let her?After returning to London from his Grand Tour, serious-minded Jeremy St. Clair, the Marquess of Sather, attends a ball and meets a luminescent beauty who draws him out of his shell. They share a searing kiss-her first-and though he never planned to wed, Jeremy desires to make this young woman his. But his life takes an unexpected turn when he leaves her that night. With his father's death, Jeremy becomes the new Duke of Everton, and learns the former duke has left the St. Clair family almost penniless. Jeremy spends five years restoring the family fortunes but yearning for the auburn-haired beauty who understood him like no other before. One night with her was all he needed to remember her forever.Lady Catherine Crawford has been inundated with offers of marriage and hasn't cared for any of her suitors. She longs for love, seeing how devoted her parents are to one another. When she meets Lord Sather, she believes they are meant to be together. Yet her world collapses that night in a horrific carriage accident, killing her mother and seriously injuring both Catherine and her father. She retreats to their country estate and, once healed, cares her father and mothers her younger sister, Leah. But she's never forgotten about Lord Sather... and their kiss.When Jeremy and Catherine meet years later, the sparks are still present-though Catherine has recently learned a dark secret about her past, making it impossible to wed Jeremy without ruining his reputation. Through a misunderstanding, the ton believes them to be engaged and she goes along with the engagement, hoping to find a way to break it.Will Catherine's secret be revealed-and will Jeremy accept her if it becomes public knowledge? Heartbreak is in their stars... or salvation.The St. Clairs series Books Two and Three are coming May 2019 and June 2019.Find the answer in bestselling author Alexa Aston's first book of The St. Clairs, Devoted to the Duke.Each book in The St. Clairs Trilogy is a standalone story that can be enjoyed out of order.Series Order: Book #1 Devoted to the DukeBook #2 Midnight with the MarquessBook #3 Embracing the Ea

Includes over 100 maps of the actions, engagements and battles of the entire Peninsular War. “Philip Guedalla wrote “The Duke” in 1931, when the exploits of the First Duke of Wellington were still generally known to his audience....In a brisk but witty narrative, Guedalla retraces the life and long career of Arthur Wesley, later Duke of Wellington. Wesley’s unpromising youth provides no foreshadowing of his future greatness...Guedalla rescues Wellington’s highly successful apprenticeship in arms in India from historical obscurity; only Jac Weller has covered that period better. Wellington’s successes in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo have been well-documented and Guedalla does not place undue emphasis on this portion of his career. Guedalla does carry the narrative forward into Wellington’s long career in government and in politics after Waterloo, where, despite long and faithful public service, he might fairly be said to have outlived his times. Wellington spent a military lifetime defeating the more rabid effects of the French Revolution; as a politician, he found himself often out of synch with the much more peaceful English Revolution that followed. It is Guedalla’s gift as an historian to place Wellington in the context of his times and especially of his social class as a member of the Anglo-Irish nobility. His extensive research into Wellington’s correspondence has produced a wealth of quotes that help provide a flavor of the man. Guedalla avoids the temptation to speculate; Wellington’s worlds and actions are allowed to speak for him. We come away with a sense of Wellington as a strict, disciplined, methodical, and confident military officer endowed with both an enormous amount of common sense about people and politics and with distinct pride and ambition about his own career. This book is highly recommended to students of the life of the Duke of Wellington.-D. S. Thurlow.

An authoritative account of the Duke lacrosse team rape case illuminates the ever-widening gap between America's rich and poor, and demonstrates how far the powerful will go to protect themselves.