Ready, willing and eligible girl and boys parents arrange for an initial meeting. Both the boy and the girl are free to make decisions based on their own personal likes and dislikes. Since there is no dating or courtship involved, decisions are business-like and, hence, there are no emotional feelings that come in the way of tough decisions. It is completely decentralized and fits the 21st century business model.

"Jo Beverley strains the boundaries of political correctness . . . There is no denying Ms. Beverley is a master storyteller and perhaps because of this political incorrectness she delivers a powerfully fresh stage for her story." ~Tara A. Green Ruined through her vile brother's schemes, Eleanor Chivenham is offered rescue by marriage to a rake with an infamous French mistress. Eleanor accepts, determined to treat the arranged marriage with cool dignity. Then she meets Nicholas Delaney. Not only does he stir her senses, but the trouble and pain beneath his smooth exterior reaches her heart. Nicholas is indeed troubled. While serving his country by seducing secrets out of a French spy, he is persuaded to marry Eleanor to protect his family's honor. But such chivalry runs counter to his carefully wrought rogue image, and extends the life-threatening plots shadowing him to Eleanor. To assist, Nicholas re-assembles the Company of Rogues, a schoolboy group he started years before. But not even they can dampen Eleanor's fighting wit that is quickly unmasking their enemy and testing Nicholas' formidable will. From The Publisher: Author Jo Beverley is known for her consumate attention to historical detail that wisks the reader back in time to a near first-hand experience. Fans of Regency romance and historical British fiction set in the 19th century, as well as readers of Jess Michaels, Mary Balogh, Christi Caldwell, Stephanie Laurens, Madeline Hunter and Mary Jo Putney will want to read every book by Jo Beverley. Best Regency Novel, Romantic Times Bookrak Bestseller RITA, finalist "A splendid love story... a veritable feast of delight. Bravo!" ~Romantic Times

The Dying Sun tells the story of an empire at the end of a dynasty, a world on the verge of a new age. Priestesses of the Old Gods have escaped their enchanted prison and seek royal aid in releasing their masters. The High Priest of the Akhenic Temple, faithful to the One God, denies the existence of other gods and demands a holy inquisition to destroy the Pantheon Cu

Continue the thrilling second installment of the Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Series, a transmigration/time travel (isekai) romantic fantasy with a powerful heroine, badass hero warrior, arranged marriage, action and adventure, and kingdom-building by Alexia S. Praks. Join vivacious, modern-day, newly graduated scientist Quinn and her warrior husband Aldric in an impoverished, war-torn, medieval-like world of magic and monsters as they save lives, feed the populace delectable food, and build a kingdom! Now that they’ve moved into Norsewood Lodge, the only luxurious, modern buildings complex in this medieval-like, fantastical world that is Eseron, Quinn, her hunky husband Aldric, and the citizens are getting used to and loving their new living environment and lifestyle. Some go so far as to worship the very ground the lodge is on. While Quinn is off her feet assisting in rebuilding Norsewood and educating the people, with the aid of her sassy skill Vicky, a new discovery of deities and blessings comes into light, turning what has been passed down for centuries on its head. Mixed in with the excitement, Quinn is second-guessing where her relationship with Aldric stands. Their marriage is an arranged one, after all, and her fear of his indifferent feelings toward her grows as Aldric acts intimate one minute and distant the next. When Aldric’s brother Juan appears, along with news of hundreds of civilians being taken captive and enslaved in a mining dungeon, Quinn puts her relationship problems aside and embarks with Aldric and the Norsewood warriors on a rescue mission, one that unearths not only a dark, sinister plot to destroy Norsewood, but a behemoth beast of a dragon, too, one Aldric has a score to settle with. My Lord Saves the Citizens is the second book in Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Series. It is a romantic fantasy series featuring a vivacious heroine with a determination to change and improve the lives of civilians in a medieval-like, war-torn world with the use of her modern knowledge and her magic and a hunky hero hell-bent on protecting his land and people and claiming his wife’s love. This series contains romance, magic, kingdom building, and food and cooking. Oh, and enough steam to fog up the other world’s medieval-era glass window in later books as the story progresses. Note: A kingdom-building fantasy series involves the protagonist/s working on building and managing their own village, town, city, nation, or even empire and gathering citizens and subordinates. Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride series is published in novel-length (80-120K word) serialized books format and needs to be read in order. Each book has its own little arc. Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Books 1: A Girl in Another World 2: My Lord Saves the Citizens 3: My Lady Builds a Village 4: Title and Book Coming Soon

Continue the thrilling third installment of the Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Series, a transmigration/time travel (isekai) romantic fantasy with a powerful heroine, badass hero warrior, arranged marriage, action and adventure, and kingdom-building by Alexia S. Praks. Join Quinn, her husband Aldric, and the people of Norsewood in an impoverished, war-torn, medieval-like world of magic and monsters as they continue to save lives, feed the populace delectable food, and build a kingdom in the process! Having saved the refugees from the mining dungeon and inviting them into Norsewood, Quinn and her hunky warrior husband Aldric now concentrate on the rebuilding of their community and land. Naturally, with Quinn, no projects she touches are ever considered modest. Just as things are going smoothly, with Christmas celebrations and Quinn and Aldric revealing their love for one another, the elf and dwarf refugees plead for aid to save their famishing nations. Now, Quinn, Aldric, and the people of Norsewood not only have to come up with a method to feed hundreds of thousands of starving elves and dwarves, but protect their land and people from an unanticipated attack, too. My Lady Builds a Village is the third book in Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Series. It is a romantic fantasy series featuring a vivacious heroine with a determination to change and improve the lives of civilians in a medieval-like, war-torn world with the use of her modern knowledge and her magic and a hunky hero hell-bent on protecting his land and people and claiming his wife’s love. This series contains romance, magic, kingdom building, and food and cooking. Oh, and enough steam to fog up the other world’s medieval-era glass window in this book, and later, as the story progresses. Note: A kingdom-building fantasy series involves the protagonist/s working on building and managing their own village, town, city, nation, or even empire and gathering citizens and subordinates. Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride series is published in novel-length (80-120K word) serialized books format and needs to be read in order. Each book has its own little arc. Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Books 1: A Girl in Another World 2: My Lord Saves the Citizens 3: My Lady Builds a Village 4: Title and Book Coming Soon

Prosperity magic can be generated with a gem tree. But what about magic that enables people to create a better life for themselves — a lifestyle of comfort, wealth, happiness, and good fortune - by manipulating spatial and time energy patterns? Think of this “magic” as energy, life force or chi that mutates and transforms, creating extraordinary changes both within individuals and in the environment around them. Imagine being able to capture, store, accumulate, and manipulate this chi into powerful, luminous energy that illuminates and improves every aspect of life. The magic that makes this happen — Feng Shui magic — is part of a wider system of Taoist practice, which I like to call “the science of the sages.” Whilst the philosophical underpinnings of the Tao can sometimes seem lofty or profound, the techniques of Feng Shui are very specific and easier to apply.

From Paul Verhoeven’s The Cold Heart in 1950 to Konrad Petzold’s The Story of the Goose Princess and Her Loyal Horse Falada in 1989, East Germany’s state-sponsored film company, DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft), produced over forty feature-length, live-action fairy-tale films based on nineteenth-century folk and literary tales. While many of these films were popular successes and paved the way for the studio’s other films to enter the global market, DEFA’s fairy-tale corpus has not been studied in its entirety. In The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films, Qinna Shen fills this gap by analyzing the films on thematic and formal levels and examining their embedded agendas in relation to the cultural politics of the German Democratic Republic. In five chapters, Shen compares the films with earlier print versions of the same stories and analyzes revisions made in DEFA’s film adaptations. She also distinguishes the DEFA fairy-tale films from National Socialist, West German, and Disney adaptations of the same tales. Her archival work reconstitutes the cultural-historical context in which films were produced and received, and incorporates the films into the larger narrative of DEFA. For the first time, the banned DEFA fairy-tale comedy, The Robe (1961/1991), is discussed in depth. The book’s title The Politics of Magic is not intended to suggest that DEFA fairy-tale films were merely mouthpieces of official ideology and propaganda. On the contrary, Shen shows that the films run the gamut from politically dogmatic to implicitly subversive, from kitschy to experimental. She argues that the fairy-tale cloak permitted them to convey ideology in a subtle, indirect manner that allowed viewers to forget Cold War politics for a while and to delve into a world of magic where politics took on an allegorical form. The fact that some DEFA fairy-tale films developed an international audience (particularly The Story of Little Mook and Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella) not only attests to these films’ universal appeal but also to the surprising marketability of this branch of GDR cinema and its impact beyond the GDR’s own narrow temporal and geographic boundaries. Shen’s study will be significant reading for teachers and students of folklore studies and for scholars of German, Eastern European, cultural, film, media, and gender studies.