Abigail Wendover, with her high-spirited intelligence and good looks, was a most sought-after young woman. But of all her high-placed suitors, there was none Abigail could love.

Abigail was kept busy when her pretty and naive niece, Fanny, fell head over heels in love with Stacy Calverleigh, a good-looking town-beau of shocking reputation and an acknowledged seductor. She was determined to prevent her high-spirited niece from becoming involved with the handsome fortune-hunter.

The arrival in Bath of Stacy's uncle seemed to indicate an ally, but Miles Calverleigh is the black sheep of the family. Miles Calverleigh had no regard for the polite conventions of Regency society. His cynicism, his morals, his manners appalled Abigail. He also turned out to be the most provoking creature Abigail had ever met - with a disconcerting ability to throw her into giggles at quite the wrong moment.

Will Abigail overcome Miles' indifference towards his nephew and help Abigail foil Stacy's plans?

In Alissa Nutting's novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student. Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom.

In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure. Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

Nunca a rendição foi tão doce. Numa noite quente de verão, a apenas algumas horas do seu casamento, a discreta Lady Jessica Sheffield testemunhou uma cena da qual nunca irá recuperar. Vê o jovem Alistair Caufield numa cena fiercely íntima com uma mulher muito mais velha. Chocada, mas estranhamente excitada, ela manteve silêncio sobre o que viu, e caminhou até ao altar como esperado. Mas, ao longo de anos de um casamento sereno e normal, a imagem de Caulfield continuou na sua imaginação, alimentando sonhos muito ilícitos...

Alistair fugiu da tentação da debutante recatada com o fogo da paixão nos olhos para as Índias Ocidentais. Enquanto comerciante bem-sucedido, tem pouco em comum com o jovem libertino que ela conhecia. Mas quando, sete anos depois, a recém-viúva Jessica sobe a bordo do seu navio para uma viagem até à Jamaica, os sete anos de prazeres negados são mantidos em xeque apenas por algumas camadas de seda... e pela certeza de que renderem-se irá consumir os dois...

Guy de Maupassant's scandalous tale of an opportunistic young man corrupted by the allure of power, Bel-Ami is translated with an introduction by Douglas Parmee in Penguin Classics. Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his admirers as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives - the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses, and wily financiers - and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end.

Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity, and humanity. Douglas Parmee's translation captures all the vigour and vitality of Maupassant's novel. His introduction explores the similarities between Bel-Ami and Maupassant himself and demonstrates the skill with which the author depicts his large cast of characters and the French society of the Third Republic.

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win.

This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able to judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward's introduction explodes myths about Laclos's own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context.

Twenty-five-year-old Venetia Lanyon's beauty is rivaled only by her sensibility. Intelligent and independent, her future seems safe and predictable. Lovely Venetia despairs of ever meeting the handsome hero of her romantic dreams but is nearly resigned to spinsterhood, thanks to the enormous amount of responsibility she inherited with a Yorkshire estate and an invalid but precocious brother, Aubrey.

She lives in comfortable seclusion in rural Yorkshire, never having been further than Harrogate, nor enjoyed the lackluster attentions of any but her two wearisomely persistent suitors. She cannot accept to marry the respectable but dull Edward Yardley - she will only marry for love.

Then her long-absent neighbor, thirty-eight-year-old Lord Jasper Damerel, returns home to Yorkshire. In one extraordinary encounter, she meets the infamous neighbor, known only by reputation - a gamester, a shocking rake, and a man of sadly unsteady character. Before she knows better, she finds friendship with a libertine whose way of life has scandalized the North Riding for years.

Lord Damerel finds Venetia to be the most truly engaging and wittily perverse female he has encountered in all his life and determined to woo and win her, he pursues her with a passionate abandon that is soon the talk of the ton. And after her encounter with the dashing, dangerous rake, Venetia's well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon a courtship with him that scandalizes and horrifies the whole community.

But Venetia has no intention of losing her heart to the rakish lord until she is sure that beneath his swashbuckling ways and shocking manners lies a tender heart belonging to her. And Lord Damerel would marry her in a heartbeat if he did not think it would ruin her. Then she discovers a shocking family secret that changes everything... It was therefore particularly provoking to find that on occasion, Lord Damerel could make up his mind to be idiotically noble...

Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I get everything - and everyone - we want. Snagging the latest Marc Jacobs bag or your best friend's boyfriend isn't always pretty, but it's always hot.

Enter the world of Gossip Girl - a world where everyone is gorgeous, everything is fabulous, and jealousy and betrayal are everywhere you look. It's springtime and our lives are really heating up. Everybody's into college, and it's obviously time to party - as if we hadn't been doing that already!

Now that B's finally lost her virginity to N, she can't wait to do it again (and again). But will B and N's love affair continue? And will B finally get into Yale? Or will N and S hook up and leave B alone in the city? Only time will tell, but one thing's for sure: love is in the air, and it smells a lot like Gucci Envy.

You know you love me,
gossip girl

Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary life until Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at St. George's, befriends her. But even as their relationship develops, so too does another: Sheba has begun an illicit affair with an underage male student.

When the scandal turns into a media circus, Barbara decides to write an account in her friend's defense—and ends up revealing not only Sheba's secrets, but also her own.

The Duke of Jervaulx was brilliant and dangerous. Considered dissolute, reckless, and extravagant, he was transparently referred to as the ‘D of J’ in scandal sheets, where he and his various exploits featured with frequency.

But sometimes the most womanising rake can be irresistible, and even his most casual attentions fascinated the sheltered Maddy Timms, quiet daughter of a simple mathematician.

The Moneychangers is a thrilling dive into the high-stakes world of banking. As the day begins at First Mercantile American Bank, the challenges are not just financial but deeply personal.

Inside these walls, secret million-dollar deals are made and manipulated. The stakes are high, with public scandals and private affairs interwoven into the daily grind.

It's a world where deals are sweetened with sex and ambition drives every decision. The men and women within these corridors play to win, each luxuriously unaware of the dangers that threaten to strip them of everything they live and die for.

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of late-eighteenth-century British aristocracy. This wonderfully readable biography tells the intimate story of Lady Georgiana Spencer, a woman who, for a time, was the undisputed leader of her society.

Georgiana, a great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, achieved immediate celebrity in 1774 by marrying the Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. Thrust into a world of wealth and power, she became the queen of fashionable society, admired by the Prince of Wales and a dear friend of Marie-Antoinette.

Not content with merely being a society hostess, Georgiana used her connections to enter politics, becoming more influential than many men holding office. Her public success hid a personal life filled with challenges, including a complicated relationship with her husband and her closest friend, leading to an uneasy ménage à trois.

Georgiana's life was marked by uncontrollable gambling, all-night drinking, drug taking, and love affairs with leading politicians. These aspects of her life provide a captivating insight into the era of the madness of King George III, the American and French revolutions, and the defeat of Napoleon.

A gifted historian, Amanda Foreman draws on extensive research to write colorfully and insightfully about Georgiana, whose beauty, flamboyance, and determination make her an astonishingly contemporary figure.