In The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O'Farrell, the National Book Award-winning author of Hamnet, tells the immersive and poignant untold story of Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici, the woman who inspired Robert Browning's famous poem "My Last Duchess."
At the age of 15 in 1560, Lucrezia must leave her home in Florence, Italy, to marry Alfonso II d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara. Alfonso, originally engaged to marry Lucrezia's sister, who had died not long before, is desperate for an heir to consolidate his power. He appears considerate and patient at first, but during the first year of their marriage, Lucrezia discovers that a much different man lurks beneath his calm exterior.
O'Farrell paints a startlingly intimate portrait of one woman whose rebellious spirit must be confined to the wild images she hides in her landscape paintings. And her means of surviving her union to Alfonso speaks to the uncanny power dynamics of marriage more broadly.
"An utterly absorbing and dazzling novel about the stories we tell to stay alive and the secrets we keep to protect ourselves." --Nancy Jooyoun Kim, NYT Bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee. A young...
Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the...
The highly anticipated debut cookbook from the creator of The Mediterranean Dish website, with more than 120 recipes for bright and flavorful Mediterranean diet-inspired meals.
"I want to cook everything in this book!...
Brevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritize essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in...
Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time--war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race--in a way that stimulates a...
The #1 national bestselling, award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War--a city fizzing with money, glamour, and corruption--in this spellbinding tale of seduction...
Dreams are today's answers for tomorrow's questions.
11-year-old Kofi Offin dreams of water. Its mysterious, immersive quality. The rich, earthy scent of the current. The clearness, its urgent whisper that beckons with...
For fans of Anthony Marra and Lauren Beukes, #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth tells the story of a woman's desperate search for a missing girl after the collapse of the oppressive dystopian regime--and the dark secrets...
