Bandon Public Library

Walter Pater (1839-1894) attained a B.A. degree in Classics from Queen's College, Oxford, followed soon after by a M.A. degree from Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was made a Fellow in 1865. That same year Pater toured Italy, where he discovered what would become a lifelong passion for masters of the Italian Renaissance like Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, among many others. In 1877 he published "The Renaissance: Studies in...

A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. 
From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history,...

In this extraordinarily rich and engaging book, John Hale has painted, on a grand canvas, what he calls "an investigative impression" of one of the highest points of European civilization: the flourishing, between 1450 and 1620, of the period we have come to call the Renaissance. It was an age that, wrote Marsilio Ficino in 1492, "has like a golden age restored to light the liberal arts which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, painting, sculpture,...

"A novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici"-- Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia...

It is 1877, when a heartbreaking tragedy leaves Eleanora Cohen marooned in Istanbul during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. But young Eleonora, clever and engaging beyond her years, soon catches the attention of the Sultan's court

"Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing. Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn't one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she's the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they're long-stemmed roses, she's a dandelion: an adorable bloom that's actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that...

Falsely accused of plotting to overthrow King Claudio, scholarly Mangus the magician, along with his street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, face deadly consequences unless they can track down the real traitor by the stroke of midnight

“From Torquemada to Guantánamo and beyond, Cullen Murphy finds the ‘inquisitorial impulse’ alive, and only too well, in our world” (Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money).
 
Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews—and with burning at the stake—its...