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|  | | Napoleon's Rosebud
You are the high spirited 19-year-old daughter of a penniless widow, born and brought up on an isolated, windswept South Atlantic island, a girl with virtually no prospects, when out of the blue the most famous man on earth falls into your lap.
strong>span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;
font-weight:normal;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Still smarting from his defeat at Waterloo, still the hero of Liberals everywhere, Napoleon is exiled to tiny Saint Helena because it is the remotest and most easily defended island in the British Empire. But far from being broken by defeat, Napoleon’s fertile imagination seethes with escape schemes. He meets you on his first evening on the island and instantly knows he has found what he is looking for: his path to freedom./span>/strong>
p class="MsoNormal"> /p | |  | | The Divine Madness
A discussion of the mad/genius paradox which focuses on major poets of the Romantic era.
span style="font-size: 14pt; ">Madness and genius have been linked since classical Greek times. This new contribution focuses on bipolar disorder in a selection of great Romantic poets. It explains that while depression dries up inspiration and mania tends to cause overblown, chaotic productions, the condition in between these extremes, called hypomania, promotes periods of brilliant creativity./span>
p class="MsoNormal">span style="font-size:14.0pt">Specially featured are Romantic poets Coleridge, Poe and William Blake.o:p>/o:p>/span>
| |  | | The Nero Prediction
Was Nero the Antichrist who fiddled while Rome burned or an artistic genius pushed into being Caesar? In an age when Rome ruled the world and astrologers ruled Rome, Nero secretary battles the prediction that he will murder the musical messiah he adores.
span style="line-height: 150%">It is 48 AD and Epaphroditus, a library slave, is shipped off to Agrippina, the scheming niece of the emperor Claudius. She is convinced that the scribe is destined to help her raise her son, the future emperor Nero, to the throne of the Caesars./span>
p style="line-height: 150%" class="a">What Agrippina doesn’t tell the young slave is that Nero is foredoomed to murder his mother and that Epaphroditus's secret destiny is to assassinate her son. Agrippina's attempt to use Epaphroditus to kill Nero at what she believes is the fated time backf |
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