NCW Libraries

In prison, accused of murder, Tully Truegood begins to write her life story. A story that takes her from a young girl in the backstreets of 18th century London to her stepmother Queenie's Fairy House--a place where decadent excess is a must... Trained by Queenie to become a courtesan, and by Mr. Crease--a magician who sees that Tully holds similar special powers to his own--Tully soon becomes the talk of the town. But as Tully goes on a journey of...

In 1917, deep in the snowy mountains of occupied Korea, an impoverished local hunter on the brink of starvation saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their fates are connected, and from this encounter unfolds a saga that spans half a century. In the aftermath, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver's courtesan school, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status....

"When Lei, seventeen, is stolen from her home to become one of nine Paper Girls, the Demon King's concubines, she proves to be more fire than paper." -- Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honor they could hope for... and the most cruel. But this year, there's a ninth girl... and she's made of fire. Lei is a member of the lowest and most oppressed class in Ikhara. She's forced to go with...

Violet Minturn, a half-Chinese/half-American courtesan who deals in seduction and illusion in Shanghai, struggles to find her place in the world, while her mother, Lucia, tries to make sense of the choices she has made and the men who have shaped her.

The astonishing and unknown story of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who inspired Dumas's novel and play La dame aux camélias, Verdi's opera La Traviata, George Cukor's film Camille, and Frederick Ashton's ballet Marguerite and Armand. Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Greta Garbo, Isabelle Huppert, Maria Callas, Anna Netrebko, and Margot Fonteyn are just a few of the actors, singers, and dancers who have portrayed her. Drawing on new research, Julie...

Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion,...

Yukari Kobayakawa, an accomplished author at the age of 17, writes with amazingly accurate details about historical Japan. It turns out he has the ability to travel back in time... to his past life as a renowned courtesan in the Edo period! As he goes back and forth between the past and present, he unravels the karmic relationship he has with his beautiful classmate Mahoro Tachibana... Satomi Katsuhiko enters Yukari's life when he needs a new housekeeper,...

"He had a perfectly orderly life. William, the sixth Duke of Pelham, enjoys his punctual, securely structured life. Orderly and predictable-- that's the way he likes it. But he's in the public eye, and the scandal sheets will make up anything to sell papers. When the gossips link him to Juliette, one of the most beautiful and celebrated courtesans in London, chaos doesn't begin to describe what happens next. Until she came along. Juliette is nicknamed...

Told from their alternating viewpoints, as battle lines are drawn between the powerful Hanno clan and the Demon King of Ikhara, the warrior Wren fights to find Lei, who is trying to assist the rebellion even though she is the King's prisoner.

A woman confined by her Puritan upbringing finds a new life in London as a courtesan.