A Violent Desire for Joy

Ancient Korea, 1728. Swordsman Kim Ho, guard of King Yeong-jo of Joseon, is demoted and sent to work in Uigeumbu prison. When night falls, the prison...

During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Great, travels to Moscow to marry the dimwitted...

Oscar François de Jarjayes was born female, but her father insisted she be raised as a boy as he had no sons. She becomes the captain of the...

Prades, France, 1940s. The exiled Catalan cellist Pau Casals decides not to perform any more in public until the fall of the dictatorship that...

From Jane Austen’s novella, the beautiful and cunning Lady Susan Vernon visits the estate of her in-laws to wait out colorful rumors of her...

Scottish orphan David Balfour is betrayed by his wicked uncle Ebeneezer, who arranges for David to be kidnapped and sold into slavery so that he...

By a little bay near Marseille lies a picturesque villa owned by an old man. His three children have gathered by his side for his last days....

When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter...

In 1757, the second year of the Seven Years' War, Frederick II the Great stands at the gates of Prague. He has been trying to take the city for...

The time is the French Revolution; the place is the village of Travers, ensconsed in neutral Switzerland. Prussian aesthete Herman Beyer is on the...

In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy...