The Tigress of Forlì

In this thrill-a-minute, jaw-dropping biography of Caterina Sforza (1463–1509), female ruler of the province of Forlì, Elizabeth Lev puts us in the shoes of a Renaissance woman wielding unprecedented power. Following Sforza from her youth in the Milanese court through assassination-plagued marriages and a deadly rivalry with the Borgias, Lev charts a bloody, survivalist career for her heroine that will both appall and inspire.

June 18: George Orwell's "As One Non-Combatant to Another" was published on this day in 1943. Orwell's poem arguing against pacifism quotes from Churchill's "finest hour" speech, delivered to Parliament and the nation on this day in…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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