Search results for ""Author Francesca Flores""

Meet Aina Solís. Pulled off the streets when she was twelve years old, Aina was trained to become one of the most powerful and dangerous assassins in Sumerand, a kingdom founded by immigrants, built by magic, and still reeling from an industrial revolution that’s led to all-out civil war. Fearless and willing to risk everything - and with nothing left to lose - Aina is ready to leave her wretched past behind and accept a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to kill a wealthy industrialist named Kouta. But this career-defining move won't come easy. She will have to act against her boss Kohl, who doesn't tolerate his assassins working against him. What will be the price for her betrayal? Meanwhile, the closer Aina gets to her target, the more she craves an answer to the questions an assassin is never meant to ask: Who wants Kouta dead? And why was Aina chosen for this mission? Now, in a city full of dark forces and hidden agendas, old rivalries and a whole new world of enemies, it's up to Aina to unravel a conspiracy that could rewrite Sumerand's history and her own future. Is it too late to save her city - and herself? Is courage born or is it bred? And what must Aina sacrifice for a second chance to begin a better, brighter life?

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Ava and Kaye used to be best friends. Until one night two years ago, vampires broke through the magical barrier protecting their town, and in the ensuing attack, Kaye’s mother was killed, and Ava was turned into a vampire. Since then, Ava has been trapped in her house. Her mother needs her: Ava still has her witch powers, and Eugenia must take them in order hide that she’s a vampire as well. Desperate to escape her confinement, Ava needs to reach the vampires that live in the forest and to stop her mother’s plans for the town. When there is another attack, she sees her opportunity and escapes. Kaye, now at the end of her training as a Flame witch, is ready to fulfil her duty of killing any vampires that threaten the town, including Ava. On the night that Ava escapes, Kaye follows her and convinces her to travel together into the forest, while secretly planning to turn her in. Ava agrees, hoping to rekindle their old friendship, and the romantic feelings she'd started to have for Kaye before that terrible night. But with monstrous trees that devour humans whole, vampires who attack from above, and Ava’s stepfather tracking her, the woods are full of danger. As they travel deeper into the forest, Kaye questions everything she thought she knew. The two are each other's greatest threat—and also their only hope, if they want to make it through the forest unscathed.

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Vasari famously wrote that Giotto "recovered the true method of painting, which had been lost for many years before him," and indeed, he is traditionally considered a founder of the Italian Renaissance. Producing a series of commissioned works for the church and upper classes in his native Tuscany and surrounding regions, Giotto changed the course of European art by breaking away from the rigid, stereotyped figures of the Byzantine and medieval traditions. His innovation was to give his characters natural movement and expression. His great fresco cycles, such as the lives of the Virgin and Christ in the Scrovegni (or Arena) Chapel, Padua, are populated with realistic depictions of three-dimensional figures; secondary characters, both comic and tragic, display the range of the painter's wit and invention. And Giotto's treatment of perspective was just as revolutionary as his approach to the human form: the dramatic power of his scenes is heightened by the convincing illusionistic spaces in which he places them.In this authoritative survey of Giotto's life and work, Francesca Flores d'Arcais draws on an impressive range of sources, from 14th-century documents to the most recent art-historical investigations. Her research leads her to important reattributions of Giottesque paintings and to new conclusions regarding the execution and dating of both famous and lesser-known works. In this second edition of her study, d'Arcais also discusses the earthquake of September 26, 1997, that damaged the frescoes of the Upper Basilica of San Francisco in Assisi, some of which are attributed to the young Giotto; she explains not only the extent of the damage, but also the art-historical insights that emerged from the subsequent restoration effort. More than three hundred illustrations, most in full colour and some on double gatefold pages, reproduce all of Giotto's important frescoes in exquisite detail, as well as his moving crucifixes and jewel-like polyptychs. These splendid images and d'Arcais's insightful text, now, for the first time, in an affordable paperback edition, make this the definitive monograph on the greatest of trecento masters.

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