The Mediterranean: An Anthology

Harlequin Presents® offers you another chance to enjoy these sensational stories set in the majestic Mediterranean from Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Romance Authors Penny Jordan and Carole Mortimer. Passion and the Prince by Penny Jordan

Just who is Lily Wrightington—cynical fashion photographer or studious art historian? Prince Marco di Lucchesi can't hide his haughty disdain for this Englishwoman—or his strong attraction to her!

A Stormy Spanish Summer by Penny Jordan

The last time Vidal saw Fliss, he hated and wanted her with equal measure. Now, as the truth about Fliss comes flooding out, and the power of their stormy attraction takes hold, can Vidal admit how wrong he's been about her?

The Infamous Italian’s Secret Baby by Carole Mortimer

Gabriel Danti was renowned for his prowess in the bedroom—and Bella Scott was unable to resist the temptation of the night he was offering. Bella never thought she'd see Gabriel again so has never told him that he has a son!

Bedded for the Spaniard’s Pleasure by Carole Mortimer

Wealthy, powerful and handsome, Rafe Montero has it all. All except the one thing he really wants: fiery Cairo Vaughn, the woman who abruptly ended their short but intensely passionate affair years before. Now Rafe is determined to have Cairo once more!

The Mediterranean is a liquid road connecting places and people. Ships, words and stories travel on its waves. Sometimes fantastic creatures, hidden in the hold. The Mediterranean speaks many languages; some of them we don’t recognize anymore. They are ancient, but never really dead. This speculative fiction anthology collects twenty-four pieces of fiction and poetry, new and old, and some things that are in between, because we don’t believe in boundaries. It gathers Mediterranean stories with a horror twist and horror stories with a Mediterranean flavour—caring sea monsters, still dripping and briny; brave mermaids, merciless ghosts and bizarre creatures—with snippets in nine different languages (all translated for English-readers) and many different styles.

The Mediterranean basin provides one of the key “origins of civilizations” foundations in literature and is the most familiar to most Western region readers. Ancient Mediterranean Man Love is a ten-story compendium, two of the stories never before published, of author habu’s writings over that last dozen years of ancient Mediterranean short stories and novella epics, primarily dealing with the scheming of royals for position, power, and homoerotic sexual satisfaction. Some of the previously published works provided here were originally separately published under the habu pen name of Dirk Hessian. The anthology circles the men on the rim of the Mediterranean Sea from Greek to Phoenician and Assyrian to Egyptian, and finally, to Spanish environs, most with references to the island of Cyprus, where habu lived, worked, and wrote for several years.
The anthology spins out in three sections, unrolling in time and location, starting with two epics of mystical early-Greek state time and locale and a side trip to a parallel-time pre-Pharaonic mythical Egyptian kingdom. The second section, which features different slices of the same setting, moves to the Crusader period in what is now Syria. The third section rounds off the anthology’s trip around the Mediterranean in Spain and the sixteenth-century Inquisition period. Although habu has written many stories set in Italy, even in an historical period, he has no ancient Italian stories to include in this anthology.