Lolah Burford
Personal Information
Description
Burford was the daughter of Joseph Michael Egan and Mae Rene Flanary. She was educated at Bryn Mawr (Class of 1951), and SMU Graduate School (Class of 1954). She served as a teacher at the Norfleet School of Music and Individual Studies in New York, and was an instructor in the SMU English department after receiving her master's degree. She married poet William Skell Burford, who co-founded the literary magazine The Medusa. She died in Tarrant, Texas in 2002.
Books
Alyx
They were enslaved in a place where lust knew no bounds-and only love was forbidden... They were two white slaves thrown together in the darkness of the breeding hut. She, Alyx de Vere, a virginal, sixteen-year-old beauty carried off to nightmare captivity on a Caribbean sugar plantation. He, Simon, handsome, young, once heir to a noble title. He felt no desire for this anonymous woman who was forced upon him. And she knew only fearful hatred for this stranger who was about to violate her youthful innocence. But as night after night of tremulous, fevered mating passed, something forbidden grew between these two desire-damned lovers-a rapturous passion that drove them to dare any peril to free each other from this savage world of bondage and brutal submission. And it was then that Alyx and Simon swore that no power-even death itself-would ever overcome their eternal bond of flaming, all-conquering love...
Seacage
Suddenly he knew where he was. He was in the cage. He was out in the sea, on a pinnacle of rock, and he was in the cage. His spirit screamed once, in sudden agony, and then was quiet. My God. It was the end. Seacage is a tempestuous tale of savagery and lust, of revenge and repentance. Lolah Burford takes us back in time to the beginning of the Christian era where love and hate knew no boundaries. Where passions raged beyond the laws of man. The Mediterranean kingdom where a young king, deposed and blinded, is left to die in a bronze cage on a rocky isle in the slaty sea. He knows not why he is imprisoned. He remembers little except having been brought there, thrust into the cage through fire, and left to rot. There is no food, no water, no shelter, no escape. It is a place of death. Thoughts come to him from out of the past, from another time. He remembers, as a boy, seeing the cage at a great distance, its large body swaying violently, a reminder of the brutality of man. He was told it was death to go near, not death by law, but that the waters near the rock jutting from the sea were dangerous, full of eddies, and whirlpools that changed direction without warning, sucking boats and men down into their depths, never to be returned. Some said the cage was given by the gods themselves, for the punishment of fallen kings. The facts were not known, only guessed at. He wept at his fate. So harsh a sentence passed on one so young and untried in life. Yet, suddenly, the course of his life changes. Three voices speak to his conscience, his God, and the woman Anita. Is she the agent of his destruction or his only hope of salvation? Rape, murder, and unspeakable tortures mount to a shattering climax as the two lovers triumph over the bronze seacage. Together they live and love passionately. Theirs is a story for all time
Vice avenged
In 18th century England young men gathered in private clubs to devise mischievous and exciting schemes to while away their idle hours. So it was with Bysshe, the young Marquis of Gore and his friends. They were bored, very bored. What they wanted was a delicious new game: a shocking, sensational, dangerously different way to spice up their long days. And together they thought up an ingenious idea. One of them would ravish a virgin of good family, an innocent maiden to be chosen by lot. Only a game they said. And so it was until the plan backfired. Suddenly the game had become a sadistic round of violence and vengeance.
The vision of Stephen
We first meet Stephen as he is riding through a forest in Northumbria in A.D. 674. Nearly ambushed in a trap set by King Aella, who is at war with Stephen's father, the King of Deira, he is saved by Aella's son. The two princes feel a curious and instant friendship - but as a result, Stephen is eventually ordered by his father to the torture chamber in an attempt to discover what information or treachery has passed between them. As he slips into merciful unconsciousness on the rack we are transported to the year 1822, into the home of twelve year-old Margery and her brother Peter, where Margery is exclaiming : "There is a boy in the grate behind the pianoforte. A boy. Mama, and he is as real as real." It is Stephen, still in his seventh-century garb. The whole family, particularly young Margery, takes him into their hearts, and he becomes an integral part of their lives. But he does keep disappearing for long intervals, followed by sudden reappearances. Like a haunting fugue in music, the two eras meet and blend and separate. Throughout, the different customs, life styles, beliefs, the surrounding country- side are vividly portrayed. All the people involved in the plot - and there is a plot, and a most suspenseful one - become very real and very fascinating to the reader. The Vision of Stephen is quite unlike any recent novel: probably its nearest counterpart is T. H. White's The Once and Future King. If you would like to be transported. however briefly, from our own troublous times, this enchanting novel offers a dazzling voyage into another and magical world.
Edward, Edward
This is a haunting tale of a strange romance between a worldly and dissolute man, James Noel Holland, Earl of Tyne, and the golden-haired young Edward, his ward--or perhaps his son. Homosexuality, sadomasochism, and incest are elements in their relationship--and so are affection, love, and the saving quality of grace.
MacLyon
When the drunken Diarmid MacLyon abducts and forcibly marries the young Mary Elisabeth Grant, the impulsive act has consequences that neither could foresee. Disowned by his father, his homestead and new wife savaged by His Majesty's troops in the retaliation after the Battle of Culloden Moor, MacLyon is captured and shipped off to indenture in the colonies. While his proud Highlander character refuses to bend his back for another man, Mary undergoes her own degrading odyssey to free the man who ruined her innocence and with whom she has fallen in love.
