Historical Fiction

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books....

The second novel in Wilbur Smith's The Courtneys series, The Sound of Thunder is a powerful story of family tragedy set against the backdrop of the ravages of the Second Boer War....

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist....

To the outside world, Electra D’Aplièse seems to be the woman with everything: as one of the world’s top models, she is beautiful, rich and famous....

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, Lonesome Dove, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America....

It's 1863, and Melbourne is transitioning from a fledgling colony to a thriving, gold-fuelled metropolis. But behind its shiny new façade, the real Melbourne can be found in the notorious red-light district of Little Lon, full of brothels where rich and poor alike can revel all night.

Responsible, practical Miss Hermione Rogers, has been crafting stories as the notorious Mr. Michael Michaelmas and selling them for a meager wage to support her siblings....

Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job.

Sir James Harrison was one of the greatest actors of his generation. But, when he passes away at the age of ninety-five, he leaves behind more than just a heartbroken family. He leaves a secret so shocking, so devastating that it could rock the English establishment to its very core . . .

Before the Swallows Come Back is a story of love, found family, and redemption that will break your heart and have it soaring time and time again as you sit on the edge of your seat desperately hoping.

The Duke of Ainswood, Vere Mallory - the last of the infamous Mallory hellions - lives a charmed life: he's rich, titled, and exceedingly handsome....

One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But all is not as it seems and Anna soon finds herself at the heart of a mystery that threatens her very way of life.

It is the 1870s, and twin brothers Sean and Garrick Courtney are born into the wilds of Natal. They could not be more different, and fate, war and the jealous schemes of a woman are to drive them even further apart....

Erin O'Byrne returns to Ceann Mara, her family's remote property on the Darling River, seeking peace after a painful marital breakup. Camping by the tranquil billabong, she hopes the solitude of the Australian bush will help her heal.

Ikey Solomon's favorite saying is also his way of doing business....

In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family....

They leave as brothers. They must return as men. Famed sailor Hal Courtney is now a man of land and family. But when the King orders him to sail to Madagascar, he must travel with his three younger sons on a journey that will shape the young men forever....

After Jimmy's shocking departure, Nellie Castle is feeling bereft. And with Rodney being elusive, she's determined to do all she can to help her youngest son Bert get back on his feet following the terrible injuries he sustained in the bombing.

Brutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of 15 in Hobart Town....

Here is the story of two families, branches of the Solomons, transported to an alien land. Both eventually grow rich and powerful....

Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929.

Centaine de Thiry Courtney has not only survived but thrived. A successful woman with two sons of her own: Shasa Courtney, the Courtney heir, and Manfred de la Rey, Shasa's half brother, her secret child raised solely by his father....

One of the greatest fighter pilots of the Great War, Michael Courtney is saved by the French noblewoman Centaine de Thiry when he crashes near her home....

An irresistible collection of sparkling stories featuring John Mortimer's beloved comic creation: Horace Rumpole is the most erudite, astute, and seldom defeated of barristers in the annals of the Old Bailey....

Paris, 1943. The scent of fresh baguettes hangs in the air as Coralie unbolts the door to her bakery with trembling fingers.

On the outskirts of London sits a seemingly innocuous institution with a secretive aim—train young women to distract, disrupt, and discredit the patriarchy. Outraged by a powerful politician’s systematic attack on women’s rights, the Academy summons its brightest—and most bitter—pupil to infiltrate the odious man’s inner circle. A deal is struck: bring down the viscount, and Miss Euphemia Flite will finally earn her freedom.

Riding into the arena under the furling blazon of the blue falcon, Sir Conan de Corbney accepts a token from the young beauty, Lady Chandra, sparking a romance foretold long ago. That is, unless Conan’s mother can help it. Colluding with her son’s rival, Sir Tedric, Lady Udele secretly arranges a more lucrative marriage for her son and weds him to Edwina—Chandra’s older sister—while Sir Tedric claims the fiery Chandra for himself.

Bernadette Swift, a young copyeditor at Lenox & Park Publishing, is determined to become the first female CEO in the publishing industry. But first she needs to take the next step up that ladder with a promotion that her boorish and sexist boss wants to thwart. Seeking a base of support, Bernadette joins a feminist women's book club at the New York Public Library, and soon, she's inspiring her fellow members to challenge the male gatekeepers and decades of ingrained sexism in their workplaces and pursue their personal and professional dreams.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin.

Half-sister to Emperor Honorius, unmarried and powerless, twenty-year-old Galla Placidia watches from the shadows as imperial policies are made and unmade. Her plans to gain power and influence are halted when the city is besieged and captured by a vast army led by Alaric the Visigoth. Taken hostage, travelling out of Italy, Galla Placidia falls in love and marries a barbarian king. At a time when Rome's power is fast dwindling, its authority diminishing year upon year, she embarks on a dangerous and remarkable journey towards the imperial throne.

New York City, 1929. Young Theo Sterling’s world begins to unravel as the Great Depression exerts its icy grip. He finds it hard to relate to his parents: His father, a Jewish self-made businessman, refuses to give up on the American dream, and his mother, a refugee from religious persecution in Mexico, holds fast to her Catholic faith. When disaster strikes the family, Theo must learn who he is.

San Francisco, 1866: una monja irlandesa, embarazada y abandonada por un aristócrata chileno tras una apasionada relación, da a luz a una niña a la que llama Emilia del Valle. Criada por su cariñoso padrastro, Emilia se convertirá en una joven brillante de gran personalidad, autónoma e independiente, que desafiará las normas sociales de su tiempo para profesar su verdadera pasión y vocación: la escritura.

Elizabeth finds she cannot reconcile herself to Charlotte aligning herself with a man such as William Collins, so she refuses the invitation to Hunsford. Instead, she goes on holiday to Brighton with the Gardiners. The family takes a summer holiday each year, and either Elizabeth or Jane joins them. Due to her broken heart, Jane, whose turn it was, demurs and asks Lizzy to go in her stead.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter’s family, Rhys Kinnick snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched his conspiracy theorist son-in-law. Horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the country and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, off the grid and with no one around—except a pack of hungry raccoons. Now, seven years later, Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep.

England, 1940: When seventeen-year-old John Sharratt’s life is shattered by a single, devastating bomb dropped by the Luftwaffe, he is thrust into a world of loss and longing. With his family gone and his heart heavy, John’s conscription into the army offers a refuge and a new beginning, even in the face of turmoil. As he dons the battledress of a British soldier at Seaforth Barracks, John embarks on an intense journey of transformation.

Sitting bolt upright, Ella rubs at her eyes and concentrates on the music. Is she dreaming? She’d fallen for Luka’s voice the first time she heard him singing on the street corner near her house, with his kind smile and joyous laugh. He was her first love, and the pain of being torn apart still slices at her. He’s alive. But even as hope swells in Ella’s heart, terror threatens to swallow it. Luka is Jewish. If he’s here, he’s in grave danger—even more than Ella faces for sneaking into the ghetto to see him back in Warsaw… But she will never regret it.

The isolated Monkshill Park boarding school seems a world away from the violence that has engulfed Europe. Yet its eerie ground have witnessed a murder. Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a checkered past, disappeared during the holidays. The teachers and girls assume she has left the school, but the truth is quite different. Her body is lying at the bottom of the Maiden’s Leap, along the dangerous and overgrown Gothic Walk. Annabel’s ghost is trapped at Monkshill, unable to move on whilst the mystery of hear death remains unsolved.

An abused woman. A fierce Highlander. Is he strong enough to battle the demons threatening to destroy her? Madeline MacDonald has been a victim of her stepbrother's cruelty ever since her parents' death in a fire two years ago. Forced into a betrothal to a man she hates, her only way out is to escape to a convent.

The war is nearly over, but the wounds are still fresh, and for​ the picturesque village of Larkwhistle in the New Forest, it’s a time of​ great change and great sorrow.  Jill Metcalfe receives the news of her brother Henry’s death from his friend, US Army Officer Jack Stafford.  Henry had been on a mission in France and had discovered some vital information, but it was information he was unable to give to Jack before he was killed at the rendezvous point.   Jack has come to the village in the hopes that Henry’s cryptic last note will lead to a clue to the traitor he was searching for.

Sarah Willis longs to free herself from the expectations of a privileged upbringing, while Winston Keller can't afford the luxury of a dream. Despite their differences, the pair are drawn together in a whirlwind romance that defies the boundaries of class. But when a dark family secret pulls the young lovers apart, and WWII plunges the world into chaos, it seems impossible they will ever find their way back to each other—or even hold onto the dream of what might have been.

Elfreda Marsden has finally made a major discovery—an ancient amulet proving the Viking army camped on her family’s estate. Too bad her nemesis is back from London, freshly exiled after a scandal and ready to wreak havoc on her life. Georgie Redmayne is everything Elfreda isn’t—charming, popular, carefree, distractingly attractive, and bored to death by the countryside. When the two collide (literally), the amulet is lost, and with it, Elfreda’s big chance to lead a proper excavation.

Two young Lakota boys, ages eleven and six, huddle in a boxcar hurtling through the prairie night as they run from a government agent sent to take them to an Indian boarding school. But what begins as a pursuit soon becomes a complex human drama of intersecting lives as the boys make their way across the vast Dakota plains to the pipestone quarries of western Minnesota to replace their great-grandfather’s channunpa, or sacred pipe, that was broken by the government agent.

The search for his missing son takes Joseph Radcliffe from the streets of Dublin, smouldering with rebellion, to the trackless veld of South Africa and the bloody brutality of the Anglo-Boer War. As a former cavalryman in the US army, Radcliffe is no stranger to war, but 800 miles north of Cape Town, under fire from Boer commandos and distrusted by the British forces, he will find his survival skills tested to the hilt. The Last Horseman is an epic tale of heroism and treachery, love and loyalty, set against the backdrop of a conflict that shook an empire to its core.

Fannerl führt als Kaufmannstochter in Innsbruck 1881 ein privilegiertes Leben. Bald will sie den jungen Johann heiraten. Doch dann stirbt überraschend ihr Vater und ihr Leben gerät aus den Fugen, denn Fannerls Mutter will rasch wieder heiraten. Der neue Mann stellt eine Bedingung: Er ist nur zur Ehe bereit, wenn Fannerl die Familie verlässt. Wegen ihrer hellen Haare und Haut glaubt der Stiefvater, dass das Mädchen ihm Unglück bringt. Die Mutter schickt Fannerl zur Wäscherin Franza ins Sellraintal.

Book 1: Recalled to Life: A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie, whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Dickens' best-known work of historical fiction, A Tale of Two Cities is regularly cited as the best-selling novel of all time.

Aye, I stole a goblet. A magical one. From a witch. In my defense, I returned it. I just… took too long. I was trying to save myself from a loveless marriage, not doom my future. But witches don’t take kindly to thievery that cost them dearly. She granted my wish—then twisted it into a curse. Now I’m thrice wed, never for love. Men want me for my sight, not my heart. And when they don’t heed my visions, they die. I've been taken again, this time by Colin bloody MacDonald. A brute. A Highland warlord. My father’s greatest enemy. He says he’s not like the others.

The queen bee of the fictional village of Riseholme, Mrs. Emmeline ‘Lucia’ Lucas is a snobbish yet oddly charming woman who prides herself on being the cultural and intellectual leader of her community. She dabbles in art, plants Shakespeare-themed flower arrangements in her garden and uses fake Italian phrases to maintain her social standing. Trouble brews when some new arrivals to town – including the glamorous opera singer Olga Bracely and the eccentric spiritualist Daisy Quantock – begin to challenge Lucia’s hold over Riseholme.

Paris, 1919 : mort d'un diplomate anglais. Printemps 1919. La terre entière a les yeux rivés sur Paris. C'est en effet là que se tient la Conférence de la paix, où vont se négocier tous les traités entre vainqueurs et vaincus de la Première Guerre mondiale. Des empires disparaissent, des États sont créés, le monde se redessine. Dans ce contexte éprouvant, la communauté diplomatique britannique a besoin de tout sauf d'un scandale... Et pourtant, un de ses membres éminents, Sir Henry Maxted, est retrouvé mort à Montparnasse, après avoir chuté du toit de l'immeuble de sa maîtresse.

Gregory Collins inherited a flourishing wine importing business in London from his father and is now a prosperous tradesman. Upon discovering he is the heir presumptive to a relative's estate, he realizes he must make the journey to meet the family, as he has no knowledge of landowning or agriculture. He is determined to amass as much knowledge as he can so that when he comes into possession, he can tend to the land and its tenants properly.

Heartbroken after the loss of her fiancé, Fern travels to her aunt’s house in Italy to find peace and solace. There, overcome by the beauty of the landscape and consumed by a history she finds fascinating, she is catapulted into the life of the beautiful but reckless Cecilia, a sixteenth century lady of Venice.