Showing results for "lifes a" in Historical Fiction

Thirteen-year-old Leni is coming of age in a tumultuous time. Caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, she dares to hope that Alaska will lead to a better future for her family, and a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown. As Leni grows up in the shadow of her parents’ increasingly volatile marriage, she meets Matthew. And Matthew – thoughtful, kind, and brave – makes her believe in the possibility of a better life.

At the start of the 20th century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste....

Kenneth Branagh stars in BBC Radio 4's ambitious eight-hour dramatisation of Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece set during the Battle of Stalingrad. This powerful work, completed in 1960, charts the fate of both a nation and a family in the turmoil of war. Its comparison of Stalinism with Nazism was considered by Soviet authorities to be so dangerous that the KGB placed the manuscript under arrest and Grossman was informed his book would not be published for at least 200 years.

While the hand's recipient, Temple Treasurer Sir William Waring, is rightfully shaken, Gabriel is filled with curiosity. Who would want to send such a thing? And why? But as more parcels arrive—one with fatal consequences—Gabriel realises that it is not Sir William who is the target, but the Temple itself. Someone is holding a grudge that has already led to at least one death. Now it's up to Gabriel, and Constable Wright of the City of London Police, to find out who, before an old death leads to a new murder.

In the first century AD, Publius Ovidius Naso, the most urbane and irreverent poet of imperial Rome, was banished to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea. From these sparse facts, one of our most distinguished novelists has fashioned an audacious and supremely moving work of fiction. Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who impate their dead and converse with the spirit world. But then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer.

At 28, Violet's father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing. Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.

In 1941, Queensland drover Michael McTavish leaves behind his young daughter Gracie and joins the 2/22 AIF, his destination, Rabaul, New Guinea, a small town surrounded by impenetrable jungles and steep jagged mountains, its shores lined by tranquil bays and active volcanos. Joanie has also arrived in New Guinea, with a chance to manage a trading store with her father, Reg, too exciting an opportunity to pass up.

Germany 1939 – To save her baby, Trudi Beck must hand her over to strangers who will take her across the sea to a foreign country. Trudi has already lost her husband to the Nazis, her stepsons are taking the train too. Walking away from the train station with empty arms is the hardest thing she's ever done. London 1939 – Newly married, Sally Matthews, is alone again. Her husband is away training for war, leaving her days and home empty. She volunteers to help with the children from the Kindertransport, becoming captivated by five-year-old Tom and his baby sister, Liesel.

Sep McGilby always said that Emily Kennedy had a happy face. And at 16, Emily had a lot to be glad about. She loved working as maid-of-all-work for the McGilbys, the only cloud on her horizon was her anxiety about her delicate younger sister, Lucy. But when Mrs McGilby dies, and Sep is killed in an accident soon after, Emily and Lucy must leave South Shields to look for work, which they find at Croft Dene House.

The dazzling new novel from Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel, best seller and winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.

A modern classic, this epic tale of families, romance and political intrigue, set in India, never loses its power to delight and enchant listeners. At its core, A Suitable Boy is a love story: the tale of Lata - and her mother's - attempts to find her a suitable husband, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal. At the same time, it is the story of India, newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis as a sixth of the world's population faces its first great general election and the chance to map its own destiny.

Soline Roussel is well schooled in the business of happy endings. For generations her family has kept an exclusive bridal salon in Paris, where magic is worked with needle and thread. It’s said that the bride who wears a Roussel gown is guaranteed a lifetime of joy. But devastating losses during World War II leave Soline’s world and heart in ruins and her faith in love shaken. She boxes up her memories, stowing them away, along with her broken dreams, determined to forget.

Discover the truths, the history, the myths and the magic behind the best-selling All Souls trilogy. Fall under the spell once more with this all-encompassing insider's guide to A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night and The Book of Life. The All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness, featuring historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont, delves into mythology, alchemy, literature and architecture. And history is brought to life.

It's 1953. Memories of the war are beginning to fade. Young Queen Elizabeth has just ascended to the throne. Isobel McIntyre is a doctor-in-training at a London teaching hospital. It's not easy being a woman working in medicine. And Isobel carries the additional burden of a shocking secret. One night three years ago, Isobel took the chance to walk into another woman's life. By the time she understood the implications, it was too late to turn back. Now the secret she's been hiding for so long threatens everything.

Minerva Peabody needs a man. Unfortunately she picked the wrong one. The impoverished playwright has a dream to see her plays performed on stage, but in Elizabethan England, not only are women considered the inferior sex, they simply do not write plays. Faced with rejection after rejection, she decides to take one more chance with the most desperate theater manager in London, only this time she’ll use the cover of a man. Sucked in by a pair of bright blue eyes and impressive shoulders, she chooses Blake out of the crowd, never thinking he’ll actually play an active role in her ruse.

In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive. On one ordinary day, Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the prison camp to an unnamed town hidden in a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within. Here, Valery is Dr. Kolkhanov once more, and he’s expected to serve out his prison term studying the effect of radiation on local animals. As he begins his work, he is struck by the questions his research raises: what, exactly, is being hidden from the thousands who live in the town?

Poland, 1891. Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted Marya was not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris to study chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne. Marie would go on to change the course of science forever and become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. But what if Marie had made a different choice?

They may never have a life together‚ but they will have their moment. They will have this much. England‚ September 1934. Two young lovers‚ Catherine and Daniel‚ have trespassed into the rose garden of Burnt Norton‚ an abandoned house in the English countryside. Hearing the sound of footsteps‚ they hide‚ and then witness the poet T.S. ('Tom') Eliot and his close friend Emily enter the garden and bury a mysterious tin in the earth.

Alec MacBriar crashes into the cottage of a healer and drops his wounded captain onto the table, commanding that the woman save his friend. Katie Oliver is terrified of the giants in her small home, but has no choice but to comply, hoping only to tend the wounded man and send them on their way, praying they cause no trouble to her or her son.

With Mulberry Lane's favourite pub, The Pig & Whistle undergoing renovation, proprietors Peggy and Able Ronoscki leave the chaos behind and head off on a trip of a lifetime to America. But disaster hits and Peggy finds herself in a critical condition in hospital. Meanwhile, business is booming for young entrepreneurs Fay Ronoscki and Maggie Rowan with their new restaurant and catering empire. Neither has time for love. But when fate throws a famous global singing sensation and glamourous racing car driver into their paths, falling in love with Jace and Greg seems beyond their control.