Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Historical Fiction

Since the age of thirteen, Lanny Budd has been more than an eyewitness to history. From the Paris Peace Conference to the Battle of the Bulge, he has played key roles in the extraordinary events of his age. Now, forty years later, Presidential Agent 103 is coming out of retirement to serve his country—and the free world—once more. A counterfeiting conspiracy hatched by unrepentant neo-Nazis threatens to gravely damage America’s efforts to rebuild and stabilize a divided Germany.

Franny Steinberg knows there’s powerful magic in laughter. She’s witnessed it. With the men of Chicago off fighting WWII on distant shores, Franny has watched the women of the city taking charge of the war effort. But amidst the war bond sales and factory shifts, something surprising has emerged, something Franny could never have expected. A new marvel that has women flocking to comedy clubs across the nation: the Showstopper.

London, 1952: Forty-six-year-old Elizabeth Dalloway feels she has failed at most everything in life, especially living up to her mother, the elegant Mrs. Dalloway, an ideal socialite and model of perfection until she disappeared in the summer of 1923—and hasn’t been heard from since. When Elizabeth is handed a medal with a mysterious inscription from her mother to a soldier named Septimus Warren Smith, she’s certain it contains a clue from the past.

The death of Donald Ray in a freak car accident becomes the catalyst for the release of passions, needs, and hurts. Clayton’s discovery of dead Donald Ray upends his longtime emotional numbness. Darlene, the seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her late husband while proving herself still alive. Soon Clayton and Darlene’s bond of loss and death works its magic, drawing them into an affair that brings the loneliness in Clayton’s marriage to a crisis. When Aurilla Cutter, Clayton’s mother-in-law, learns about the affair, her own memories are set loose.

The most wanted man in the West, Big Bob McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’s been judged guilty by association. To clear his name, Carson teams up with bounty hunter Colby Tate to track down the outlaws—now scattered across the frontier—and bring them to justice.

In 1943, the once-unstoppable Nazi war machine is starting to falter. For a decade and a half, Lanny Budd’s cover as a fine-art dealer and Fascist sympathizer has held firm, earning him the confidence of Hermann Göring and other top officials, including Adolf Hitler himself. With the Allies preparing to retake Europe, Lanny must make certain that the location of the invasion remains hidden from the Nazi high command. But his mission is compromised and his life endangered when Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s feared Gestapo chief, uncovers Lanny’s true loyalties.

When a bloody raid in Libya turns up nothing but a camp of terrorists who know nothing about any bombs, the elite American fighters find themselves ordered to Portugal to follow up a new lead. Once there, they learn every undercover agent from every country working in Portugal has been taken out of play, leaving the door wide open for staging an apocalyptic attack. If the Black Berets fail to locate the bombs and take out the merciless cabal that stole them, it could mean the end of the world as they know it. For these five warriors, the stakes have never been higher.

To the average citizen, the Lion of Salvador was a national hero, a military general of such renown that his accolades spanned two continents. To those in the know, however, the man was the cruelest of drug lords, a savage despot building an unstoppable empire that ranged from the Central American jungle to the bustling streets of New York.

Letting a struggling Chicano gas company run its pipeline across their Louisiana land struck the Black Berets as a good idea—especially once Cowboy got an eyeball on Isabella Cifuentes, its stunning, sultry president. But the contract, it seemed, contained some very fine and lethal print. A Texas oil magnate allied with a fanatical right-wing cult had made an unholy alliance to keep the territory free of Mexicans and competition—even if it meant taking his grievance to the people next door.

Pamela Binnings Ewen’s newest novel reveals the story of Émilienne, once the most beautiful, sought-after woman in Paris during the Belle Époque, the era of peaceful years just before World War I. As a girl, Émilienne fights her way through poverty in Montmartre, drawn to the lights of Paris below. Soon, she stars at the Folies Bergère, mistress of kings and princes, known as the most beautiful woman in Europe.

The year is 1861, the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. For Kate Warn, the first female private detective in American history, the only assignment tougher than exposing a conspiracy to assassinate the new president is training her new mentee, Hattie MacLaughlin, in the art of detection. The two women’s mission to save the president takes them from the granges of rural Maryland to the heart of secessionist high society, and sets them on a collision course that could alter the course of history.

Matilda is the only legitimate daughter of Henry I of England. She’s also the granddaughter of William the Conqueror and is a descendent—through her mother—from the ancient line of Anglo-Saxon kings. She is made a widow in her early twenties and is the only surviving heir to the throne of England. Now she must marry Geoffrey of Anjou, a boy ten years younger, and share the task of leading an often rebellious state. Before long she gives birth to three sons and provides her father with the male heirs he’s longed for.

The year 1942 marked the turning point of World War II. The Americans destroyed the Japanese Battle Fleet in the decisive engagements of Midway and the Coral Sea. General Montgomery defeated General Rommel at El Alamein. But for President Roosevelt, 1942 was the darkest hour of the war. He knew the Germans were developing the atomic bomb. Our victories would be meaningless if the Nazis perfected the “A” bomb first. There was only one man who could find out the biggest Nazi secret of the war: Lanny Budd.

It is 1942, and the American and British armies are landing in North Africa to fight the German army led by General Erwin Rommel. Underground resistance to German occupation is rising across Europe. In Jugoslavia, Communist and royalist resistance movements are fighting both the Germans and each other. American and British agents are parachuting into Jugoslavia from Egypt to assist them.

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York—the same night her grandmother dies—or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie’s story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong.

Andrews is found dead in his own living room. His head blown to bloody smithereens. Who will finish what the dead man started? The publisher turns to Arnold Landon. And why wouldn’t he pick up the mantle? Everyone tells him it’s safe. The police have their man for Andrews’ killing. But the closer Landon gets to Andrews’ checkered past, the less certain he becomes. Could the true killer be out there still? Watching, waiting for his chance to strike again …

In London, early in the nineteenth century, five-year-old Mary Godwin, daughter of philosopher William Godwin, plays with her sister Fanny, mourns her deceased mother, and marvels as a hot-air balloon lands not far from the Thames River. Nearby, in Sussex, eleven-year-old Percy Shelley entertains his three sisters by telling them stories and performing tricks with chemicals and fire. A few years later, Mary and Percy meet and fall in love in the Godwin bookshop near Black Friar’s Bridge.

Edward “Blackbeard” Teach has a good reason for everything he does. Despite what his crewmen might say, he isn’t turning soft. When King George I issues a pardon for all pirates who give up their thieving ways within a year, Blackbeard sees his chance to have it all. He just needs to falsely repent within a year and then his comfortable future will be guaranteed. But Blackbeard has made many enemies over the years—men who are not prepared to forgive him just because of a royal decree.

In 1902 Lithuania, a group of rebels armed with books triumphs against the mighty Russian Empire. Part folktale, part thriller, The Last Book Smuggler tells the story of Ada and her grandfather Viktoras, an old book smuggler tired of his forty-year battle to keep his language alive despite the attempts of the Russian Empire to destroy it. Into their world steps Jonas, a young man in love with Ada and ready to join the underground book smugglers. But there is a traitor in their midst who must stop them or lose everything.

Seventeen-year-old Ariadne is in love with young British National Serviceman, Stephen Allenby. But her family are deeply involved with an organization campaigning for a union with Greece, and do not approve. And they’re not the only ones. It’s only a matter of time before Stephen is sent back to England, leaving Ariadne pregnant and alone. Stephen does his best to move on with his life. He marries Laura and has a baby girl called Cressida, but it’s not long before the cracks start to show and his marriage falls apart …