Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical Fiction

The minute I saw the letter, I knew it was hers. There was no mistaking it: the salutation, the tiny, precise handwriting, the date, the content itself, all confirmed its ancient status and authorship… Samantha McDonough cannot believe her eyes--or her luck. Tucked in an uncut page of a...

A stunningly imaginative novel about the Cold War, the Russian space program, and the amazing fraud that pulled the wool over the eyes of the world. It's 1964 in the USSR, and unbeknownst even to Premier Khrushchev himself, the Soviet space program is a sham. Well, half a sham. While the program...

“Astonishing . . . Explores the vast underground legacy of our own desires. This is the must-read book of the year.” —Rene Denfeld, bestselling author of The Child Finder A richly imagined debut novel about a traveling salesman and the small town he changes forever If someone offered...

A moving and powerful novel about the lives of the men, women, and children who endure a second-class existence and labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California’s fields. “Viramontes depicts this world with sensuous physicality...working firmly in the social-realist vein...

Britain and Germany are at war and Sexton Blake is in the thick of it. As the battle for the Western Front rages, adventuring detective Sexton Blake pits his intellect and physical prowess against the machinations of the Kaiser. A band of intrepid allies join Blake to take on the forces of evil in three classic stories, collected here for the first time. From uncovering secret German naval bases to dangling from zeppelins, fighting atop moving trains and escaping firing squads, Blake moves through war-torn Europe solving mysteries and fighting against tyranny.

Once upon a time, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories - fantastical yarns of wondrous creatures in faraway places-bewitched children across the world. But times change. Today, Kipling's writing tells us a different tale; of a love of Empire, and the troubling legacy of British colonialism. In Not So Stories, writers of colour from around the world reclaim these stories and remake them into something new. Something different.

Sixteen-year-old Bessie works long hours as a weaver in Blackburn, helping to support her family. Meanwhile, her older sister, Peggy, works as an apprentice at the Girls' School, hoping for a more prosperous future as a schoolteacher. Jennet and Titus Eastwood have always made decisions for their daughters' futures. But as the sisters near adulthood, they are determined to make their own choices. And with temptation in the way, will the girls find love - or infatuation - leads them astray?

Deal, Kent, 1812. Eighteen-year-old Winnie Lennicker yearns for a peaceful life as a respectable married woman. However, when she becomes involved in her family's free-trading operations and is caught by the Revenue, she is sent before the magistrates. Forced to confess that she is with child, now more than ever, Winnie is determined to give up smuggling. But the only way she can support herself and her unborn child is to carry on.

Lancashire, 1832. Maids Hannah and Mary find themselves with no jobs and no home when their employer, Henry Sudell, loses all his money and disappears in the middle of the night. They have no choice but to return to Blackburn where Hannah is lucky to be taken in by her sister, Jennet, and brother-in-law, Titus, but Mary must seek lodgings in the infamous Star beer house.

When the beautiful but naïve Grace Lennicker falls for Isaiah Feasey, son of a rival smuggling family and owner of a local tavern, her sisters try to intervene. But as tensions grow, there is another suitor also hoping to win her hand in marriage, the dashing and more favourable Albert Enderby, a young lieutenant in the Revenue. Grace is unwittingly drawn back into the world of smuggling that her sisters fought hard to leave behind, and as violence erupts, she finds herself unable to stand by, knowing the rival gangs will kill anyone who stands in their way.

Lily and Vincent have been dancing everything from the waltz to the foxtrot together since they were six years old. Now a teenager, Lily realises she has feelings for Vincent that she never knew were there. However, with Vincent off to war, Lily is evacuated to a mother and baby home with her younger siblings. It is there that she finds she has more in common with the fallen women than she once thought. But as the bombs begin to fall in Liverpool, will she ever see her sweetheart again?

When Jennet and Titus Eastwood are forced to move from their idyllic cottage into the centre of Blackburn to find work in the cotton mills, their lives are changed in ways they could never have imagined, and their new home on Paradise Lane is anything but. Then Titus is arrested and sent to prison for attending a Reform meeting. Jennet is left to fend for herself, and things go from bad to worse as she finds herself pregnant and alone - with another man's child.

The Lennicker sisters live in a cottage nestled amongst the counting houses, shops and inns, where the smugglers plot and the seamen drink. When their father – a fisherman and smuggler – is murdered by a rival gang, the eldest daughter, Louisa, is forced to carve out a living by trading illegally in French lace. She will do anything to keep a roof over her sisters’ heads, but what she truly desires is a way of wreaking revenge. With the threat of Napoleon approaching Britain’s shores, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Dover, 1864: Violet Rayfield leads a happy life with her family in a beautiful terrace on Camden Crescent. But Violet’s seemingly perfect world is shattered when her father makes a decision that costs her family everything. Now Violet must sacrifice all she holds dear, including the man she loves. As Violet strives to pick up the threads of her existence, a series of shocking revelations leaves her feeling even more alone. But where one door closes, another opens, and the embroidery skills Violet perfected while a young woman of leisure win her vital work.

Margate, 1884: When 17-year-old Hannah Bentley fled the family home, she never dreamed she’d find her feet working as a nurse on the children’s ward at the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary. She adores her patients and the sea air, and looks forward to a time when she’ll have put away enough money so her younger sister can join her. But when her sister suddenly turns up unannounced, she brings more trouble than Hannah bargained for. As Hannah is forced to risk everything to keep her sister out of trouble, she must somehow find the strength to save herself too....

Accused of murder, Alejandra flees her home, escaping to the southern edge of Spain, where she faces a life of poverty and destitution. Seduced by the power of the rich and the anonymity that waits across the water in Tangier, Ale makes a bid for a new start. But it will come at a cost: a life of deception. Because Ale's new friends want to know what she is running from, they want to know who she is and whether they can trust her. Fifty years later, a young American writer wanders the streets of Tangier, searching for inspiration.

Patty Jenkins has come a long way from her poverty-stricken days in Brownlow workhouse. She now has a coveted position in the kitchens at Freeman's Department store in Liverpool and even the prospect of advancement. For Patty has always enjoyed baking, and her flair for it has caught the attention of the store owner, who intends to have her create elaborate cakes and pastries to serve at afternoon tea to Freeman's clientele.

Rediscover one of the great mystery authors of the twentieth century in this Depression-era tale of a wealthy family's dark secrets turned deadly on their secluded lakeside estate. An urgent note from a friend spurs Ann Gay to visit her recently married cousin, Jacqueline Heaton. Upon her...

"A full, big hearted novel.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & the Six Nestled in the suburbs of Atlanta, a family learns the funniest punchlines can hide the hardest truths in this evocative women’s fiction novel from the author of Well-Behaved Indian...

James Welch never shied away from depicting the lives of Native Americans damned by destiny and temperament to the margins of society. The Death of Jim Loney is no exception. Jim Loney is a mixed-blood, of white and Indian parentage. Estranged from both communities, he lives a solitary, brooding...