Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Historical Fiction

True love comes when you least expect it. It was 1967 at Indiana University when Jana St. James, then 18 years old, met graduate student Robert Waller at a campus coffeehouse where he was playing his guitar. At first what they shared was an innocent friendship and simple love of guitar music. But then their love blossomed into something neither of them ever imagined possible.

Amidst the upheaval of the French Revolution, former aristocrat Charles Darnay becomes wrongly tangled in unfortunate events, endangering his freedom and family. Sidney Carton, a cynical lawyer who squandered his life away, seeks to redress his unhappiness through Darnay's beautiful wife, Lucie. A work of historical fiction by one of the world's greatest writers, A Tale of Two Cities is a story about love, chaos, sacrifice, and redemption.

The legacy of Alexandra Ripley's Charleston lives on in this next installment in her Deep South saga. Let the passion, deception, secrets, and revenge creep under your skin like South Carolina heat as you plunge into this gripping novel of Southern intrigue.

Strongly influenced by the gentility and generosity of spirit of the older brother from whom he eventually inherits his beloved Mount Vernon, the young George Washington matures into a devoted and able public servant in both the military and political arenas. Though marked by tragedies and disappointments, his domestic life offers him well-earned solace and satisfaction, especially after his marriage to the young widow, Martha "Patsy" Custis.

The moment Ivan stumbled upon a clearing in the dense Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed: atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, the beautiful princess Katerina lay still as death. But beneath the foliage a malevolent presence stirred, sending the 10-year-old scrambling for the safety of Cousin Marek's farm. Now years later, Ivan is an American graduate students engaged to be married.

Our heroine, Temple Gordon, is the daughter of an educated Cherokee leader and a young woman of uncommon beauty raised on her family's grand Southern plantation. She is fiercely devoted to Cherokee traditions and to her lover, The Blade Stuart, a visionary committed to a new future for the tribe. The Romance between Temple and The Blade and the existence of the Cherokee Nation itself are soon tested by government pressure to surrender tribal territory and move west.

When a new student transfers to principal Tom Gardner's school, Tom instantly recognizes that this teenager is the son he never knew he had, the result of a one-night stand years before. Raised by an adoring and fiercely independent mother who never revealed the name of his biological father, Kent Arens is a fine young man. But his very presence represents something deeper—and darker—to the members of Tom Gardner's family.

One hundred years after a woman is hanged, the search for justice reveals a story of simple faith, obsession, and murder. In 1832, an 18-year-old Frankie Silver was charged with murdering her young husband. In 1833, she became the first woman in the state of North Carolina to be hanged for murder. But was she guilty? More than 100 later, Tennessee sheriff Spencer Arrowood is determined to reveal the truth behind this unanswered question.

This is the classic story of the young Theseus - Prince of Troizen, King of Eleusis and Athens, slayer of the Minotaur. Mary Renault's powerful novel captures the modern imagination by weaving myth, legend, history, and fiction into the story of a young hero's search for his destiny, or moira. If you like The King Must Die, try The Bull from the Sea.

It's the 1950's; after a nuclear blast in the mid-Pacific, a Thoreau-reading American Air Force General makes an unexpected and troubling discovery. There, in a flowery field on a tiny island in the middle of a vast ocean, is an angel, its beautiful face frozen in a death mask and its huge wings wrapped around an inert body. As the general ponders this mystery, the Soviets discover their own angel after a similar nuclear test in Siberia. Are these twin phenomena a ploy in the ongoing hostilities between two international powers?

This is the story of an extraordinary friendship between two remarkable women, both caught in the shadow of slavery in the 19th-century South. One is an escaped black slave under sentence of death; the other is white, yet committed to end the horrors her neighbors accept as a matter of course. Ruby Dee's passionate and sensitive readings gives a poignant sense of reality to this magnificent novel of courage, daring and love.

This rich and nuanced portrait of eighteenth-century China follows a Chinese girl's path to enlightenment. At the midpoint of the Manchus' long sway over the largest empire in China's history, a young girl stands reluctantly on the brink of womanhood. Lotus, the Empress Dowager's servant, decides to follow a spiritual path through the Forbidden City. She travels down routes of erotic fancy in search of a place called Mandala, where life's troubles are left behind.

A brooding, suspenseful novel of sensuality and vengeance, set amid the fields and villages of 19th century England. Bella Ford, jilted by her unscrupulous lover, plans revenge that ends in a catastrophic act of violence.

The Atropos, a 22-gun sloop, has been given its first assignment under Horatio Hornblower's command: flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson. But soon the Atropos is part of the Mediterranean Fleet's harassment of Napoleon, recovering treasure that lies deep in Turkish waters and boldly challenging a Spanish frigate several times her size. Follow Forester's hero in more adventures in Lieutenant Hornblower.

Slaying the minotaur was only the beginning. Theseus's legendary exploits continue in this magnificent tale of mythological adventure in classical Greece. Picking up where The King Must Die left off, this stirring sequel recounts Theseus's triumphant return from Crete to become King of Athens.