Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Historical Fiction

It's the 1950s. After a nuclear blast in the mid-Pacific, a Thoreau-reading American Air Force General makes an unexpected and troubling discovery: 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? Or has divine intervention pointed the way toward a new political era?

Dessa Rose is the heartwarming story of an extraordinary friendship between two strong, remarkable women from very different backgrounds, 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 a white woman committed to end the horrors her neighbors accept as a matter of course. Ruby Dee's passionate and sensitive reading gives a poignant sense of reality to this magnificent story of courage, daring, and love.

A collection of stories about America's bloodiest conflict by some of the greatest writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, The Scarlet Letter tackles the subjects of social stigma, shame, and judgment. Hester Prynne is at the forefront of the scandal, subject to public humiliation for bearing a child out of wedlock. Forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing for the rest of her life, she cannot run from her sin. Hester refuses to name her daughter's father, a local reverend whom she is in love with, a timid man who keeps his secret from the community.

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 safety. Years later, Ivan is an American graduate student engaged to be married, yet he cannot forget that day long ago. Compelled to return to his native land, Ivan finds the clearing just as he left it.

A 19th century novel that defied the repressive moral conventions of Victorian England. Young Tess Durbeyfield comes from an impoverished home. Her father, desperate to alleviate the family's financial plight, presses his daughter into work for the wealthy D'Urbervilles. But in doing so, Tess meets the manipulative Alec, who forces himself upon her. And though Tess later meets a kinder man who proposes marriage, her salvation is jeopardized when she reveals to him her troubled past.

A Russian museum curator acquires a painting of a public building that includes a modification completed in 1952. The artist: Adolf Hitler. A prominent historian is mysteriously killed while in the final stages of research for his latest book—a biography of the fü hrer. An American architect preparing a book on Third Reich architecture discovers plans for a seventh bunker. All are pieces of an emerging puzzle whose solution will reveal…the Seventh Secret.

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage tells the story of Henry Fleming, a young private in the Union Army who flees from the horror of battle and then struggles with shame and self-loathing. Outstanding in its portrayal of the quiet tension and violent emotion of war, this powerful psychological study of a young soldier will strike listeners with its undeniable realism.