Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Historical Fiction

As the American Civil War rages, an officer who longs for the glory of battle has been assigned to staff duties away from the battlefield. Now a captain, he is assigned to a combat unit and faces battle for the first time. He finds there is no glory, only controlled terror for those engaged in war.

Here, a collection of 15 short stories by Ambrose Bierce. Bierce's participation in the Battle of Shiloh forever shaped his writing and his life. The short stories in this audiobook, although fiction, are - for the most part - based on some fact. They stand as a testament to the horror of the American Civil War.

We have all experienced it. A scene, a smell, a sound, or a song will carry us back to another time, another place, and to memories pleasant or unpleasant. For Private Grayrock of the Federal Army in the fall of 1861, the trigger is a mockingbird.

In 1910, when "And This is War" was published, emotional wounds of the American Civil War were as yet unhealed. In Europe the winds of the next great war were bginning to stir, and in the United States a spirit of isolationism prevailed.This book does not glorify war, but rather condems all wars, with thirty five related short stories that portray the heartache, sadness, hopelessness and devastation that accompany war.

Scorned by her 17th century New England Puritan village, Hester Prynne struggles to raise her precocious daughter, Pearl, who is the result of an affair and whose father is unknown. Despite being forced to wear a scarlet letter A as a brand for her adultery, Hester tries to live a life of repentance and dignity. Pearl's father comes forward as he is struggling under the weight of his own shame and sin.

Precocious 17-year-old Bab, with a sizeable sense of the romantic and an over-developed sense of the dramatic, shares how these traits get her into continuous scrapes via school themes, journals, and articles meant for publication. Managing an allowance is easy - isn't buying a car to save on shoe repair fiscally responsible? Is the family's butler a spy for Germany? Set against the backdrop of the first World War, these humorous tales highlight how little has changed in the past century with regard to a young girl's finding her place in the world. 

In the pretty little town of Sibley, NY, the court has adjourned for lunch, and Judge Evans and some of the leading lawyers of the district stand outside the courthouse discussing the limitations of the criminal classes. A stranger describes to them just how a man might commit a murder and avoid detection - and only minutes later, the widow Clemmens is discovered struck down in her parlor by an unknown hand in circumstances eerily similar to those described by the stranger.

Swept up in a whirlwind courtship, Katja and Wasyl begin life anew in a Ukrainian settlement of Western Canada. The dusty Canadian prairies promise hope and independence, but when war breaks out between the old world and the new, their newfound stability is shattered. Rumors of the internment of Ukrainian-Canadians haunt the new settlers. Would the country they love betray them like this? An incident throws the couple and their young children into turmoil, and Katja faces the prospect of enduring a Canadian winter without Wasyl by her side.

Lucy Honeychurch is a young English girl abroad in Italy for the first time and is ready to experience all the beauty, art, and romance it has to offer. She is hampered by the oppressive attentions of her chaperone, her prim cousin Charlotte, as well as the presence of a substantial British expatriate and tourist community in Florence.

Zane Grey's first western story, written in 1909, is based on a real character, Buffalo Jones. Grey's descriptive art was just beginning in this story. But he brings color and life to the area between the Grand Canyon and Utah. The story follows Grey, Jones, and a company of colorful characters on a "hunt" bent on capture rather than shooting.

In this final book of Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Ferber's series featuring the indomitable Emma McChesney, Emma's newly married son Jock has relocated to Chicago, leaving Emma an empty-nester. Her secret romance and pending nuptials stall when their company is thrown into an uproar at the height of the selling season. To defeat her long-time nemesis and take the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company international, the always-competitive Emma sails off on a whirlwind tour of South America.

Elizabeth Clarke gave her brother a silver locket to remind him of home as he left for war in June of 1917. But as the Great War ends for America, it continues on for Elizabeth. While carrying out duties for the US State Department, her father went missing in the chaos of the Russia Revolution. When word arrives that he is alive and needs assistance moving a valuable and mysterious “package” out of Russia, it is up to his children to organize the rescue.

Two time periods. Two coasts. Lives intertwined and impacted forever. Greed, societal forces, religion, eugenics, and racial prejudice came together in a shameful and shocking way on a small, wooded island off the coast of Maine in the early 1900s. The atrocious events that occurred on Malaga Island continue to echo through the years. Their impact is felt in many ways and by many lives. 

Kate Doyle has spent her life making lists. But her pleasure in planning comes to an abrupt end in the wake of a family tragedy. For the first time in two decades, she is living back in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood she discovers has not changed nearly as much as reports of hipster Brooklyn had led her to believe. Her discovery of a family heirloom teaches her that the Heights and its surrounding neighborhoods have been sustaining Doyles for well over a century.

Charles Boswell's short story "Monsters of Monarchy", Terror Tales, May 1940 features Roman emperor Caligula (12 BCE-24 CE), one of the most notorious Roman emperors. Known for his incestuous relationship with his sisters, and for his cruelty and madness, which culminated in Caligula naming his horse Roman consul and declaring himself a god. Caligula's brief reign and life turn into a complex and fascinating story of a boy-emperor thoroughly unprepared for the throne, who, in the early years of the Roman Empire, tried to make Rome an absolute monarchy but failed.

Constance Reid marries Sir Clifford Chatterley, Baronet, who comes home from the Great War grievously injured. He is paralyzed from the waist down and must rely on Constance for all his needs. Constance finds living in mining country formidable and depressing until she meets Sir Clifford's gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. They enter into an affair which makes Constance realize living with the mind alone is only half a life.

The year is 1980. On a former French Plantation east of Chanthaburi, a very exclusive gathering brings together five extraordinary women. Stories were their business, and Gilda was at the top of the heap. There wasn’t a war she hadn’t reported, a scandal she hadn’t uncovered or a bestseller list she hadn’t topped. The Whisky & Ink Ladies Drinking Society numbered only five at any one time, no boys allowed. Its meetings took place every two years. And Claude, daughter of the late Ava Wood, wants in. If things go right, she’ll be initiated into WILDS at the end of the visit.

This gripping thriller takes listeners on an adrenaline-filled journey through the shadowy world of sabotage in 1942 America. Ric Dymond is an inexperienced young FBI agent on a mission to bring a covert and deadly sabotage plot hatched by the German Abwehr to justice. Ric is forced to go undercover and rely on his wits and intuition to uncover the unknown saboteurs, aware that another uncover agent was brutally murdered. But the mission is further complicated when Ric meets an old flame, throwing his resolve and focus into question.

Suzanne Morse, a midwife in Watertown, moves to a remote frontier town with her husband and two children in 1666. A hands-on, practical woman who needs people, she bonds with the first two women she meets. The minister's new wife, Abigail Willard, wants to learn Suzanne's trade. At the same time, Dancing Light, a medicine woman across the river, calls her to heal her sister, dying of a white man's disease, with white medicine. In no time, Suzanne becomes known as an effective healer among Groton settlers. However, her friendship with Dancing Light arouses the town's approbation.

In pursuit of her dream to be a writer, Nora journeys from her family in Canada after she accepts a job as a journalist in Jamaica and then later, the United States. In the autobiography, the young author recounts her early life and writing career. Only seventeen years old and with just ten dollars in her pocket, Nora sets sail for Jamaica west Indies, and when this new career as a newspaper writer takes an unwelcome turn, Nora ends up in Chicago, where she struggles to find a good job and make it as a journalist and storyteller.