Historical Fiction Eastern

Petra Kurková—a witch who wields magic worth its weight in gold—is tasked with combating the undead on World War I’s eastern front. The battlefield has yielded a newfound closeness for her spellbound team, especially for Josef Svoboda, a recruiter for the Order of the Seven Stars. But Josef was bitten at the start of the war, leaving his blood tainted by a strain of the vlkodlak curse, which makes him a target of the Order’s latest mission: slay the werewolves prowling the eastern front under the moonlight.

With her husband off fighting at World War I’s eastern front, Petra Kurková embraces her fleeting freedom, roaming the city at night with her camera. A born witch, she’s discovered that she can capture the souls of the dead on film. Her supernatural skills don’t go unnoticed by the enigmatic Josef Svoboda. He’s recruiting a team of sorcerers to infiltrate the front lines, where the bloodshed of combat has resurrected foul creatures. Petra’s unique abilities will be needed against the most dangerous enemies of all—those ever present, undead, and unseen.

Perfect for fans of Patrick O'Brian, Bernard Cornwell and swashbuckling adventure during the great Age of Sail: To the Eastern Seas is the 22nd novel in Julian Stockwin's acclaimed Thomas Kydd series. With Bonaparte held to a stalemate in Europe, the race to empire is now resumed. Britain's ambitions turn to the Spice Islands, the Dutch East Indies, where Admiral Pellew has been sent to confront the enemy's vastly rich holdings in these tropical islands. Captain Sir Thomas Kydd joins reinforcements to snatch these for the British Crown.

Private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn receive in the mail an unexplained key stamped with the letter Q. Barker, recognizing it for what it is, uses the key to unlock an anonymous door in the alleyway, which opens to an underground tunnel leading to Downing Street. The Prime Minister has a small task for Cyrus Barker. A Foreign Office agent stole a satchel in Eastern Europe, but was then himself murdered at Charing Cross. The satchel contains a document desperately wanted by the German government, but while the agent was killed, the satchel remains in English hands.

In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. 

The ancient war has finally come to an end, bringing a peaceful closure to the chaotic dispute of the Ancient Dragon Battlefield. Its prisoners, along with their mysterious foes, return to the realm of the forgotten.

Cha Ming and Huxian have faced the heavens and lived.... Crippled and broken, Cha Ming finds himself in an isolated village. Only the efforts of a mortal doctor are keeping him alive. His qi pathways are ravaged, and his organs are failing. It’s only a matter of time before his wounds claim him. Meanwhile, Huxian finds himself in his natural environment - a mountain crawling with powerful demons. To survive, he’ll need to eat or be eaten. It’s a good thing eating is what he does best. One man. One fox. One shared life. If one fails, so does the other.

At the age of 17, Don Stinson accidentally landed a job in the White House during Watergate, the largest political scandal in American history. A truly insignificant member of the Nixon White House staff, he frequently loitered outside of the Oval Office to watch it unfold.  What he saw throughout the White House ran  the gamut from the deeply profound to the wildly hilarious.

Unfolding on the vast grasslands of the steppes of Kazakhstan before its independence from the USSR, this haunting novel limns the struggles of the world through the eyes of Nasyr, a simple fisherman and village elder, and his resolute son, Kakharman. Both father and son confront the terrible future that is coming to the poisoned Aral Sea.

State Security Officer Brano Sev is the secretive member of the Ministry for State Security. No one else quite trusts him, but it is part of his job to do what the authorities ask, no matter what. So when he gets an order to travel to the village of his birth in order to interrogate a potential defector, he goes. When a man turns up dead shortly after he arrives and Brano is framed for the murder, he assumes this is part of the plan and allows it to run its course.

Theodora: Actress, prostitute, mistress, feminist. And Byzantine Empress of the civilized world. Stephen: Handsome Syrian boy, wizard's apprentice, palace eunuch. And Secretary to the Empress. How does this unlikely pair become such allies that one day Empress Theodora asks Stephen to write her biography? From a very young age, Theodora, daughter of a circus bearkeeper in Constantinople, sets her sights well above her station in life. Her exquisite beauty sets her apart on stages and in the eyes of men.

A sprawling adventure pitting two of literature's most iconic anti-heroes against each other: Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab. Caught between them: real-life British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the century's greatest ship, The Great Eastern. But when he's kidnapped by Nemo to help design a submarine with which to fight the laying of the Translatlantic cable - linking the two colonialist forces Nemo hates, England and the US - Brunel finds himself going up against his own ship, and the strange man hired to protect it, Captain Ahab.

Захар Беркут Івана Франка – це історична повість, в якій описуються події 1241 р., коли жителі українських Карпат боролися проти монголо-татарської навали. Автор зображує вояків мужніми і безстрашними: Захар Беркут, який стоїть на чолі громади села Тухля, його син Максим ризикують життям, а дочка боярина Мирослава покидає зрадливого батька, аби стати на шлях правди. На тлі історичних подій також вимальовується романтична лінія – кохання Максима і Мирослави, яких доля врешті привела до шлюбу. Лише у єдності і згуртованості можна досягти перемоги – така основна думка повісті Івана Франка Захар Беркут.

It is September 11, 1683, and the Ottoman Turks stand at Vienna poised to bring down the weakening citadel and impose jihad. Their sights are set on all of Europe. Aleksy, a Tatar raised by a Polish peasant family, holds in his heart the wish to become a Polish winged hussar, a Christian lancer who carries into battle a device attached to his back that holds dozens of eagle feathers. As a Tatar and as a peasant, this is an unlikely quest. When he meets Krystyna, the daughter of the noble who owns the land that his parents work, he falls hopelessly in love.

The three tales in this audiobook are adapted from stories told by the peasants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They are drawn from some books I found in shops when I visited the former USSR in 1988 as part of a citizen diplomacy group. I was intrigued by these folktales, since my paternal grandmother lived for some time in Odessa in the Ukraine. Also, I found these stories share a common theme - the poor peasant is able to succeed despite obstacles against an unfair ruler.

Una emocionante historia basada en hechos reales sobre la memoria, el amor y la esperanza en medio del horror de Auschwitz.

 A family secret revealed 40 years ago by a grandmother to her grandson is now an acclaimed Russian historical fiction novel. A Hundred Sweet Promises is the tale of the author’s grandfather, Nasrosoltan, a famed composer, who on the eve of World War I travels from Persia to Russia to study classical music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with such masters as Rimsky-Korsakov. 

Eleventh century, Northern Spain. Isabella has been a nun in the Christian kingdom of Galicia since she was a child, a gifted herbalist leading a quiet and spiritual life, devoted to God. But on a rare journey outside of the convent, she is taken by Viking raiders and sold to Morocco as a slave. Cruelly treated by her first owner, salvation comes from an unlikely source: Yusuf bin Tashfin, leader of a vast Muslim army intent on conquering all of North Africa. Isabella must struggle not only to survive her new life but to hold true to her faith, which is tested by great dangers...

One woman’s decision. The fate of an entire family...Berlin, 1933. Erich, a Jew, and Hilde, a Christian, are a young couple, the parents of Yvonne, and owners of a small book publishing firm. With Hitler’s rise to power and the persecution of Jews, their lives are destroyed in an instant. The Nazis burn their books and, fearing for their lives, the family is forced to escape to Holland. The many hardships, however, tear the family apart when Hilde chooses to return to Germany together with Yvonne, leaving Erich, who immigrates to Palestine. Will he ever see his family again?

Hold onto your magic hats for another spellbinding adventure! All aboard for Rome! Maxat sets sail for the city of history, song, gods and goddesses, art...and delicious ice cream. There are a thousand sights to see...but the one sight Maxat could do without seeing is the figure staring back at him from a very old mirror. After a fierce and shocking fight, it becomes clear that a perilous piece of history is repeating itself here and now, threatening to tear apart a lifelong friendship. Usually the rescuer, Maxat now needs to be rescued.