Borgia Bride by Jeanne Kalogridis
Vivacious Sancha of Aragon arrives in Rome newly wed to a member of the notorious Borgia dynasty. Surrounded by the city's opulence and political corruption, she befriends her glamorous and deceitful sister-in-law, Lucrezia, whose jealousy is as legendary as her beauty. The Borgia Bride is a richly compelling tale of conspiracy, sexual intrigue, loyalty, and drama.
The Botticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato
When prostitute Luciana Vetra is asked by one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, she doesn't mind serving as the model for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece "Primavera." But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals the painting--only to find that somone is ready to kill her to get it back.
The Canterbury Papers by Judith Koll Healey
AlaÏs, the king of France's sister, is abducted while on her mission for the wily Eleanor of Aquitaine, the former Queen of England, to retrieve hidden letters that, in the wrong hands, could bring down the English king. Now AlaÏs, along with help from the very intriguing leader of the Knights Templar, must unravel a tangled web of family secrets and lies.
Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade by Nicole Galland
Impeccably researched and beautifully told, Nicole Galland's Crossed is a stunning tale of the disastrous Fourth Crusade—and of the hopeful, brave, and driven who were caught up in and irrevocably changed by a corrupted cause and a furious battle beyond their comprehension or control.
Cruel as the Grave by Sharon Kay Penman
April 1193. England’s King Richard Lionheart languishes in a German prison, and treason scents the air. Richard’s younger brother, John, seizes Windsor Castle, and Dowager Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine summons her trusted personal “queen’s man,” Justin de Quincy, to do the impossible– mediate a truce with her rebel son.
Dina's Lost Tribe by Brigitte Goldstein
When Professor Henner Marcus receives an urgent plea from his niece, Nina Aschauer, he leaves Chicago behind and travels 5,000 miles to France. Nina has finally materialized after a five-year absence, and he is anxious to help her explore the Pyrenees Mountains for the location of her birth, which occurred as her parents fled the Nazis.
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears
An Instance of the Fingerpost intertwines three intellectual mysteries, three love stories—and three of the darkest moments in human history. United by a classical text called "The Dream of Scipio," three men struggle to find refuge for their hearts and minds...in the final days of the Roman Empire, in the grim years of the Black Death, and in the direst hours of World War II.
Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett
When silk merchant John Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters‚ their fortunes are set to change forever. Elder daughter Jane starts a notorious liaison with Edward IV‚ while her sister‚ Isabel‚ as the new silkweaver to the court‚ becomes privy to its most intimate secrets. Could they hold the keys to power in this time of uncertainty?
The Fool's Tale: A Novel of Medieval Wales by Nicole Galland
Wales, 1198. A time of treachery, passion, and uncertainty. King Maelgwyn ap Cadwallon, known as Noble, struggles to protect his small kingdom from foes outside and inside his borders. Pressured into a marriage of political convenience, he takes as his bride the young, headstrong Isabel Mortimer, niece of his powerful English nemesis.
Forgiven by P M Kulseth
FORGIVEN is a story of a small valley in Norway terrorized by a brutal berserker and a boy terrorized by flashbacks from the trauma he experienced as a captive of this notorious Viking. It is a story of a discarded infant, her rescue and the influence her life has on so many people; a story of conversion and forgiveness, the restoration of broken spirits, and the discovery of a most unexpected love.
The Good Men: A Novel of Heresy by Charmaine Craig
In fourteenth-century France, a young woman from the mountain village of Montaillou was tried for heresy by the Catholic inquisition. Her name was Grazida Lizier and, by her own confession, her “joy was shared” with the wrong man: the village rector.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country (Guenevere Novels) by Rosalind Miles
Last in a line of proud queens elected to rule the fertile lands of the West, true owner of the legendary Round Table, guardian of the Great Goddess herself . . . a woman whose story has never been told -- until now.
The House of Lanyon by Valerie Anand
Richard Lanyon answers to no one save the aristocratic Sweetwater family, owners of the land he farms. His bitter resentment is legend within the bounds of their tiny Exmoor community, but as their tenant, Richard must do their bidding. However, driven to succeed, Richard is prepared to take what is not his and to forfeit the happiness of his family to claim the entitlements he lusts for.
I, Mona Lisa by Jeanne Kalogridis
Florence, April 1478: The handsome Giuliano de' Medici is brutally assassinated in Florence's magnificent Duomo. The shock of the murder ripples throughout the great city, from the most renowned artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, to a wealthy wool merchant and his extraordinarily beautiful daughter, Madonna Lisa.
The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
England, late fourteenth century: For Lady Kathryn of Blackingham Manor, a widow and mother, it is a time made both sweeter and more perilous by the arrival of a master illuminator called Finn. Caught between the King's taxes and the Church's tithes, Kathryn strikes a bargain with the local abbot: she will take Finn and his pretty young daughter into her household in exchange for protection.
Kabbalah of Stone by Irene Reti
Girona, Spain, 1492-Rabbi Raphael Halevi seeks to save his community from the Inquisition. Help comes in the unexpected form of the spirit of the biblical prophet, Huldah, and a Christian scribe who has discovered his hidden Jewish identity. This lyrical and suspenseful novel of Jewish history, magic, and Kabbalah offers a feminist reinterpretation of an intriguing Hebrew prophet.
The King's Daughter by Barbara Kyle
Even as she plans for her own nuptials, Isabel Thornleigh is helping to lay the groundwork to overthrow Bloody Mary and bring Elizabeth to power. But none of the secrets Isabel has discovered compares to the truths hidden in her own family. With her beloved father imprisoned by Queen Mary, only Carlos Valverde --- a Spanish soldier of fortune --- can help Isabel.
Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King
Lady Gruadh, called Rue, is the last female descendant of Scotland’s most royal line. Married to a powerful northern lord, she is widowed while still carrying his child and forced to marry her husband’s murderer: a rising warlord named Macbeth.
The Lady Queen by Nancy Goldstone
In 1348, at the age of twenty-two, Joanna I, the queen of Naples, stood trial before the pope, accused of murdering her cousin and husband, Hungarian prince Andrew. Arguing her own case in Latin, she won her acquittal, and went on to become the only female monarch in her time to rule in her own name—until she herself was murdered.
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier’s answer to the mystery behind one of the art world’s great masterpieces—a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown—until now.
The Lady of the Sea by Rosalind Miles
The final thrilling chapter in the Tristan and Isolde trilogy: Isolde, heir to the throne of the queens, is now a sovereign in her own right. With the glories of the throne comes the responsibility of a queen, and Isolde knows she must return to her beloved Western Isle, where her lords face a growing threat from the warlike Picti, who live in the barren highlands to the north of England.
Leonardo's Swans by Karen Essex
Isabella and Beatrice d'Este are as different as night and day. Wordly and ambitious, Isabella's beauty and intellect are legendary across the courts of Europe, while her younger sister, a tomboy, prefers horses and the hunt. When Isabella is betrothed to the Marquis of Mantua, all her ambitions seem to come true - until Beatrice marries Ludovico, the powerful Duke of Milan.
The Miracles of Prato by Laurie Albanese and Laura Morowitz
Italy, 1456. A Carmelite monk, the great artist Fra Filippo Lippi acts as chaplain to the nuns of the Convent Santa Margherita. It is here that he encounters the greatest temptation of his life, beautiful Lucrezia Buti, who has been driven to holy orders more by poverty than piety. But as painter and muse are united, a passionate love develops, one that threatens to destroy them both.
Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
Seven-year-old Bianca de Nevada lives on a farm perched high above the rolling hills and valleys of Tuscany. One day a noble entourage makes its way up the winding slopes to the farm—and the world comes to Montefiore. In the presence of Cesare Borgia and his sister, the lovely and vain Lucrezia—decadent children of a wicked pope—no one can claim innocence for very long.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This is the tragic tale of the rise and fall of Camelot - but seen through the eyes of Camelot's women: the devout Gwenhwyfar, Arthur's Queen; Vivane, High priestess of Avalon and the Lady of the Lake; above all, Morgaine, possessor of the sight, the wise, the wise-woman fated to bring ruin on them all.
The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
One of the few female post-Renaissance painters to achieve fame during her own era, Artemisia Gentileschi led a remarkably "modern" life. Susan Vreeland tells Artemisia's captivating story, beginning with her public humiliation in a rape trial at the age of eighteen, and continuing through her father's betrayal, her marriage of convenience, motherhood, and growing fame as an artist.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The building of a cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of this drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.
The Prince of Poison by Pamela Kaufman
Set amidst the pomp and savagery of twelfth-century Europe, the Alix of Wanthwaite trilogy renders a glorious mishmash of ruffians, peasants, troubadours, murderers, pretenders, barons, princesses, and popes in charming and disarming detail. This novel lampoons historical notables like Richard the Lion Heart and Eleanor of Aquitaine, spinning the historical novel in a fresh direction.
The Queen's Man by Sharon Kay Penman
Eleanor of Aquitaine sits on England's throne. At seventy, she has outlived the husband with whom she had once scandalized the world. But has she also outlived her favorite, her first-born son? Richard Lionheart, England's king, has been missing these last months. It is rumored that he is dead. Only a letter, splattered with the blood of a dying man, can tell her if Richard still lives.
The Ruby in Her Navel: A Novel by Barry Unsworth
Set in the Middle Ages during the brief yet glittering rule of the Norman kings, The Ruby in Her Navel is a tale in which the conflicts of the past portend the present. The novel opens in Palermo, in which Latin and Greek, Arab and Jew live together in precarious harmony. But the peace and prosperity of the kingdom is being threatened, internally as well as externally.
The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin
When King Henry II's mistress is found poisoned, suspicion falls on his estranged queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The king orders Adelia Aguilar, expert in the science of death, to investigate. A reluctant Adelia finds herself once again in the company of Rowley Picot, the new Bishop of St. Albans...and her baby's father. Their discoveries into the crime are omens of greater danger to come.
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A. D. 62: Pompeii: A Novel by Rebecca East
A twenty-first century woman is stranded in first century Pompeii when a time travel experiment goes awry; she is sold to a wealthy family as a house slave. This provides her with an intimate, upstairs/downstairs perspective on household life in ancient times. As her influence grows, she wins the love of her master and his daughter and provokes the vengeful jealousy of his wife.
Alexander and Alestria by Shan Sa
Acclaimed author Shan Sa brings Alexander the Great to richly imagined new life, entwining his historical legacy with a fantastic love affair set in a time of war between Western and Eastern civilizations.
As Sure As the Dawn: Mark of The Lion #3 by Francine Rivers
Atretes. German warrior. Revered gladiator. He won his freedom through his fierceness... but his life is about to change forever.
Baudolino by Umberto Eco
It is April 1204, and Constantinople, the splendid capital of the Byzantine Empire, is being sacked and burned by the knights of the Fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion, one Baudolino saves a historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.
Caveat Emptor: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie
Newlyweds Ruso and Tilla are ready to find a place to settle down. They return to Britannia for Ruso’s work; however, the only job available isn’t as a doctor, but as an investigator for the Roman government. A tax collector from the town of Verulamium is missing, and the town council swears that the tax man, Julius Asper, was trying to make off with the town coffers...
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Stacy Schiff boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.
Drinker of Blood by Lynda S. Robinson
With the top secret investigation of Queen Nefertiti's murder in full gallop, Lord Meren is suddenly called away to investigate the bizarre death of Pharaoh Tutankhamen's favorite groom.
An Echo in the Darkness: Mark of the Lion #2 by Francine Rivers
Turning away from the opulence of Rome, Marcus is led by a whispering voice from the past into a journey that could set him free from the darkness of his soul.
The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn
For centuries her name has been a byword for feminine beauty, guile, and wisdom. This sweeping, meticulously researched novel restores Esther to her full, complex humanity while reanimating the glittering Persian empire in which her story unfolded.
Helen of Troy by Margaret George
Margaret George tells the story of the woman whose face "launched a thousand ships." This is an exquisite page-turner with a cast of irresistible characters--Odysseus, Hector, Achilles, Priam, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, as well as Helen and Paris themselves--and a wealth of material that reproduces the Age of Bronze in all its glory,
Iokaste: The Novel of the Mother-Wife of Oedipus by Alice Underwood and Victoria Grossack
For millennia the story of Oedipus - who, despite all efforts to avoid his fate, killed his father and married his mother - has captivated imaginations. Even more compelling are the experiences of his wife and mother, Iokaste. In Iokaste, she finally tells her story.
The Memoirs of Helen of Troy: A Novel by Amanda Elyot
In this lush, compelling novel of passion and loss, Helen of Troy, a true survivor, tells the truth about her life, her lovers, and the Trojan War. This is the memoir that she has written—her legendary beauty still undimmed by age.
Poison by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
The death of flamboyant writer and womanizer Peter Grosvenor sets in motion a series of spiraling events surrounding his legacy and his estate. His bitter third wife, his two children, his sister, his friends, and his would-be biographers are drawn into a maelstrom of intense memories and painful encounters as each of the major players in Peter's life seeks to appropriate Peter's estate for his or her own purposes.
Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
For a thousand years her existence has been denied. She is the legend that will not die–Pope Joan, the ninth-century woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to become the only female ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter. Now in this riveting novel, Donna Woolfolk Cross paints a sweeping portrait of an unforgettable heroine who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept.
Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome by Steven Saylor
Weaving history, legend, and new archaeological discoveries into a spellbinding narrative, critically acclaimed novelist Steven Saylor gives new life to the drama of the city's first thousand years. Following the shifting fortunes of two families though the ages, this is the epic saga of Rome, the city and its people.
Shadow of Colossus by T. L. Higley
The place is the island of Rhodes; the time, 227 BC. In the ten years that Tessa of Delos has been in bondage as a high-priced Greek courtesan to a wealthy politician, she has learned to abandon all desire for freedom and love. But when her owner meets a violent death, Tessa is given the chance to be free—if she can hide the truth of his death and maintain a masquerade until escape is possible.
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Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall
Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that her husband is the true criminal; she is only guilty of disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property.
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. The novel is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War.
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign.
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles
In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children, searching for a life and a future. But their dreams are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the Johnsons' settlement while Britt is away establishing a business.
Douglass' Women: A Novel by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Frederick Douglass, the great African-American abolitionist, was a man who cherished freedom in life and in love. In this ambitious work of historical fiction, Douglass' passions come vividly to life in the form of two women: Anna Murray Douglass and Ottilie Assing.
Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon
Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris were engaged to be married, when they were invited to share the Presidential box with the Lincolns at Ford's Theater on the evening of Good Friday, 1865. When John Wilkes Booth crept into the box, the young couple became witnesses to a central tragedy in American history.
In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent
Leah, an escaped slave, discovers a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, he brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created.
The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr
After returning from the Civil War, Cass Wakefield means to live out the rest of his days in his hometown in Mississippi. But when a childhood friend asks him to accompany her to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother from the battlefield where they died, Cass cannot refuse.
The Known World: A Novel by Edward P. Jones
This is the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues.
The Long Journey Home: A Novel of the Post-Civil War Plains by Laurel Means
This epic saga begins when a war-weary homesteader returns home with his injured son after the Civil War, to discover that his wife has passed away, his only daughter has gone, and his land is impoverished beyond repair. After his two sons decide to leave and make good on their own, Henry Morton receives an unexpected land grant from the U.S. government.
A Long Way From Home by Connie Briscoe
Spanning more than sixty years, A Long Way from Home is the story of Susie; her daughter, Clara; and her granddaughter, Susan—house slaves born and reared at Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of President James Madison. Proud and intelligent, these women are united by love, fierce devotion, and a desire for freedom that grows stronger year by year.
March by Geraldine Brooks
From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March. Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.
The Night Inspector by Frederick Busch
The Night Inspector follows the extraordinary life of William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, as he returns from the battlefields to New York City, bent on reversing his fortunes. It is there he meets Jessie, a Creole prostitute who engages him in a venture that has its origins in the complexities and despair of the conflict he has left behind.
On Agate Hill by Lee Smith
A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree, a refugee who has no interest in self-pity.
On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon by Kaye Gibbons
Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, a plantation owner's daughter, grows up in a privileged lifestyle, but it's not all roses. Her family's prosperity is linked to the institution of slavery, and Clarice, a close and trusted family servant, exposes Emma to the truth and history of their plantation and how it brutally affected the slave population.
Red River by Lalita Tademy
Tademy takes her family's story back to a little-chronicled, deliberately-forgotten time...and the struggle of three extraordinary generations of African-American men to forge brutal injustice and shattered promise into a limitless future for their children.
Savannah: Or a Gift for Mr. Lincoln by John Jakes
Georgia 1864: Sherman's army marches inexorably from Atlanta to the sea. In its path: the charming old city of Savannah, where the Lester ladies-attractive widow Sara and her feisty twelve-year-old daughter Hattie-struggle to save the family rice plantation.
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The Alchemist's Daughter by Katharine McMahon
There are long-held secrets at the manor house in Buckinghamshire, England, where Emilie Selden has been raised in near isolation by her father. A student of Isaac Newton, John Selden believes he can turn his daughter into a brilliant natural philosopher and alchemist. The Alchemist's Daughter is a gripping, evocative tale. Set against the backdrop of eighteenth-century London society, it is an unforgettable story of one woman's journey through a world of mystery, passion, and obsession.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume One: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson
Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, as American Patriots riot and battle for liberty, this deeply provocative novel places an African slave at the center of the war for independence. The first of two parts, M. T. Anderson’s breathtaking narrative views the past through a startlingly fresh lens that has powerful resonance for readers today.
Bound by Sally Gunning
By the age of fifteen, Alice can barely remember the time when she was not a servant to John Morton and his daughter, Nabby. Though work fills her days, life with the Mortons is pleasant; Mr. Morton calls Alice his "sweet, good girl," and Nabby, only three years older, is her friend, companion, and now newly married, her mistress. But Nabby's marriage is not happy, and soon Alice is caught up in its storm.
A Factory of Cunning by Philippa Stockley
Philippa Stockley's American debut begins with the arrival in London of the mysterious Mrs. Fox. On the run from a scandalous French past, she takes on a new identity, determined to rehabilitate herself. To do so she must pit her formidable skills for revenge against Earl Much, a British aristocrat with no less notorious a past who is easily her match in sinfulness and intrigue.
The Fan-Maker's Inquisition by Rikki Ducornet
In a tense courtroom during the French Revolution, a young fan-maker, renowned all over Paris for her sensual and graphic objets d'art, is on trial because of her collaboration with the Marquis de Sade. Heads will roll unless the independent fan-maker, erotically cast in the shadow of Sade, can justify her art and friendships to a court known for its rigid and prudish proprieties.
Harpsong by Rilla Askew
The newlyweds don’t head west in classic Dust-Bowl-to-California migration but careen around the Great Plains in a giant figure eight, with Oklahoma in the middle, “the squeezed-in hourglass place.” The young couple’s personal hardships play out against the backdrop of communal hardships of the era, as they appear in hobo jungles and Hoovervilles, rabbit drives and dust storms, bank robberies, cow killings, and the siege of a county courthouse by out-of-work miners and their families in the coal-mining district.
Kingston by Starlight: A Novel by Christopher John Farley
Irish-born Anne Bonny is only a teenager when she is left destitute by her mother's death. Abandoned by her father, she seems destined to be forgotten by the world. But Anne chooses to seek her fortune in the lush tropics of the colonial West Indies, where she passes herself off as a young man named Bonn. She finds work as a ship's hand, sailing under the command of Calico Jack Rackam, a notorious and charismatic pirate with a bounty on his head.
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Les Misérables, translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, (The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion.
Life Mask by Emma Donoghue
In Life Mask, the bestselling author of Slammerkin turns her eye to the aristocracy of late eighteenth-century England, a world where art, politics, sports, and theater combine to form webs of intrigue. At the center of Life Mask are the Honorable Mrs. Anne Damer, the only female sculptor of her time; the Earl of Derby, inventor of the horse race that bears his name and the richest (though homeliest) man in the House of Lords; and Miss Eliza Farren, born without pedigree but now the reigning Queen of Comedy at London's famed Drury Lane Theatre.
Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution by Patrick McGrath
With consummate skill, Patrick McGrath brings to life the squalor and depravity of eighteenth-century London and the hardships and hopes that drove the American colonists to fight for their freedom, weaving history, philosophy, and politics into a captivating family drama. Rich in breathtaking adventure and psychological suspense, Martha Peake is a haunting portrait of human frailty, courage, and redemption.
The Mirrored World by Debra Dean
Born in to lower Russian nobility, Xenia is a passionate dreamer who cares little for social conventions. She unexpectedly falls in love with Andrei, a handsome solider with the Imperial choir. Their perfect happiness is constantly overshadowed by the petty demands of life at the royal court and Xenia’s obsession to have a child. However, she is certain that tragedy will strike and when it finally does, Xenia begins giving away her possessions and finally vanishes.
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
In this spirited comedy of manners, Catherine Morland falls in love with a young clergyman while vacationing in Bath, and his father, thinking her wealthy, invites her to be a guest at Northanger Abbey, the family's country estate. But things take a turn for the worse when it's discovered that she is not wealthy.
Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez
Against the background of the lush, coastal tropics, García Márquez creates the story of an impossible, yet undeniable, love. Of Love and Other Demons is is set in a South American seaport during the colonial era, the home of bishops and viceroys, enlightened thinkers and Inquisitors, lepers and pirates.
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
A tour de force of historical improvisation and vocal acrobatics, Peter Carey’s novel looks at postrevolutionary France and America through the eyes of two unforgettable narrators: Olivier and Parrot. The result is a vivid counterpoint and two wildly divergent perspectives on the same tumultuous period. It is also the story of a most unlikely friendship between a French lord and an English servant.
Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly
When Martha Dandridge Custis marries her second husband, George, she never suspects that the soft-spoken Virginia planter is destined to command the founding of a nation --- or that she is to be “Lady Washington,” the woman at the first President’s side. Only a select inner circle of women will know the cost of sharing a beloved man with history . . . and each will draw strength from the unique treasure given to them by a doomed queen.
Perfume by Patrick Süskind
In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"-the scent of a beautiful young virgin.
The Rebellion of Jane Clarke by Sally Gunning
Grippingly rendered, filled with some of the lesser known but most influential figures of America's struggle for independence --- John and Samuel Adams, Henry Knox, James Otis --- The Rebellion of Jane Clarke is a compelling story of one woman's struggle to find her own place and leave her own mark on a new country as it is born.
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Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund
The year is 2020, and not much has changed. Human beings are still killing each other over religion, and evidence of life on other planets, if exposed, would certainly rock some fundamentalist boats. So when Lucy Bergmann’s astrophysicist husband Thom tenderly hangs a computer memory stick storing irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial life around her neck, Lucy is both moved and nervous.
Bathsheba: The Wives of King David, Book 3 by Jill Eileen Smith
Bathsheba is a woman who longs for love. With her devout husband away fighting the king's wars for many months at a time, discontent and loneliness dog her steps--and make it frighteningly easy to succumb to King David's charm and attention. Though she immediately regrets her involvement with the powerful king, the pieces are set in motion that will destroy everything she holds dear.
City of God by E. L. Doctorow
At the heart of this stylistically daring and dazzling inventive tour-de-force is a riveting detective story about a cross that vanishes from a Lower-East-Side church, only to reappear on the roof of an Upper-West-Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery is a well-known novelist whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age.
Eve: A Novel of the First Woman by Elissa Elliott
In this luminous debut novel, Elissa Elliott puts a powerful twist on biblical narrative, boldly reimagining Eve’s journey. This unique work of fiction blends biblical tradition with recorded history and dazzling storytelling. And as it does, Eve comes to life in a way religion and myth have never allowed—in a novel that explores the very essence of love, motherhood, faith, and humanity.
The Exodus Quest by Will Adams
On the trail of the lost Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologist Daniel Knox stumbles upon a theft in progress at an ancient temple near Alexandria. Then a senior Egyptian archaeologist is violently killed, and the finger of suspicion points at Knox himself. To add to his mounting worries, his partner Gaille Bonnard is kidnapped while showing a television crew around the ruins of Amarna.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
No one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work.
Love's Sacred Song by Mesu Andrews
Standing in the massive shadow of his famous father, young king Solomon wavers between fear and bravado, wisdom and folly. In the uncertain world of alliances and treachery, Solomon longs for peace and a love that is true and pure--a love that can be his cornerstone.
Michal - The Wives of King David, Book One by Jill Eileen Smith
As the daughter of King Saul, Michal lives a life of privilege--but one that is haunted by her father's unpredictable moods and by competition from her beautiful older sister. When Michal falls for young David, the harpist who plays to calm her father, she has no idea what romance, adventures, and heartache await her.
Noah's Wife by T. K. Thorne
Noah's wife is Na'amah, a beautiful and brilliant girl who wishes only to be a shepherdess on her beloved hills in ancient Turkey-- a desire shattered by the hatred of her powerful brother, the love of two men, and a looming disaster that threatens the survival of her world.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons. Told in Dinah's voice, Anita Diamant imagines the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent.
Sarah: Book One of the Canaan Trilogy by Marek Halter
Sarah’s story begins in the cradle of civilization: the Sumerian city-state of Ur, a land of desert heat, towering gardens, and immense wealth. From the great ziggurat of Ishtar to the fertile valleys of Canaan to the bedchamber of the mighty Pharaoh himself, Sarah’s story reveals an ancient world full of beauty, intrigue, and miracles.
Sarai: Wives of the Patriarchs, Book 1 by Jill Eileen Smith
Sarai is aware of the way men look at her, including her half brother Abram. When Abram finally requests Sarai's hand, she asks one thing--that he promise never to take another wife as long as she lives. Even her father thinks the demand is restrictive and agrees to the union only if Sarai makes a promise in return--to give Abram a son and heir.
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As High As the Heavens by Kathleen Morgan
It is 1568 and Mary, Queen of Scots, is imprisoned in Lochleven Castle. But her supporters, including noblewoman Heather Gordon, are planning a rescue. Heather travels to a cottage in the frigid Highlands to teach a simple man--who just happens to resemble someone with access to Lochleven--how to act the part of a nobleman in order to gain entry to the castle. But in the close quarters of the cottage there is more stirring than political rebellion.
Captured by Desire by Kira Morgan
In 16th century Scotland, young Miss Florie Gilder runs away from her drunken foster father to find her real father and her noble heritage. Along the way, she is accused of theft, becomes a fugitive hiding in a forest, and is accidentally wounded by a handsome local huntsman.
Courtesan by Diane Haeger
The Court of François I is full of lust, intrigue, and bawdy bon temps—a different world from the quiet country life Diane de Poitiers led with her elderly husband. Now a widow, the elegant Diane is called back to Court, where the King’s obvious interest marks her as an enemy to the King’s favourite, Anne d’Heilly. As Anne calls on her most venomous tricks to drive Diane away, Diane finds an ally in the one member of Court with no allegiance to the King’s mistress: his teenage second son, Henri.
In the Company of the Courtesan: A Novel by Sarah Dunant
Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to become a miracle of east-west trade: rich and rancid, pious and profitable, beautiful and squalid. With a mix of courage and cunning they infiltrate Venetian society. Together they make the perfect partnership: the sharp-tongued, sharp-witted dwarf, and his vibrant mistress, trained from birth to charm, entertain, and satisfy men who have the money to support her.
Daughter of the Sun by Barbara Wood
Hoshi'tiwa is 17 years old, a member of an unnamed clan in what will, centuries later, become New Mexico. Her life is simple --- she is a corn grower's daughter and she will soon marry a storyteller's apprentice. Until she is captured by the powerful and violent ruler of Center Place, a legendary city of untold wealth and unspeakable violence.
Dissolution by C. J. Sansom
The year is 1537, and the country is divided between those faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the king and the newly established Church of England. When a royal commissioner is brutally murdered in a monastery on the south coast of England, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s feared vicar general, summons fellow reformer Matthew Shardlake to lead the inquiry.
His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester by Jeane Westin
They were playmates as children, impetuous lovers as adults --- and for 30 years were the center of each others’ lives. Astute to the dangers of choosing any one man, the Virgin Queen could never give her “Sweet Robin” what he wanted most --- marriage --- yet she insisted he stay close by her side. His Last Letter tells the story of this great love, especially of the last three years Elizabeth and Dudley spent together, the most dangerous of her rule, when their passion was tempered by a bittersweet recognition of all that they shared --- and all that would remain unfulfilled.
The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert
London, 1593: It is three weeks before the murder of Christopher Marlowe, playwright and spy in Queen Elizabeth I's secret service -- a crime that remains unsolved to this day. New York City, present day: Renaissance scholar turned private eye Kate Morgan investigates a shocking heist and murder involving a mysterious, antique manuscript recently unearthed in central London. What secret lurks in those yellowed, ciphered pages...and how, centuries later, could it drive someone to kill?
Lady in Waiting by Susan Meissner
Readers jump back in time to England after the death of Henry VIII. Lucy Day is ordered to Sudeley Castle, bearing a dress for Lady Jane Grey. Lucy narrates the tale of Lady Jane, pawn in the schemes of powerful men who seek the throne of England even as young Jane Grey is determined to live-and die-on her own terms.
The Last Boleyn: A Novel by Karen Harper
Although her sister Anne (who became the queen) is the one most remembered by history, Mary was the Boleyn that set into motion the chain of events that brought about their meteoric rise to power, as well as the one who managed to escape their equally remarkable fall. Sent away from home at an extraordinarily young age, Mary is quickly plunged into the dangerous world of court politics, where everything is beautiful, but deceptive, and everyone is always watching and manipulating.
Murder Most Royal: A Novel by Jean Plaidy
Sophisticated Anne Boleyn, raised in the decadent court of France, was in love with another man when King Henry claimed her as his own. Being his mistress gave her a position of power; being his queen put her life in jeopardy. Her younger cousin, Catherine Howard, was only fifteen when she was swept into the circle of King Henry. Her innocence attracted him, but a past mistake was destined to haunt her.
Night of Sorrows by Frances Sherwood
Night of Sorrows plunges readers into the conflicting New Worlds of the mysterious Malintzín, born as an Aztec princess and sold as a slave, and her dashing and ruthless lover-master, conquistador Hernán Cortés. As they march through the Empire of the Sun to the shimmering island metropolis, Tenochtítlan (Mexico City), Cortés advances his cause by winning friends through Machiavellian conniving and confronting enemies in merciless battle.
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family¹s ambitious plots as the king¹s interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands.
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett
The year is 1527. The great portraitist Hans Holbein, who has fled the reformation in Europe, is making his first trip to England under commission to Sir Thomas More. In the course of six years, Holbein will become a close friend to the More family and paint two nearly identical family portraits. But closer examination of the paintings reveals that the second holds several mysteries...
The Queen's Captive by Barbara Kyle
England, 1554. In the wake of the failed Wyatt Rebellion, a vengeful Queen Mary has ordered all conspirators captured and executed. Among the imprisoned is her own sister, 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth. Though she protests her innocence, Elizabeth’s brave stand only angers Mary more. But Elizabeth longs to gain her liberty --- and her sister’s crown. Aiding in a new rebellion against the wrathful Mary will soon lead her to an impossible choice…
The Queen's Lady by Barbara Kyle
London, 1527. Marry or serve: for Honor Larke, the choice is clear. Unwilling to perish of boredom as an obedient wife, she leaves the home of her ward, the brilliant Sir Thomas More, to attend Her Majesty, Queen Catherine of Aragon. But life at Henry VIII's court holds more than artifice for an intelligent observer, and Honor knows how to watch --- and when to act...
Rivals in the Tudor Court by D. L. Bogdan
As Queen Catherine's maid and daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, the future seems bright for Elizabeth Stafford. But when her father gives her hand to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, the spirited young woman must sacrifice all for duty. Yet Elizabeth is surprised by her passion for her powerful new husband. And when he takes on a mistress, she is determined to fight for her love and her honor…
The Rose Without a Thorn: A Novel by Jean Plaidy
Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, young Katherine leaves her grandmother's home to become a lady-in-waiting at the court of Henry VIII. The royal palaces are exciting to a young girl from the country, and Katherine finds that her duties there allow her to be near her handsome cousin, Thomas Culpepper, whom she has loved since childhood. But her bliss is short-lived as rumors of her wayward past come back to haunt her, and Katherine's destiny takes another, deadly, turn.
The Ruby Ring: A Novel by Diane Haeger
In The Ruby Ring, Diane Haeger brings to life a love affair so passionate that it remains undimmed by time. Set in the sumptuous world of the Italian Renaissance, it’s the story of the clergymen, artists, rakes, and noblemen who made the world of the painter Raphael and his beloved Margherita the most dynamic and decadent era in European history.
Secrets of the Tudor Court by D. L. Bogdan
When young Mary Howard receives the news that she will be leaving her home for the grand court of King Henry VIII, to attend his mistress Anne Boleyn, she is ecstatic. Everything Anne touches seems to turn to gold, and Mary is certain Anne will one day become Queen. But Mary has also seen the King’s fickle nature and how easily he discards those who were once close to him...
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The Age of Orphans by Laleh Khadivi
All the Flowers in Shanghai by Duncan Jepson
For every young Chinese woman in 1930s Shanghai, following the path of duty takes precedence over personal desires. For Feng, fulfilling her duty means bearing a male heir. Feng must reconcile herself with the sacrifices and terrible choices she has made in order to assure her place in the family and society.
Antonio's Wife by Jacqueline DeJohn
By 1908 Francesca Frascatti has reached the pinnacle of success in the opera world. At night Francesca appears as Tosca at the Manhattan Opera House; but by day, she tries desperately to find her daughter before her cunning grandfather can spirit her away to Italy and out of her scandalous mother's reach forever.
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
Xuela Claudette Richardson, daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half-African father, was delivered to his laundress as an infant, bundled up like his clothes. The Autobiography of My Mother is a story of love, fear, loss, and the forging of a character, an account of one woman's inexorable evolution.
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Bastard of Istanbul is the story of two families, one Turkish and one Armenian American, and their struggle to forge their unique identities against the backdrop of Turkey's violent history. This exuberant, dramatic novel is about memory and forgetting, about the tension between the need to examine the past and the desire to erase it.
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
This extraordinary novel tells the stirring, erotically charged story of Madame Mao Zedong, the woman almost universally known as the 'white-boned demon,' whom many hold directly responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Min penetrates the myth surrounding this woman and provides a portrait of a woman driven by ambition, betrayal, and a never-to-be-fulfilled need to be loved.
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
The Bird Artist begins in 1911. Its narrator, Fabian Vas draws and paints the birds of Witless Bay, his remote Newfoundland coastal village home. In the first paragraph of his tale Fabian reveals that he has murdered the village lighthouse keeper, Botho August. Later, he confesses who and what drove him to his crime..
Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez
Spanning the years between 1932 and 1977, this beautifully told epic is set in the heart of El Salvador, where coffee plantations are the center of life for rich and poor alike. Following three generations of the Prieto Clan and the wealthy family they work for, this is the story of mothers and daughters who live, love, and die for their passions.
A Bitter Veil by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.
The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell
The Breaking of Eggs is the story of a man who closed himself off from everyone and everything years ago and now awakens to discover the world has changed dramatically and he must change with it. It also has the added bonus of being a crash course in 20th century European history, subtly told as a backdrop to Feliks' riveting personal story.
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
In this an epic portrait of passion and ambition, set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland. Johnston has created two of the most memorable characters in recent fiction: Joey Smallwood, who claws his way up from poverty to become New Foundland's first premier; and Sheilagh Fielding, who renounces her father's wealth to become a popular columnist and writer.
The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
In 1959, a young woman, Haruko, marries the Crown Prince of Japan. She is the first nonaristocratic woman to enter the mysterious, hermetic monarchy. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman to accept the marriage proposal of her son, with tragic consequences.
Crippen by John Boyne
Buried under the flagstones of a Camden house are the remains of Cora Crippen, former music-hall singer and wife of Dr. Hawley Crippen. No one would have thought the quiet, unassuming Dr. Crippen capable of murder, yet the doctor and his mistress have disappeared from London, and now a full-scale hunt for them has begun.
The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
It starts with a question, a simple favor asked of a husband by his wife. Her portrait model has canceled, and would he mind slipping into a pair of women's shoes and stockings for a few moments so she can finish the painting on time. "Of course," he answers. "Anything at all." With that, one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the twentieth century begins.
A Day of Small Beginnings by Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum
Poland, 1906: on a cold spring night, in the small Jewish cemetery of Zokof, Friedl Alterman is wakened from death. On the ground above her crouches Itzik Leiber, a reclusive, unbelieving fourteen-year-old whose fatal mistake has spurred the town's angry residents to violence. Now Friedl is trapped in that thin world between life and death, her brash decision binding her forever to Itzik.
The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton
Caddie Blair, a war correspondent, loses her photojournalist lover and her detachment in one tragic moment during an unexpected ambush in the war-torn Middle East. An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos she feels and the consequences when she becomes too involved in the story she is covering.
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love.
Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes
It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling.
Edges: O Israel, O Palestine by Leora Skolkin-Smith
It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling.
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir and her lover Sebastien decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish-speaking country.
The Fig Eater by Jody Shields
When a young woman's body is discovered in the summer of 1910 Vienna, the Inspector's wife is certain the figs found in her stomach during the autopsy are the clue to the identity of the murderer--for there are no fresh figs in Vienna at this time of year.
The First Man by Albert Camus
Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother.
The Flamboyant: A Novel by Lori Marie Carlson
Set in the 1920s and 1930s, The Flamboyant tells the life story of Lenora Demarest, an American beauty intent on achieving fulfillment as the first aviatrix in her adopted country of Puerto Rico. Inspired by the life of a historical figure, and set against the vibrant backdrop of colonial politics, The Flamboyant traces the inner life of a quintessential modern woman.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday, they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and very little to go on, "Nell" sets out to trace her real identity.
The Fox's Walk by Annabel Davis-Goff
It is 1915, the First World War has just entered its second year, and, in Ireland, Nationalists are edging toward revolution. Often lonely and homesick, living in a rigid old-fashioned household where propriety is all-important, eight-year-old Alice Moore pieces together the world around her from overheard conversations, servants' gossip, and her own quiet observations.
Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien
In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. Going After Cacciato is ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.
The Golden Prince by Rebecca Dean
It’s 1912, and seventeen-year-old Prince Edward, England’s Golden Prince of Wales, is feeling the burden of his position. However, when unexpected circumstances bring him to Snowberry Manor, home of the four Houghton sisters, his life suddenly seems more interesting. As he secretly spends more time with Lily, the youngest of the girls, he finds himself falling hopelessly in love.
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.
History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason
Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. When his mother dies, Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe's leading hotelier—a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on one of Amsterdam’s grandest canals. As Piet enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets and finds his life transformed.
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie?
Ireland: A Novel by Frank Delaney
In the winter of 1951, a storytellerarrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside and stays for three wonderful evenings. These nights change young Ronan forever, setting him on a years-long pursuit of the elusive, itinerant storyteller and the glorious tales that are no less than the saga of his tenacious and extraordinary isle.
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra as seen through the eyes of the Romanovs’ young kitchen boy, Leonka. Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanovs’ brutal murders.
The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith
An enigmatic man haunted by guilt and a dark secret from the past . . . A beautiful young woman consumed by a desire that could destroy her lifelong dream . . . A madman who stalks them both in retribution for a murder they know nothing about . . . They all play a part in Sarah Smith's captivating, critically acclaimed novel of suspense.
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
The North Vietnamese army is poised to roll into Saigon. As the fall of the city begins, two lovers make their way through the streets to escape to a new life. Helen Adams, an American photojournalist, must take leave of a devastated country she has come to love. Linh, the Vietnamese man who loves her, must grapple with his own conflicted loyalties of heart and homeland.
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Vivid images of the elderly Marina's youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army began a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation and bitter cold, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping.
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
In 1901, Anna Winterbourne finds herself enraptured by Egypt and in love with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Nearly a hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, a divorced American journalist and descendant of Anna and Sharif has fallen in love with Omar al-Ghamrawi, a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American conductor with his own passionate politics.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when as a nine-year-old girl she is taken from her home and sold to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha.
The Painter from Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Through the raucous glamour of prewar Shanghai and the bohemian splendor of 1920s Paris, and back to a China ripped apart by civil war and teetering on the brink of revolution: this novel tells the story of Pan Yuliang, one of the most talented—and provocative—Chinese artists of the twentieth century.
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Pearl of China by Anchee Min
In the small southern China town of Chin-kiang, in the last days of the nineteenth century, two young girls bump heads and become thick as thieves. Willow is the only child of a destitute family. Pearl is the headstrong daughter of Christian missionaries-and will grow up to become Pearl S. Buck, Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
In 1959, Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist, takes his four young daughters, his wife, and his mission to the Belgian Congo --- a place, he is sure, where he can save needy souls. But the seeds they plant bloom in tragic ways within this complex culture.
Restoration by Olaf Olafsson
Alice Orsini shocks everyone when she marries the son of a minor Italian landowner and begins restoring San Martino, a crumbling villa in Tuscany, to its former glory. But after years of hard work, Alice's growing restlessness pulls her into the heady social swirl of wartime Rome and a reckless affair that will have devastating consequences.
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS, Chris Bohjalian's 15th book, is a spellbinding tale that travels between Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 and Bronxville, New York, in 2012 --- a sweeping historical love story steeped in the author’s Armenian heritage, a subject his legions of fans have been asking him to write about for years.
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place—and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released...
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1959: A Novel by Thulani Davis
It's the summer of 1959 and Willie Tarrant of Turner, Virginia, is twelve and being groomed to be sent in the first wave of integration. Before this can happen, though, eight black college students, wearing suits and fresh haircuts, go into the Woolworth's lunch counter -- changing everything.
The Air We Breathe by Andrea Barrett
In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the community of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. But when the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home.
All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve
"A marriage is always two intersecting stories." This realization comes perhaps too late to the husband of Etna Bliss-a man whose obsession with his young wife begins at the moment of their first meeting and culminates in a marriage doomed by secrets and betrayal.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
In 1939 New York, a young artist who also has been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, teams up with his cousin teams up with his cousin to create a great American literary product --- the comic book. As the shadow of Hitler falls over Europe and ultimately the world, the boys end up immersed in the Golden Age of Comic Books, finding greater fame and more trouble than they could ever have imagined.
The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin
Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. However: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals.
American Music by Jane Mendelsohn
At this novel's center are Milo, a severely wounded veteran of the Iraq War confined to a rehabilitation hospital, and Honor, his physical therapist, a former dancer. When Honor touches Milo’s destroyed back, mysterious images from the past appear to each of them, puzzling her and shaking him to the core.
Angel Sister by Ann H. Gabhart
It is 1936 and Kate Merritt, the middle child of Victor and Nadine, works hard to keep her family together. Her father slowly slips into alcoholism and his business suffers during the Great Depression; it's Kate who must shoulder the emotional load. Who could imagine that a dirty, abandonend little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what the Merritts need?
Artist of the Beautiful: A Novel by J. D. Landis
The fate of Swift River Valley holds a strange fascination for seventeen-year-old Sarianna Renway, a wayward student obsessed with the life and work of poet Emily Dickinson. Sarianna finds herself drawn to this little world whose end is predetermined and whose time is drawing near. In the small hamlet of Greenwich Village—abandoned, beautiful, doomed—Sarianna takes a job tutoring a minister’s son.
Away by Amy Bloom
When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia.
The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell by Loraine Despres
It is 1920, prohibition is in full swing, women are clamoring for the vote -- and in the little town of Gentry, Louisiana, narrow-minded intolerance is on the rise. Sent to jail for swimming in an indecent bathing costume with a group of suffragists, Belle Cantrell knows her behavior broke the rules. But sometimes she has to twist the rules a little, because they all say the same thing: "Don't."
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi, with poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about taverns. He was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot.
Catching Moondrops by Jennifer Erin Valent
Jessilyn Lassiter no longer has to convince people she’s not a child. Having just turned 19 in the summer of 1938, her love for Luke Talley has never been more real. But their budding romance is interrupted when a young, black doctor comes to Calloway, stirring up the racial prejudice that has been simmering just beneath the town’s surface.
The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty
Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a 36-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Young Louise is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will change their lives forever.
City of Light by Lauren Belfer
The year is 1901. Buffalo, New York, is poised for glory. With its booming industry and newly electrified streets, Buffalo is a model for the century just beginning. Louisa Barrett has made this dazzling city her home. But nothing prepares her for a startling discovery: evidence of a murder tied to the city’s cathedral-like power plant at nearby Niagara Falls.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This is the improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog.
Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke
In 1968, a clerical mistake threatens the prestigious but cash-strapped Goode School in a small New England. After a century of all-male, old-boy education, the school accidentally admits its first female student: Carole Faust, a brilliant, outspoken, fifteen-year-old black girl whose arrival will have both an immediate and long-term effect on the prep school and everyone in its orbit.
The Devil Amongst the Lawyers: A Ballad Novel by Sharyn McCrumb
In 1935 Erma Morton, a beautiful young woman with a teaching degree, is charged with the murder of her father in a remote Virginia mountain community. A local journalist, Carl Jennings, covering his first major story, reports what he sees: an ordinary town and a defendant who is probably guilty. But who will believe a local cub reporter whose stories contradict the nation’s star journalists?
Evensong by Gail Godwin
With Evensong, Gail Godwin again translates our everyday existence into soul-touching truths as she brings to brilliantly realized life the people of a small Smoky Mountain town--and a woman whose world is indelibly altered by them.
Fixer by Ed Brodow
Power broker Harry Leonnoff takes on Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in this thrilling novel of New York City politics. From the slums of the Lower East Side to the bloody battle of Belleau Wood, Fixer is the spellbinding tale of a fearless politician with a limp and a .38 who is faced with an impossible choice between his career and his integrity.
The Flaming Corsage by William Kennedy
In the sixth novel of the author's Albany Cycle, the lives of high-born Katrina Taylor and her Irish-American playwright husband are shaped by a 1908 murder-suicide in a Manhattan hotel room.
Fortune's Rocks: A Novel by Anita Shreve
The year is 1899, and Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father's New Hampshire estate, the teenage heroine of Fortune's Rocks is entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers, and lawyers --- and especially by John Haskell, a charismatic physician.
Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
In Birmingham, Alabama, twenty-year-old Stella Silver, an idealistic white college student, is sent reeling off her measured path by events of 1963. Combining political activism with single parenting and night-school teaching, African American Christine Taylor discovers she must heal her own bruised heart to actualize meaningful social change.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women --- mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends --- view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor and hope, THE HELP is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
Her Daughter’s Dream: Marta's Legacy, Book Two by Francine Rivers
Growing up as latchkey kids in a world gripped by the fear of the Cold War isn’t easy for little Carolyn Arundel. With her mother, Hildemara, quarantined to her room with tuberculosis, Carolyn forms a special bond with her oma Marta, who moves in to care for the household. But as tensions between Hildie and Marta escalate, Carolyn believes she is to blame.
Honolulu by Alan Brennert
This is the story of a young “picture bride” who journeys to Hawai'i in 1914 in search of a better life. But instead of the affluent young husband that she has been promised, she is quickly married off to a poor, embittered laborer who takes his frustrations out on his new wife. Renaming herself Jin, she makes her own way in this strange land, finding both opportunity and prejudice.
The House on Malcolm Street by Leisha Kelly
It is the autumn of 1920 and Leah Breckenridge is desperate to find a way to provide for her young daughter. After losing her husband and infant son in an accident, she is angry at God. Finding refuge in a boardinghouse, Leah's heart begins the slow process of mending. Is it the people who surround her--or perhaps this very house--that reach into her heart with healing?
Joy Takes Flight: Alaskan Skies, Book Three by Bonnie Leon
Kate Evans and Paul Anderson are finally married, settling in, and starting a family. They rejoice when Kate finds she is pregnant, but soon it is clear that there are hurdles ahead. Should she continue in her dangerous profession as an Alaskan bush pilot? Can she really fall into the role of a wife? Then tragedy strikes, life begins to unravel, and Kate fears she may have lost Paul for good.
The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as freshmen roommates at Barnard College in 1968. Ann, who comes from a wealthy New England family, is brilliant and idealistic. Georgette, who comes from a bleak town in upstate New York, is mystified by Ann's romanticization of the underprivileged class. An intense and difficult friendship is born.
Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub
Elsa Emerson relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child's game of pretend. While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Irving Green, one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood, who refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette and renames her Laura Lamont.
Leah's Way by Richard Botelho
The tale of one woman's quest to find the meaning of her life, Leah's Way examines the soul at search, set against a world full of human weakness and misgiving. A lifetime of poor choices and the folly of one's own pride can overwhelm the noblest of intentions.
The Legacy of Eden by Nelle Davy
For generations, Aurelia was the crowning estate of the Iowa farmland. Matriarch Lavinia Hathaway had elevated the family name—no matter what relative or stranger she had to destroy in the process. It was a desperation that wrought the downfall of the Hathaways. But with the receipt of a pleading letter, Meredith Pincetti is again thrust into conflict with the legacy that destroyed her family's name.
Little Century by Anna Keesey
Eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she’s met by her distant cousin, a laconic cattle rancher named Ferris Pickett. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin by a small lake, and there she begins her new life as a homesteader. But Esther discovers that this town on the edge of civilization is in the midst of a range war.
The Lost Mother by Mary McGarry Morris
While Henry loves his children deeply, he is devastated by their mother’s desertion. He has not told them why she left or if she’ll return. When Mrs. Phyllis Farley, a prosperous neighbor, begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son, Henry must weigh an unusual proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything.
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.
Magic Time: A Novel by Doug Marlette
Born and raised in Mississippi, Carter Ransom came to New York as a young man and has risen to become a columnist with a major city newspaper. But when his life in New York falls apart and he heads back home to recover, the still-live conflicts of his youth in the civil rights era rise up all around him again.
Metropolis: A Novel by Elizabeth Gaffney
On a freezing night in the middle of a New York winter, a young immigrant is suddenly awakened by a fire in P. T. Barnum’s stable, where he works and sleeps, and soon finds himself at the center of a citywide arson investigation. Determined to clear his name and realize the dreams that inspired his hazardous voyage to America, he will change his identity many times.
The Mineral Palace by Heidi Julavits
Set in Depression-era Colorado, this stunning debut follows Bena Jonssen-a woman struggling with her role as a wife and mother-as she is drawn to the seamier side of Pueblo. Here she encounters a pregnant prostitute and the question of the unborn baby's paternity leads Bena to uncover not only the sexual corruption on which an entire town is founded, but also the lies that enclose her own marriage.
Miscarriage of Justice by Kip Gayden
When her every attempt to rekindle romance and affection with her husband--a prominent local doctor--fails, Anna Dotson finds herself turning to the friendship of Charlie Cobb, a new man in town. But as their relationship becomes more intimate, smalltown tongues start wagging, and their starcrossed affair leads to a shocking public murder.
Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark
St. Paul, Minnesota, 1939. On a hillside, the dead body of a beautiful dime-a-dance girl is found. Assigned to the case is Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner, a man troubled and alone after his wife's recent death. He soon narrows his sights on Herbert White, an eccentric recluse and hobby photographer with a fondness for snapping suggestive photographs of the dime-a-dance girls.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Born in the United States, Harrison Shepher is reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico. One fateful day, he finds himself mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
My Last Days as Roy Rogers by Pat Cunningham Devoto
In 1950s Alabama during the last polio summer before the Salk vaccine, ten-year-old Tabitha "Tab" Rutland is about to have the time of her life. Tab, a tomboy with a passion for Roy Rogers, seeks adventure with her best friend Maudie May, "the lightest brown colored person" she knows. Tab comes of age in an unforgettable confrontation with human frailty, racial injustice, and the healing power of love.
The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook
Meg Mabry has spent her life oppressed by her family’s legacy—a heritage beginning with the journals written by her great-grandmother in the 1890s. Until now, Meg has stubbornly refused to read the journals. But when Meg finally succumbs to the allure of her great-grandmother’s story, everything she believed about her family is turned upside down.
Nora, Nora by Anne Rivers Siddons
Twelve-year-old Peyton McKenzie isn't ready to share her widowed father with anyone—certainly not with her cigarette-smoking redheaded cousin Nora, who just rolled into sleepy Lytton, Georgia, this summer. But when Nora takes a job teaching the first integrated honors class at the local high school, it appears she might be staying forever.
North River by Pete Hamill
One snowy New Year's Day, in the midst of the Great Depression, Dr. James Delaney--haunted by the slaughters of the Great War, and abandoned by his wife and daughter--returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney's care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past.
Northern Lights by Tim O’Brien
At the core of Tim O'Brien's debut novel is the relationship between two brothers: one who went to Vietnam and one who stayed at home. As the two brothers struggle against an unexpected blizzard in Minnesota's remote north woods, what they discover about themselves and each other will change both of them for ever.
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.
Oh My Stars by Lorna Landvik
Tall, slender Violet Mathers is growing up in the Great Depression, which could just as well define her state of mind. Abandoned by her mother as a child, mistreated by her father, and teased by her schoolmates, the lonely girl finds solace in artistic pursuits. Only when she’s hired by the town’s sole feminist to work the night shift in the local thread factory does Violet come into her name, and bloom.
One Mississippi by Mark Childress
You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, Daniel finds fellow outsider Tim Cousins. The two become inseparable, sharing a fascination with Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. But soon the friends commit a small crime that grows and threatens to engulf the whole town.
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
At the turn of the 20th century, reclusive orchardist William Talmadge tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to see the man who gave them no chase and end up indulging in his deep reservoir of compassion. But just as they begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, leading to a shattering tragedy.
The Passion Dream Book by Whitney Otto
The novel begins in 1918, with the story of Romy March, whose artistic aspirations alienate her from her wealthy family. She falls in love with Augustine Marks, a photographer. They journey from place to place, separately and together, until they realize in Beat Generation San Francisco that only love brings them back again and again.
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
Alice Greer, her daughter Taylor, and Taylor's informally adopted daughter, Turtle, all seem fated to lives uncomplicated by relationships with men. But simplicity is gone forever when Taylor and Turtle (who is Cherokee) appear on TV by a coincidence of fate, and come to the attention of Annawake Fourkiller, a lawyer for the Cherokee nation.
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But Iris learns better...
Prince Edward: A Novel by Dennis McFarland
In August of 1959, Benjamin Rome is ten years old, and his hometown of Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is immersed in a frenzy of activity. The Supreme Court has ordered the state to desegregate its public schools; on the heels of the failed "massive resistance" movement, the county has instead voted to close them. Ben finds himself facing choices beyond his years.
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies by Ellen Cooney
Charlotte Heath is married to the scion of the powerful Heath family. When she spies her husband bending to kiss another woman in the village square, impulsive Charlotte heads her horses straight out of town. Upon arriving at The Beechmont Hotel, Charlotte finds that the Beechmont is a rather unique institution where a different kind of hospitality awaits the all-female clientele.
The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin
In the turbulent southern summer of 1963, Millwood's white population steers clear of "Shake Rag," the black section of town. Young Florence Forrest is one of the few who crosses the line. Florence attaches herself to her grandparents' longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. The more time Florence spends in Shake Rag, the more she recognizes how completely race divides her town.
Rainwater by Sandra Brown
Ella Barron is determined that even the ravages of the Dust Bowl will not affect the well-ordered life she has built for herself and her special child, Solly, who lives in a world of his own that even she can’t enter. Aware that he evokes pity and distrust, Ella holds herself aloof from her small community, but her new boarder, David Rainwater, comes into her life—and changes it forever.
Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford
The classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring spirit of youth and the values in life that count.
The River, By Moonlight by Camille Marchetta
On a rainy April night in 1917, a passing vagrant sees a young woman fall (or is it jump?) into New York City's Hudson River. He tries to save her, but fails. The police tentatively identify the woman as Lily Canning, twenty-five years old, from Minuit, a town in the Hudson Valley. But is it Lily?
Rorey's Secret by Leisha Kelly
The Worthams and Hammonds are as close as two families could be, sharing almost everything on their Depression-era Illinois farms. So when a raging fire breaks out and threatens to destroy the Hammond farm, both families are affected by the tragedy. But how did the fire start? Several of the kids know the truth, but no one is talking.
Sarah's Quilt: A Novel of Sarah Agnes Prine and the Arizona Territories, 1906 by Nancy E. Turner
A three-year drought has made Sarah desperate for water. And just when it seems that life couldn't get worse, she learns that her brother and his family are trapped in the Great San Francisco Earthquake. A heartwarming blend of stubbornness and compassion, Sarah Agnes Prine will once again capture the hearts of readers everywhere.
Serena by Ron Rash
Award-winning and New York Times bestselling novelist Ron Rash conjures a gothic tale of greed, corruption, and revenge with a ruthless, powerful, and unforgettable woman at its heart, set amid the wilds of 1930s North Carolina and against the backdrop of America's burgeoning environmental movement.
More books like the ones on this list »
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
This is the epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, who grows up as a dirt-poor boy in backwoods Appalachia and has his first glimpse of social hierarchy when his family moves to a plantation in Tidewater Virginia. One day he goes to the mansion's front door, carrying a message, and is told by a slave wearing the master's livery that he must go around to the back door. This experience has a searing effect on the boy's consciousness. From that moment forward, he sets in motion his grand design: to become, at any cost, a man of wealth and power.
Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
Ahab's Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one woman's spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the greatest American novel, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph. Beautifully written, filled with humanity and wisdom, rich in historical detail, authentic and evocative, Melville's spirit informs every page of her tour de force.
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. Dr. Simon Jordan, an up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness, is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories?
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley
Lidie is hard to scare. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. The novel races alongside them into the Kansas Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters.
Angel’s Den by Jamie Carie
In 1808, Emma, the daughter of a prominent St. Louis family, believes she has met and married her dream man. But she soon discovers that Eric Montclaire is not who she thought he was. Controlling and merciless, Eric insists that Emma join him in a westward expedition following the trail that Lewis and Clark had broken a few years earlier. When Emma meets cartographer Luke Bowen along the way, her life is already in turmoil.
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery -- personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
Autumn Bridge by Takashi Matsuoka
In the year 1311, in the highest tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle, a beautiful woman sits by the window, watching as enemies gather below and fires spread through the night. As she calmly awaits her fate, she begins to write, carefully setting down on a scroll the secret history of the Okumichi clan…of the gift of prophecy they share and the extraordinary destiny that awaits them.
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig
Miss Penelope Deveraux never imagined she’d be whisked off to India to give the scandal of her hasty marriage time to die down. As Lady Frederick Staines, Penelope plunges into the treacherous waters of the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where no one is quite what they seem --- even her own husband. In a strange country, where elaborate court dress masks even more elaborate intrigues and a dangerous spy called the Marigold leaves venomous cobras as his calling card, there is only one person Penelope can trust…
The Binding Chair: Or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society by Kathryn Harrison
In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future.
Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal
When a second-rate painter named Albert Castle takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse. Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electircal sexual stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American West.
The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas
It’s 1880, and for unassuming seventeen-year-old Nealie Bent, the Bride’s House is a fairy tale come to life. It seems as if it is being built precisely for her and Will Spaulding, the man she is convinced she will marry. But life doesn’t go according to plan, and Nealie finds herself in the Bride’s House pregnant --- and married to another.
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
Tademy takes historical fact and mingles it with fiction to weave a vivid and dramatic account of what life was like for the four remarkable women who came before her. Beginning with Tademy's great-great-great-great grandmother Elisabeth, this is a family saga that sweeps from the early days of slavery through the Civil War into a pre-Civil Rights South-a unique and moving slice of America's past that will resonate with readers for generations to come.
Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss
In this stunning novel, Darin Strauss combines fiction with astonishing fact to tell the story of history’s most famous twins. Born in Siam in 1811, Chang and Eng Bunker were international celebrities before the age of twenty. Touring the world’s stages as a circus act, they settled in the American South just prior to the Civil War and lived for more than six decades never more than seven inches apart, attached at the chest by a small band of skin and cartilage.
Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka
It is the dawn of the New Year, 1861. After two centuries of isolation, Japan has been forced to open its doors to the West, igniting a clash of cultures and generations. And as foreign ships threaten to rain destruction on the Shogun’s castle in Edo, a small group of American missionaries has chosen this time to spread the word of their God. Among them, Emily Gibson, a woman seeking redemption from a tormented past, and Matthew Stark, a cold-eyed killer with one more death on his mind.
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in nineteenth-century London who yearns for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society, meeting a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters on the way. Her rise is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all stripes and persuasions.
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Only an elite group of America’s first Dante scholars—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J. T. Fields—can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club must shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer.et.
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
An orphan of unknown heritage, Eliza is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile. Eliza's feelings for Joaquín, a young, penniless revolutionary, are all-consuming. When Joaquín leaves Eliza in hopes of striking it rich in California, she is determined to follow him there, risking every comfort and certainty she has ever known.
The Daughter's Walk by Jane Kirkpatrick
In 1896, Helga Estby and her daughter Clara walked from Washington State to New York City in the hope of raising $10,000 to save their farm from foreclosure. But that journey is only the beginning of their story, as the tragedies that follow their accomplishments are enough to separate Clara from her family for decades. Estranged and alone, it will take the power of faith and forgiveness for Clara to accept healing and to walk into a present joy and a hopeful future.
The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig
Eloise Kelly has gotten into quite a bit of trouble since she started spying on the Pink Carnation and the Black Tulip-two of the deadliest spies to saunter the streets of nineteenth-century England and France. Not only has she unearthed secrets that will rearrange history, she's dallied with Colin Selwick and sought out a romantic adventure all her own. Little does she know that she's about to uncover another fierce heroine running headlong into history.
Deep Creek by Dana Hand
Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over 30 Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case.Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a métis mountain guide with too many secrets.
The Desires of Her Heart: Texas Star of Destiny, Book 1 by Lyn Cote
In 1821, when circumstances make it impossible for her to remain in New Orleans, Dorritt and her family head west to join Stephen Austin's settlement and recoup their fortune in Texas. But as he and Dorritt's party begin a grueling trek across untamed Texas, the success of their journey is in grave doubt. Mexico has broken with the Spanish Crown, and armies from both countries—plus marauding Comanches—roam the pine forests and prairies. And one of the party is plotting destruction.
Dessa Rose by Sherley A. Williams
In 1829 in Kentucky, a pregnant black woman was sentenced to death, but her hanging was delayed until after the birth of her baby. In North Carolina in 1830, a white woman was reported to have given sanctuary to runaway slaves. This classic novel of courage and redemption asks the question: "What if these two women had met?"
The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman
In Sunderland, England, a city quarantined by the cholera epidemic of 1831, Gustine, a defiant fifteen-year-old beauty, sells her body to feed her only love: a fragile baby boy. When she meets surgeon Henry Chive, Gustine begins working for him by securing cadavers for his ill-equipped anatomy school. It is a gruesome job that will soon threaten the very things she’s working so hard to protect.
The Edge of Light: At Home in Beldon Grove, Book 1 by Ann Shorey
It is the summer of 1838 in St. Lawrenceville, Missouri. When her beloved Samuel succumbs to cholera, Molly McGarvie is heartbroken but determined to take care of herself and her children. But when Samuel's unscrupulous brother takes over the family business and leaves Molly to fend for herself, she knows she must head out on her own.
The End of the 19th Century by Eric Larsen
Malcolm Reiner dedicates his life to the "study of the mysteries of space and time." In his "studies" he finds a sweep of time includes the history of West Tree, Minnesota; of the "Epoch of Walking"; and of his own "years of perfect seeing," the period when, living on a farm outside West Tree, he's able, with a poetic vividness rare in fiction, to sense and see what America once was.
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
In 1857 Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers are forced to put their ship up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe. The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a sinister thesis about the races of men.
The Expeditions by Karl Iagnemma
The year is 1844. Sixteen-year-old runaway Elisha Stone is in Detroit, a hardscrabble frontier town on the edge of the civilized world. A canny survivor with the instincts of a born naturalist, Elisha signs on to an expedition into Michigan’s vast, uncharted Upper Peninsula.
Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati
The year is 1812 and Hannah Bonner has returned to her family's mountain cabin in Paradise. But Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner can see that Hannah is not the same woman as when she left. For their daughter has come home without her husband and without her son...and with a story of loss and tragedy that she can't bear to tell. Little does Hannah realize that she is about to be called away to face her greatest challenge ever.
The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland
It was Emily Carr (1871-1945) - not Georgia O'Keeffe or Frida Kahlo - who first blazed a path for women artists. Her boldly original landscapes are praised today for capturing an untamed British Columbia and its indigenous peoples just before industrialization would change them forever. Now Susan Vreeland brings to life this fiercely independent and underappreciated figure.
The Gifted by Ann H. Gabhart
By 1849, Jessamine Brady has been in the Shaker Village for half her life, but in spite of how she loves her sisters there, she struggles to conform to the strict rules. Instead she entertains dreams of the world outside. When Tristan Cooper seems to step out of those dreams to entice her into the forbidden realm beyond the Shaker Village, her life turns upside down.
Heart's Safe Passage: The Midwives, Book 2 by Laurie Alice Eakes
It's 1813 and all Phoebe Lee wants out of life is to practice midwifery in Loudon County, Virginia. When Belinda, her pregnant sister-in-law, presses Phoebe to accompany her onto a British privateer in order to cross the Atlantic and save her husband from an English prison, Phoebe tries to refuse, then finds herself kidnapped.
Hottentot Venus: A Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud
It is Paris, 1815. An extraordinarily shaped South African girl known as the Hottentot Venus, dressed only in feathers and beads, swings from a crystal chandelier in the duchess of Berry’s ballroom. Below her, the audience shouts insults and pornographic obscenities. Among these spectators is the Baron George Cuvier, whose encounter with her will inspire a theory of race that will change European science forever.
Hunting Midnight by Richard Zimler
A bereft child, a freed African slave, and the rich history of Portugal’s secret Jews collide memorably in Richard Zimler’s mesmerizing novel--a dazzling work of historical fiction played out against a backdrop of war and chaos that unforgettably mines the mysteries of devotion, betrayal, guilt, and forgiveness.
Imposture: A Novel by Benjamin Markovits
Lord Byron was the greatest writer and most notorious, scandalous lover of his age—an irresistible attraction for a sheltered, bookish, and passionate young woman like Eliza Esmond. Eliza believes she's met Byron on the doorstep of his publisher, and that her dreams have come true when he arranges to meet her in secret. But what if the man she believes to be Byron is someone else?
An Inconvenient Wife by Megan Chance
An Inconvenient Wife is a rich blend of suspense, social history (America in the 1880s), and passion. This is a powerfully written page-turner about a woman's struggle to escape the confines of her time, class, and gender.
Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg
Everything lies ahead for Lizzie and Neil McKenzie when they arrive at the St. Kilda islands in July of 1830. As the two adjust to life at the edge of civilization, where the natives live in squalor and babies perish mysteriously, their marriage-and their sanity-are soon threatened.
The Linnet Bird: A Novel by Linda Holeman
In the claustrophobic, mannered world of British India, Linny Ingram seems the perfect society wife: pretty, gracious, subservient. But appearances can be deceptive. Linny Ingram was born Linny Gow, an orphan raised in the gray slums of Liverpool, and she is haunted by her past, and by the constant threat of discovery.
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.” Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and the violent and chaotic end of slavery.
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
What if, hidden in an old attic chest, Jane Austen's memoirs were discovered after hundreds of years? What if those pages revealed the untold story of a life-changing love affair? That's the premise behind this spellbinding novel, which delves into the secrets of Jane Austen's life, giving us untold insights into her mind and heart.
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
With her richly textured novels, Susan Vreeland has offered pioneering portraits of artists' lives. Now, as she did in Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland once again focuses on a single painting, Auguste Renoir's instantly recognizable masterpiece Luncheon of the Boating Party. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
From its sharply satiric opening sentence, Mansfield Park dealas with money and marriage, and how strongly they affect each other. Shy, fragile Fanny Price is the consummate "poor relation." Sent to live with her wealthy uncle Thomas, she clashes with his spoiled, selfish daughters and falls in love with his son.
The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig
Modern-day student Eloise Kelly has achieved a great academic coup by unmasking the elusive spy, the Pink Carnation, who saved England from Napoleon. But now she has a million questions about the Carnation's deadly nemesis, the Black Tulip. And she's pretty sure that handsome Colin Selwick has the answers somewhere in his family's archives...
Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester
The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. This novel is the first of the eleven swashbuckling Hornblower tales that are today regarded as classic adventure stories of the sea.
Mr. Wroe's Virgins by Jane Rogers
When God told Prophet John Wroe to comfort himself with seven virgins, his congregation gave him its daughters. So begins this provocative and immensely powerful novel, set in nineteenth-century England and based on actual events.
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Willa Cather's classic My Antonia is the story of the daughter of an immigrant family that sets out to farm the untamed prairie land of Nebraska in the late 19th century. Told to us from the perspective of Jim Burden, an orphan who comes to live at his grandparent's neighboring farm, this is an enduring American classic rich with the beautiful imagery of the midwestern plains.
Natives and Exotics by Jane Alison
In 1970, nine-year-old Alice is ravished by the beauty of Ecuador, a country her parents are helping to despoil. Forty years earlier, Alice's newlywed grandmother Violet confronts her country's past as she makes a home in the wilds of Australia. And before that, in early nineteenth-century Scotland, Violet's great-great-grandfather George flees to the Azores, unaware that he will have a hand in destroying the earthly paradise there..
The News from Paraguay: A Novel by Lily Tuck
The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.
One Last Look by Susanna Moore
After several wretched months at sea, Eleanor Oliphant arrives in Calcutta with her brother Henry and sister Harriet. It is 1836, and her beloved Henry has just been appointed England’s new Governor-General for India. Eleanor is to be his official hostess. Over the course of six years and a trek from Calcutta to Kabul and back, India manages to unsettle all of her “old, old ideas.”
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives late in the summer of 1877 in the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, Eleonora Cohen proves herself an extraordinarily gifted child—a prodigy—at a very young age. When she is eight years old, she stows away aboard a ship to the teeming and colorful imperial capital of Stamboul where a new life awaits her.
The Outsider by Ann H. Gabhart
For as long as she can remember, Gabrielle Hope has had the gift of knowing--visions that warn of things to come. When she and her mother joined the Pleasant Hill Shaker community in 1807, the community embraced her gift. But Gabrielle fears this gift; when one of these visions comes to pass, a chain of events is set in motion that will challenge Gabrielle's loyalty to the Shakers.
The Painted Kiss by Elizabeth Hickey
Vienna in 1886 was a city of elegant cafés and grand opera houses. It was there that twelve-year-old Emilie Flöge met the controversial libertine and painter Gustav Klimt. When Klimt is hired by Emilie's bourgeois father to give her some basic drawing lessons, he introduces her to a subculture of dissolute artists, wanton models, and decadent patrons that both terrifies and fascinates her.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
This superb novel, autumnal and mellow in tone, concerns the lives and loves of the Elliot family and their friends and relatives, in particular the thwarted romance between Anne Elliot---Austen's sweetest, most appealing heroine---and Captain Frederick Wentworth. This is a wonderful recreation of genteel life in the English countryside.
The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
Baltimore, 1849. The public, the press, and even Edagar Allen Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s.
A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin
Violet schemed her way to Chicago to discover the mother she barely remembered. As for romance… with the help of her grandmother and three great aunts, that is coming along nicely as well --- perhaps too well. Each of her relatives, including her saintly grandmother, seems to have a separate agenda for her. In the course of a summer, Violet's world will open wide before her eyes.
The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani
Nella, the middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life “in town,” far from the rigors of farm life. But Nella’s dreams shift when she meets Renato Lanzara, the son of a prominent family. Renato is a worldly, handsome, devil-may-care poet who has a way with words that makes him irresistible. But Nella is not alone in her pursuit: every girl in town seems to want Renato.
Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal.
Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle
It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. Before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac. Locked up for the rest of his life at Riven Rock, the family's California mansion, his true salvation lies with Katherine.
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh
In Amitav Ghosh's SEA OF POPPIES, the Ibis began its treacherous journey across the Indian Ocean, bound for the cane fields of Mauritius with a cargo of indentured servants. Now, in RIVER OF SMOKE, the former slave ship flounders in the Bay of Bengal, caught in the midst of a deadly cyclone.
Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase-Riboud
Thomas Jefferson had a mistress for 38 years whom he loved and lived with until he died—the beautiful and elusive Sally Hemings. In this moving novel, Barbara Chase-Riboud re-creates one of America’s most powerful love stories and gives us a poignant, tragic, and unforgettable meditation on the history of race and sex in America.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Her destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of the Opium Wars in China. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners on board, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
The novel, daringly written in first person, begins in the snow. It's 1848, and Emily Dickinson is a student at Mount Holyoke, with its mournful headmistress and strict, strict rules. Inspired by her letters and poetry, Charyn goes on to capture the occasionally comic, always fevered, ultimately tragic story of her life-from defiant Holyoke seminarian to dying recluse.
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Accidents of Providence by Stacia M. Brown
Even in her own time, Rachel Lockyer is hardly noticed by others: she is an unmarried woman who struggles to support herself, living on the margins of society, and she cannot easily be slotted into one of the few roles available to women. But the novel opens up her life to us allowing us to glimpse her inner self, her passions and her humanity. When she falls in love with William Walwyn (a real historical figure), she finds herself swept up in the tide of history and a victim of Puritanical laws.
Angel And Apostle by Deborah Noyes
At the end of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel, The Scarlet Letter, we know that Pearl, the elf-child daughter of Hester Prynne, is somewhere in Europe, comfortable, well set, and a mother herself now. But it could not have been easy for to arrive at such a place when she begins life as the bastard child of a woman publicly humiliated, again and again, in an unrelentingly judgmental Puritan world. With a brilliant and authentic sense of that time and place, Deborah Noyes envisions the path Pearl takes to make herself whole and to carve her place in the New World.
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
In the seventeenth century, the English Revolution is under way. The nation, seething with religious and political discontent, has erupted into violence and terror. Jacob Cullen and his fellow soldiers dream of rebuilding their lives when the fighting is over. But the shattering events of war will overtake them.
The Coffee Trader by David Liss
Amsterdam, 1659: On the world's first commodities exchange, fortunes are won and lost in an instant. Miguel Lienzo, a sharp-witted trader in the city's close-knit community of Portuguese Jews, knows this only too well. Once among the city's most envied merchants, Miguel has suddenly lost everything. Now, impoverished and humiliated, living in his younger brother's canal-flooded basement, Miguel must find a way to restore his wealth and reputation.
Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt
Bess Southerns, an impoverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft. When a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate, eager to make his name as a witch finder, plays neighbors and family members against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights.
The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips
London, 1672. A vicious killer stalks the court of Charles II, inscribing the victims’ bodies with mysterious markings. Are the murders the random acts of a madman? Or the violent effects of a deeply hidden conspiracy? Cambridge, 2008. Teaching history at Trinity College is Claire Donovan’s dream come true --- until one of her colleagues is found dead on the banks of the River Cam. The only key to the professor’s unsolved murder is the 17th-century diary kept by his last research subject, Hannah Devlin, physician to the king’s mistress.
The Feast of Roses: A Novel by Indu Sundaresan
The love story of Emperor Jahangir and Mehrunnisa, begun in the critically praised debut novel The Twentieth Wife, continues in Indu Sundaresan's The Feast of Roses. This lush new novel tells the story behind one of the great tributes to romantic love and one of the seven wonders of the world -- the Taj Mahal.
Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
History and fiction merge seamlessly in this luminous novel about artistic vision and sensual awakening. GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING tells the story of sixteen-year-old Griet, whose life is transformed by her brief encounter with genius...even as she herself is immortalized in canvas and oil.
The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato
Venice, 1681. Glassblowing is the lifeblood of the Republic, and Venetian mirrors are more precious than gold. Jealously guarded by the murderous Council of Ten, the glassblowers of Murano are virtually imprisoned on their island in the lagoon. But the greatest of the artists, Corradino Manin, sells his methods and his soul to the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, to protect his secret daughter.
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.
The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
After a violent storm in the South Pacific in the year 1643, Roberto della Griva finds himself shipwrecked-on a ship. Swept from the Amaryllis, he has managed to pull himself aboard the Daphne, anchored in the bay of a beautiful island. The ship is fully provisioned, he discovers, but the crew is missing. As Roberto explores the different cabinets in the hold, he remembers chapters from his youth: Ferrante, his imaginary evil brother; the siege of Casale, that meaningless chess move in the Thirty Years' War in which he lost his father and his illusions; and the lessons given him on Reasons of State, fencing, the writing of love letters, and blasphemy.
Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Antonia Fraser
The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and extravagant court in seventeenth-century Europe. Now, Antonia Fraser goes behind the well-known tales of Louis’s accomplishments and follies, exploring in riveting detail his intimate relationships with women.
With consummate skill, Fraser explores the nature of women’s religious lives—as well as such practical matters as contraception—in her magnificent, sweeping portrait of the king, his court, and his ladies.
The Loves of Charles II: The Stuart Saga by Jean Plaidy
Ten years after Charles I was deposed and executed, his son, Charles II, regains the throne after many years in exile. Charles is determined not only to restore the monarchy but also to revive a society that has suffered under many years of Puritan rule, when everything from theater to Christmas festivals was illegal. As king, Charles II throws himself into the gaiety of court life, becoming a patron of the arts and a consummate lover of women.
Peony in Love: A Novel by Lisa See
Lisa See's haunting novel takes readers back to 17th century China, after the Manchus seize power and the Ming dynasty is crushed. Steeped in traditions and ritual, this story brings to life another time and place -- even the intricate realm of the afterworld, with its protocols, pathways, and stages of existence . . . a vividly imagined place where one’s soul is divided into three, ancestors are worshiped, misdeeds are punished, and hungry ghosts wander the earth.
Poison by Kathryn Harrison
Set in 17th-century Spain and narrated with hypnotic intensity, Poison is the story of two women, born on the same day, whose lives run a parallel, tragic course. The terror of Spain's Inquisition, the tyranny of superstition, the rapture of religious fervor and the intrigue of the king's court form the backdrop of this rich, mesmerizing novel.
The Secret of the Glass by Donna Russo Morin
The Murano glassmakers of Venice are celebrated and revered…but now three are dead, killed for attempting to leave the city that both prized their work and kept them prisoner. For in this, the 17th century, the secret of their craft must, by law, never leave Venetian shores. Yet there is someone who keeps the secret while defying tradition. She is Sophia Fiolario, and she, too, is a glassmaker. Her crime is being a woman…
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