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Historical fiction

  • Author:
    Beverley, Jo
    Summary:

    Lady Mara St. Bride spends an adventure-filled evening on the town in London and winds up in a bit of trouble. Coming to her rescue is dashing Lord Darius Debenham, a good man with a noble, yet painful past.

  • Author:
    Laurens, Stephanie
    Summary:

    The distinguished veterans of the Bastion Club represent England's finest eligible bachelors. Among them is Deverell, a strapping man about to meet his match in the alluring Phoebe Malleson.

  • Author:
    Byrd, Sandra
    Summary:

    Sandra Byrd delivers a fresh look at Anne Boleyn through the eyes of her lifelong friend Meg Wyatt. As Anne finds favor with Henry VIII, Meg basks in the glow of Anne's glory. But when Anne falls out of favor, the childhood friends are plunged into a maelstrom of slander and intrigue that tests the limits of their loyalties and puts their lives--and the lives of their loved ones--in grave danger.

  • Author:
    Winspear, Jacqueline
    Summary:

    Spring 1940. With Britons facing what has become known as "the Bore War," Maisie Dobbs is asked to investigate the disappearance of a local lad, a young apprentice craftsman working on a government contract. At the same time, a boy Maisie knows and loves goes missing too.

  • Author:
    Belfrage, Anna
    Summary:

    While Matthew struggles to come to terms with the fact that Scotland of 1688 bears little resemblance to his lovingly conserved memories, Alex is forced to confront unresolved issues from her past, including her overly curious brother-in-law, Luke Graham. And then there's the further complication of the dashing, flamboyant Viscount Dundee, a man who knocks Alex completely off her feet.

  • Author:
    Meacham, Leila
    Summary:

    In early 1900s Texas, Samantha Gordon, heiress to a large cattle ranch, and Nathan Holloway, a charming farm boy, find their fates intertwined. As changes sweep the rustic countryside, their connection drives this narrative compulsively forward--as they love, lose, and betray.

  • Author:
    Butler, Paul
    Summary:

    In 1925, in a London restaurant, J. Bruce Ismay, former chairman of the White Star Line, has a quiet dinner with his daughter Evelyn. Through the extravagant foliage of the dining room, a young woman watches. Like Ismay, Miranda Grimsden was a passenger on board the ill-fated Titanic that terrible night in April 1912. Fuelled by simmering emotions, Ismay, Evelyn, and Miranda take a backwards journey through the thirteen intervening years to confront issues of cowardice, spite, and revenge, and to dare themselves to exorcise the spectre of the past.

  • Author:
    Waters, Sarah
    Summary:

    Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

  • Author:
    Crichton, Michael
    Summary:

    TIMELINE opens on the threshold of the 21st century in a world of exploding advances on the frontiers of technology. Information moves instantly, and any moment of the past can be actualized. Historians can enter, literally, life in fourteenth century feudal France. Not since JURASSIC PARK has Michael Crichton given us such a magnificent adventure. Here, he combines a science of the future with the complex realities of the medieval past. In a heart-stopping narrative, TIMELINE carries us into a realm of unexpected suspense and danger, overturning our most basic ideas of what is possible.

  • Author:
    Krueger, Lesley
    Summary:

    A richly atmospheric portrait of women's agency and the timelessness of love, Time Squared explores the enduring roles of rights, responsibility, and devotion throughout history The game will change when you remember who you are Robin and Eleanor meet in 1811 at the British estate of Eleanor's rich aunt Clara. Robin is about to leave to fight in the Napoleonic Wars, and her aunt rules out a marriage between them. Everyone Eleanor knows, including Robin, believe they've always lived in these times. But Eleanor has strange glimpses of other eras, dreams that aren't dreams but memories of other lives. And their time jumps start as their romance deepens. Robin fights in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, in Vietnam and Iraq. Meanwhile, Eleanor struggles to figure out what's going on, finally understanding that she and Robin are being manipulated through time. Who is doing this, and why? Arriving in modern times, Eleanor sets off to confront the ones she discovers are behind this — chessmasters playing her like a pawn. Eleanor's goal? To free herself to live out her life on her own terms. Time Squared examines the roles women are forced to play in different centuries, the power they're allowed, the stresses they face — and what this does to their relationships.

  • Author:
    Grunwald, Lisa
    Summary:

    A magical love story, inspired by the legend of a woman who vanished from Grand Central Terminal, sweeps readers from the 1920s to World War II and beyond, in the spirit of The Time Traveler's Wife and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button "A classic story of fate, true love, art, and chance with truth and beauty."-Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Tony's Wife On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don't seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again-and again-will become the focus of his love and his life. Nora, an aspiring artist and fiercely independent, is shocked to find she's somehow been trapped, her presence in the terminal governed by rules she cannot fathom. It isn't until she meets Joe that she begins to understand the effect that time is having on her, and the possible connections to the workings of Grand Central and the solar phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the sun rises or sets between the city's skyscrapers, aligned perfectly with the streets below. As thousands of visitors pass under the famous celestial blue ceiling each day, Joe and Nora create a life unlike any they could have imagined. With infinite love in a finite space, they take full advantage of the "Terminal City" within a city, dining at the Oyster Bar, visiting the Whispering Gallery, and making a home at the Biltmore Hotel. But when the construction of another landmark threatens their future, Nora and Joe are forced to test the limits of freedom and love. Delving into Grand Central Terminal's rich past, Lisa Grunwald crafts a masterful historical novel about a love affair that defies age, class, place, and even time. Advance praise for Time After Time "I'll never again set foot in Grand Central Terminal without looking over my shoulder for Nora and Joe, or marveling at the station itself-a backdrop as intriguing as the love story that unfolds beneath its star-studded ceiling."-Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones "Time After Time doesn't just re-create the lost New York of the 1920s to 1940s, it inhabits it-and so will the reader, in the company of the book's wonderful characters."-Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call and The Guarded Gate

  • Author:
    Anthony, Fletcher
    Summary:

    50,000 years ago: The People, who for time immemorial have lived in the Javanese rainforests, are driven from their ancestral hunting grounds by the invaders they call the Newcomers. So begins the epic journey that will bring them to Australia.

  • Author:
    Namioka, Lensey
    Summary:

    Third Sister in the Tao family, Ailin has watched her two older sisters go through the painful process of having their feet bound. In China in 1911, all the women of good families follow this ancient tradition. But Ailin loves to run away from her governess and play games with her male cousins. Knowing she will never run again once her feet are bound, Ailin rebels and refuses to follow this torturous tradition. As a result, however, the family of her intended husband breaks their marriage agreement. And as she enters adolescence, Ailin finds that her family is no longer willing to support her. Chinese society leaves few options for a single woman of good family, but with a bold conviction and an indomitable spirit, Ailin is determined to forge her own destiny.

  • Author:
    Graham, Genevieve
    Summary:

    In the summer of 1916, Private Daniel Baker marches into battle with the boys of Nova Scotia's 25th Battalion. Out of brutal necessity, Danny has steeled himself against the trials and horrors of war, but he is completely unprepared to meet the love of his life in war-torn France. Audrey Poulin has the soul of an artist. She lives alone with her grandmother in the quiet French countryside, where her only joy is in her brush and palette. When, by chance, she encounters Danny, the handsome young soldier captures her heart and inspires her painting. The young lovers believe that only together can they face the hardships the war brings. But love is just the beginning. Mere months later, Danny is gravely wounded at the Battle of the Somme, and his future is thrown into uncertainty. Soon, he and Audrey find themselves struggling to build a new life in Halifax, a city grieving its lost men. As the grey winter of 1917 sets in, Danny's lack of purpose and Audrey's isolation continue to mount, pulling the two apart just as a new catastrophe threatens their existence.

  • Author:
    Gregory, Philippa
    Summary:

    The #1 New York Times bestselling author and "one of the great storytellers of our time" (San Francisco Book Review) turns from the glamour of the royal courts to tell the story of an ordinary woman, Alinor, who cannot bear to conform to the life that lies before her. Midsummer's Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of a civil war between a renegade king and a rebellious parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands-the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor, a descendant of wise women, trapped in poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor's ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbors. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands. No other author surpasses Gregory's ability to take "women out of their secondary placesplacing them stage center in starring roles" (Booklist). Tidelands is a compelling achievement that launches an exciting new era in her illustrious career.

  • Author:
    Fraser, Raymond
    Summary:

    Through Sunlight and Shadows is an autobiographical novel about a young boy set in the small New Brunswick town of Bannonbridge in the 1940s and 1950s. The story is told from the perspective of an older man, Walt Macbride, a character well known to readers of other Raymond Fraser novels. "When I think back to those early days," he says, "my first feeling is of darkness inside our home, and sunshine in the yard outside. But if I think a little more I can find sunshine within and darkness without." Macbride's "memoir" is a vivid portrayal of childhood, a time when every experience is new and fresh, and when the innocence and bright expectations of the young inevitably run into life's not always kind realities. Those who began life in the middle of the last century frequently describe that era as "the best time of all to have been young," and a town like Bannonbridge as "the greatest place in the world to grow up in."

  • Author:
    Bradley, Alan
    Summary:

    Hailed as "a combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes" by The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in a much anticipated new Christmas mystery from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley. In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia's blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty--and not empty enough. Only too eager to run an errand for the vicar's wife, Flavia hops on her trusty bicycle, Gladys, to deliver a message to a reclusive wood-carver. Finding the front door ajar, Flavia enters and stumbles upon the poor man's body hanging upside down on the back of his bedroom door. The only living creature in the house is a feline that shows little interest in the disturbing scene. Curiosity may not kill this cat, but Flavia is energized at the prospect of a new investigation. It's amazing what the discovery of a corpse can do for one's spirits. But what awaits Flavia will shake her to the very core. Acclaim for Alan Bradley's beloved Flavia de Luce novels, winners of the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award, Barry Award, Agatha Award, Macavity Award, Dilys Award, and Arthur Ellis Award "If ever there were a sleuth who's bold, brilliant, and, yes, adorable, it's Flavia de Luce."--USA Today "[Flavia] is as addictive as dark chocolate."--Daily Mail "Flavia de Luce is still the world's greatest adolescent British chemist/busybody/sleuth."--The Seattle Times

  • Author:
    Morris, Heather
    Summary:

    This program includes exclusive archival audio. From Heather Morris, the New York Times bestselling author of the multi-million copy bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey : a story of family, courage, and resilience, inspired by a true story. Against all odds, three Slovakian sisters have survived years of imprisonment in the most notorious death camp in Nazi Germany: Auschwitz. Livia, Magda, and Cibi have clung together, nearly died from starvation and overwork, and the brutal whims of the guards in this place of horror. But now, the allies are closing in and the sisters have one last hurdle to face: the death march from Auschwitz, as the Nazis try to erase any evidence of the prisoners held there. Due to a last minute stroke of luck, the three of them are able to escape formation and hide in the woods for days before being rescued. And this is where the story begins. From there, the three sisters travel to Israel, to their new home, but the battle for freedom takes on new forms. Livia, Magda, and Cibi must face the ghosts of their past-and some secrets that they have kept from each other-to find true peace and happiness. Inspired by a true story, and with events that overlap with those of Lale, Gita, and Cilka, The Three Sisters will hold a place in listeners' hearts and minds as they experience what true courage really is. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

  • Author:
    Sherrard, Valerie
    Summary:

    Commended for the 2009 Best Books for Kids & Teens For Skye Haverill and her family, it begins as an ordinary day. But in the annals of Canadian history, October 7, 1825, is the date of one of our greatest national disasters. The Haverill family has been turned upside down in the last year. Following the death of their mother, Skye and her brother, Tavish, have adjusted to live with a single parent. And when they're asked to make another adjustment – when his father remarries and his new wife becomes pregnant – Skye finds that some changes are too much to handle. But family struggles quickly become irrelevant when the Haverills and their community are caught up in the Miramichi Fire, the largest land fire in North American history. As the family and the town struggle through the fire and the devastating aftermath, all must find a way to rebuild homes and relationships.

  • Author:
    Boyden, Joseph
    Summary:

    It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is gravely wounded and addicted to morphine. As Niska slowly paddles her canoe on the three-day journey to bring Xavier home, travelling through the stark but stunning landscape of Northern Ontario, their respective stories emerge—stories of Niska’s life among her kin and of Xavier’s horrifying experiences in the killing fields of Ypres and the Somme.

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