Historical fiction favorites Part 2
Explore top historical fiction favorites in Part 2 of our curated list. Discover must-read books that bring history to life with captivating stories and rich details.
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The Place of Truth
by Christian Jacq
Volume IV in the Stone of Light series. An unknown traitor undermines the security of the Place of Truth. Will Paneb reveal the culprit in time? Read on ...
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Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
The classic civil war romanctic tale of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler and the Civil War conflict.
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Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife
by Linda Berdoll
What readers are saying "Whoa, Darcy!" "Some parts are hilarious and some a walk on the wild side for Austen characters. Curl up and enjoy!" "Tells the tale I always wanted to hear...how the Darcys lived happily ever after..." "The only fault I found with this book was that it ended." Every woman wants to be Elizabeth Bennet Darcy-beautiful, gracious, universally admired, strong, daring and outspoken-a thoroughly modern woman in crinolines. And every woman will fall madly in love with Mr. Darcy-tall, dark and handsome, a nobleman and a heartthrob whose virility is matched only by his utter devotion to his wife. Their passion is consuming and idyllic-essentially, they can't keep their hands off each other-through a sweeping tale of adventure and misadventure, human folly and numerous mysteries of parentage. Hold on to your bonnets! This sexy, epic, hilarious, poignant and romantic sequel to Pride and Prejudice goes far beyond Jane Austen.
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Douglass' Women
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
WINNER OF THE 2003 PEN OAKLAND JOSEPHINE MILES AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING WRITING AND THE BLACK CAUCUS OF THE ALA LITERARY AWARD 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. Douglass' Women is an imaginative rendering of these two women -- one black, the other white -- in Douglass' life. Anna, his wife, was a free woman of color who helped Douglass escape as a slave. She bore Douglass five children and provided him with a secure, loving home while he traveled the world with his message. Along the way, Douglass satisfied his intellectual needs in the company of Ottilie Assing, a white woman of German-Jewish descent, who would become his mistress for decades to come. How these two women find solidarity in their shared love for Douglass -- and his vision for a free America -- is at the heart of Jewell Parker Rhodes' extraordinary, epic novel.
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The Palace of Tears
by Alev Lytle Croutier
It is 1868. On a balmy autumn afternoon in Paris, young winemaker Casimir de Châteauneuf wanders into a small shop filled with curiosities from the Orient. There he spies a cache of fine miniature portraits. Above all others, an ivory-skinned beauty captivates him. Her eyes ... one blue, the other yellow. That night they pursue Casimir in his dreams, as one burning question consumes him: Who is she? Thus begins Alev Croutier’s lush, stirring adventure of the heart — a mesmerizing tale of forbidden passion, true love, and destiny. For Casimir will forsake his family, his vocation, and his country to find the object of his obsession. His journey will lead him across desert and sea, from the Royal Court in Paris to a sultan’s palace in Istanbul. And there he will find the woman of his reveries, the woman with one blue eye, the other yellow. But in this city of passion, in a Palace of Tears, Casimir is about to discover what it will mean to make a dream real ... and what awaits him when his lover is set free.
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Sarah
by Orson Scott Card
Fictionally explores the life of Sarah, daughter of a king, wife of a prophet, faithful follower of the God of Abraham, recipient of a miracle, and mother of nations.
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Morgan's Run
by Colleen McCullough
Colleen McCullough captivated millions with her beloved worldwide bestseller The Thorn Birds. Now she takes readers to the birth of modern Australia with a breath-taking saga brimming with drama, history, and passion. It was one of the greatest human experiments ever undertaken: to populate an unknown continent with the criminals of English society. For Richard Morgan, twelve months as a prisoner on the high seas would be just the beginning in a soul-trying test to survive in a hostile new land where, against all odds, he would find a new love and a new life. From the dank cells of England's prisons to the unforgiving frontier of the eighteenth-century outback, Morgan's Run is the epic tale of one man whose strength and character helped settle a country and define its future.
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The Concubine's Tattoo
by Laura Joh Rowland
Twenty months spent as the shogun's sosakan-sama--most honorable investigator of events, situations, and people--has left Sano Ichiro weary. He looks forward to the comforts that his arranged marriage promises: a private life with a sweet, submissive wife and a month's holiday to celebrate their union. However, the death of the shogun's favorite concubine interrupts the couple's wedding ceremony and shatters any hopes the samurai detective had about enjoying a little peace with his new wife. After Sano traces the cause of Lady Harume's death to a self-inflicted tattoo, he must travel into the cloistered, forbidden world of the shogun's women to untangle the complicated web of Harume's lovers, rivals, and troubled past, and identify her killer. To make matters worse, Reiko, his beautiful young bride, reveals herself to be not a traditional, obedient wife, but instead, a headstrong, intelligent, aspiring detective bent on helping Sano with his new case. Sano is horrified at her unladylike behavior, and the resulting sparks make their budding love as exciting as they mystery surrounding Lady Harume's death. Amid the heightened tensions and political machinations of feudal Japan, Sano faces a daunting complex investigation. As subtle as the finest lacquered screen, as powerful as the slash of a sword, Laura Joh Rowland's The Concubine's Tattoo vividly brings to life a story of murder, jealousy, sexual intrigue, and political storms that keeps is in its spell until the final, shattering scene.
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The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria
by Laura Joh Rowland
When the shogun's young cousin and heir apparent is found murdered in the bed of Lady Wisteria, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People is called upon to solve the crime.
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The Counterfeit Crank
by Edward Marston
Nicholas Bracewell, the book holder and stage manager for the popular London theater troupe Westfield's Men, has a few problems on his hands. Edmund Hoode, the troupe's talented playwright, has fallen ill and is unable to complete his next opus. But is his illness from natural causes or is something more sinister afoot? An absentee landlord seems to have coincided with a few unusual events at the inn the troupe calls home. A gambler has moved in upstairs and proceeds to take money off many of the actors, something the regular landlord would never have allowed to happen. The troupe's costumes are purloined from a locked storage cabinet and they are forced to perform with makeshift clothing. When Nicholas meets a couple of down on their luck young people who are making their living as con artists on the streets of London, helping them is almost too much for poor Nick. But he's got a good heart and an inquisitive mind, and as usual he'll stop at nothing before he gets everything under control. After all, the show must go on in Edward Marston's delightful fan-favorite, Edgar-nominated series.
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Ahab's Wife
by Sena Jeter Naslund
From the opening line--"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"--you will know that you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Melville's Moby-Dick, where Captain Ahab speaks passionately of his young wife on Nantucket, Una Spenser's moving tale "is very much Naslund's own and can be enjoyed independently of its source." (Newsday) The daughter of a tyrannical father, Una leaves the violent Kentucky frontier for the peace of a New England lighthouse island, where she simultaneously falls in love with two young men. Disguised as a boy, she earns a berth on a whaling ship where she encounters the power of nature, death, and madness, and gets her first glimpse of Captain Ahab. As Naslund portrays Una's love for the tragically driven Ahab, she magnificently renders a real, living marriage and offers a new perspective on the American experience. Immediately immersed in this world, the reader experiences a brilliantly written, vibrant, uplifting novel--a bright book of life. Ahab's Wife was a main selection of the Book of the Month Club, chosen by Time magazine as one of the top five novels of 1999, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five books of the year, chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book of 1999, and chosen as a Best Book by Publishers Weekly. Ahab's Wife is being reprinted in Australia and England, translated into German, Hebrew, Spanish and Portuguese.
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Here be Dragons
by Sharon Kay Penman
"A masterful picture of Wales in the 13th century...vivdly pictured as grandly beautiful, its people volatile, stubborn and mystic." THE SAN DIEGO UNION Thirteenth-century Wales is a divided country, ever at the mercy of England's ruthless, power-hungry King John. Then Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, secures an uneasy truce with England by marrying the English king's beloved, illegitimate daughter, Joanna. Reluctant to wed her father's bitter enemy, Joanna slowly grows to love her charismatic and courageous husband who dreams of uniting Wales. But as John's attentions turn again and again to subduing Wales--and Llewelyn--Joanna must decide to which of these powerful men she owes her loyalty and love. A sweeping novel of power and passion, loyalty and lives, this is the book that began the trilogy that includes FALLS THE SHADOW and THE RECKONING.
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What Casanova Told Me
by Susan Swan
A dazzlingly imagined novel that embraces two centuries, two young women, a long-lost journal, and the mystery of the legendary Casanova's last great love. It's 1797, and an aging Casanova has returned to Venice in disguise to elude the authorities. There he meets Asked For Adams, the niece of American president John Adams, who is accompanying her father on a trade mission, just as Napoleon's army invades, throwing the city into chaos. Casanova convinces Asked For to abandon her future as the wife of a Yankee farmer and set out with him on a dangerous adventure through post-Byzantine Greece to Istanbul, which she records in intimate detail in her travel journal-until the account ends suddenly. Two hundred years later this journal comes into the possession of Luce Adams, Asked For's twenty-first-century descendant, an awkward and shy young archivist grieving her mother's death. En route to her mother's memorial service in Crete, accompanied by her mother's lover, and entrusted with delivering precious letters by Casanova to the Venetian library, she falls under the spell of the two adventurers and becomes determined to find out what happened to them. As their stories interweave, both young women are touched by the spirit of Casanova, a man whose appetite for life and generous spirit ignites possibility everywhere he goes. By the end, Luce uncovers the fate not only of Asked For but of her own mother, and she finds herself set free by what she learns about travel, self-invention, loss, acceptance, and, of course, love.
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Romancing Mister Bridgerton
by Julia Quinn
Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend's brother for . . . well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret . . . and fears she doesn't know him at all. Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone's preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can't seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph. But when Colin returns to London from a trop aboard he discovers notyhing in his life is quite the same—especially Penelope Featherington! The girl haunting his dreams. But when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide . . . is she his biggest threat—or his promise of a happy ending?
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The Last Kingdom
by Bernard Cornwell
In this epic novel, bestselling author Cornwell follows King Alfred the Great and his desperate quest to keep England from falling into the hands of the Danish conquerors.
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The Illuminator
by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
Working in secret for a fourteenth-century Oxford professor who would translate the Bible into English, master illuminator Finn forms an alliance with Lady Kathryn, a widow desperate to protect her inheritance from the church and the monarchy.
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Lord John and the Private Matter
by Diana Gabaldon
In 1757 Lord John Grey is appointed to investigate the shocking murder of a comrade-in-arms.
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The Witches of Chiswick
by Robert Rankin
We have all been lied to. A great and sinister conspiracy exists to keep us from uncovering the truth about our past. Have you ever wondered how Victorians dreamed up all that fantastic futuristic fiction? Did it ever occur to you that it might just have been based upon fact? That THE WAR OF THE WORLDS was a true account of real events? That Captain Nemo' s Nautilus even now lies rusting at the bottom of the North Sea? That there really was an invisible man? And what about the other stuff? Did you know that Queen Victoria had a sexual relationship with Dr Watson? Or that the elephant man was a product of an E.T./human hybridisation programme? Or that Jack the Ripper was a terminator robot sent from the future? Read on: and learn how a cabal of Victorian Witches from the Chiswick Townswomen's Guild, working with advanced Babbage super-computers, rewrote 19th Century history, and how a 23rd Century boy called Will Starling uncovered the truth about everything.
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The Courtesan
by Susan Carroll
Skilled in passion, artful in deception, and driven by betrayal, she is the glittering center of the royal court–but the most desired woman of Renaissance France will draw the wrath of a dangerous adversary. Paris, 1575. The consort of some of Europe’s most influential men, Gabrielle Cheney is determined to secure her future by winning the heart of Henry, the Huguenot king of Navarre. As his mistress, Gabrielle hopes she might one day become the power behind the French throne. But her plans are jeopardized by Captain Nicolas Rémy, a devoted warrior whose love Gabrielle desires–and fears–above all. She will also incur the malevolence of the Dark Queen, Catherine de’ Medici, whose spies and witch-hunters are legion, and who will summon the black arts to maintain her authority. With the lives of those she loves in peril, Gabrielle must rebel against her queen to fulfill a glorious destiny she has sacrificed everything to gain. Alive with vivid period detail and characters as vibrant as they are memorable, The Courtesan is a sweeping historical tale of dangerous intrigues, deep treachery, and one woman’s unshakable resolve to honor her heart.
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Banners of Gold
by Pamela Kaufman
The sequel to Kaufman's bestseller "Shield of Three Lions" picks up with Alix of Wanthwaite in over her head in royal intrigue. When Eleanor of Aquitaine decides her son, King Richard the Lionheart, who has little interest in women, must produce an heir, she believes Alix can stir his passion. When Alix hears her husband has died, does she have a choice?
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The Book of Eleanor
by Pamela Kaufman
One of history’s greatest women, celebrated by her contemporaries, descendants, and biographers, now comes to life in this mesmerizing new novel by bestselling author Pamela Kaufman. In 1137, fifteen-year-old Eleanor became Duchess of Aquitaine, a wealthy and powerful province in the south of France. Rich and influential in her own right, her tumultuous marriages thrust Eleanor into the political and cultural spotlight, where she would remain for more than half a century. Still in her teens, young Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII of France, a sickly religious fanatic so obsessed with fears of adultery that he kept his beautiful wife under lock and key, even forcing her to go on a long and dangerous crusade with him. But Eleanor was delighted by the freedom of the crusader’s life. Her handsome Aquitanian knights, her deeds on horseback, and her scandalous attire were the talk of Europe; it soon became clear that Louis’s young wife was more than he could handle. A lifelong rebel, Eleanor would defy her husband and the Church, and eventually strong-arm the Pope into annulling her unhappy marriage. Once free of Louis, Eleanor thought to marry Baron Rancon, her childhood love, but found herself forced into another political marriage, this time with a younger and more dangerous husband—Henry II of England, a ruthless soldier known throughout Europe as “the red star of malice.” In Henry Eleanor found a man whose iron will and political cunning matched her own, but the marriage was a bitter and brutal one, which escalated into open warfare when Eleanor backed their sons in an armed rebellion against Henry. Vowing revenge, he imprisoned her for fifteen years, hoping she would die in obscurity. But Eleanor would not go quietly. In prison, she wrote her memoir; this is Eleanor’s book.