Historical Diaries

When a devoted monk meets a divine goddess, when unwavering faith collides with irresistible love, does it lead to transcendence or downfall? Love Letters from the Goddess unveils this profound dilemma through 36 soul-stirring letters, carefully selected from the Holy Monk and the Spirit Woman. Hidden in the void for a millennium, these letters now come to light, revealing the poignant and timeless romance between Saraswati, a retired Nepali Living Goddess, and Khyungpo Naljor, a Tibetan pilgrim on a quest for ultimate freedom.

The year was 1933, and the Great Depression had taken hold, but a young and adventurous writer, Ruthven Colquhoun McNairn, embarked on an incredible four month adventure from Hamilton Ontario to Chicago, Denver, and Colorado Springs exploring the cities and surrounding landscape, and then heading West, hitchhiking to Los Angeles through New Mexico, Arizona and California, capturing the unique people he met and traveled with and the strange new country he was exploring beautifully in his diary, which reads like a John Steinbeck novel.

Allahabad Diary: An Uncommon Tale delves into the struggles of Hindi-medium students aspiring to clear the Civil Services Examination and become IAS officers. Parallel to this narrative is the poignant story of Shanti, a young widow grappling with the pain of her husband’s loss, the loneliness of her son leaving for a foreign land, and the isolation that ensues. Shanti’s journey raises critical questions about today’s society, viewed through the lens of her suffering and resilience.

It has the beginnings of a romance novel that are now so prevalent. Our heroine goes on a European tour with her papa and brother to take her away from a glorious Irish love object. It is light and amusing. In it, you can see the beginnings of modern Regency romance novels, and the language used is of its age and so very subtle.

The harshness of 19th-century life for women as seen through the eyes of a young bride. Margery Blake is nothing but a pawn in family affairs and her marriage is seen as a good match. Margery has no power, no voice, no control over her own life and endures her husband's rights to her body in order to produce an heir. Margery soon learns 'husband' is merely another title for owner, beater, brute, bully, evil. Yet, she finds friendships in the most unlikeliest places.

This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book, I tell you all about Germany – at all events all I know about Germany – and the Ober-Ammorgau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to teach you gradually. I should only be defeating my own object that I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps lasting dislike to the exercise.

A story bubbling with Jerome's wit and whimsy, this tale fully deserves its place in the sun.

It is 1522, in Bruges, The Spanish Netherlands. Juan Luis Vives, a renowned academic, born into a Jewish family in Valencia in 1492 has fled Spain to avoid the fires of the Inquisition. Even here, though, he is not safe and he finds that the 'eyes and ears' of the king of Spain are far-reaching. With the net closing in, England's Sir Thomas More offers him the role of tutor to Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII; he eagerly accepts.

Discover the story of Australia in the Great War through the eyes and stories of John Murray - a would-be journalist, aspiring artist, and young soldier. John’s dairies capture the history, events, and experiences of Australians, as each instalment builds to tell the story of Australia’s journey from peacetime through to the war’s end. Share a young Australian’s hopes, his insights, and his pain, as war changes the fabric of his world and his family.

England, 1441: Lady Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, hopes to become Queen of England before her interest in astrology and her husband's ambition leads their enemies to accuse her of a plot against the king. Eleanor is found guilty of sorcery and witchcraft. Rather than have her executed, King Henry VI orders Eleanor to be imprisoned for life.

Allahabad, early twentieth century. The British rule across India, but Avadhi culture is thriving. In this city where singers, musicians and poets assemble, a star emerges. Janki Bai Ilahabadi enthrals listeners wherever she performs, and counts as her fans maharajas and maharanis, poets and...

Beneath Lily Layton’s sweet and charming exterior beats the heart of a vixen - one with shocking and scandalous secrets and desires. But as a genteel lady, she confines her forbidden fantasies, like those about her employer’s devastatingly handsome son, to her diary…until she loses it. Oliver Carlyle, Marquess of Ambrose, has finally found the perfect wife, a woman who will not hide from his dark, carnal cravings. He just needs to figure out who she is.

While on his first hunt with his father, young Kimbo is kidnapped from the jungles of Africa to become part of the 19th-century Virginia slave trade. Sold like property to various masters, he makes his escape after he's entered into a boxing match against a big man named Barnyard Willie. In the midst of his escape, he comes upon a lost little White girl, and as he tries to help her, a family of kidnappers descend upon them and grab both him and the girl, until "nobody" sets them free.

In September of 1864, a gang of Confederate irregulars stormed a Union train and made off with half a ton of gold which they buried somewhere in Asheville, North Carolina. Late in the winter of that year, Corporal James Donaldson Walker, one of the few surviving robbers, was captured by Union soldiers and was sent to Ship Island, a prisoner of war camp about 12 miles off the coast of Mississippi.

Mary fears she’s losing the two people she most admires—her lover and her father—after she’s lost her reputation. She regains them with the publication of Frankenstein. As Scott is crafting his biography of the Shelleys and Godwins a century later, he fears that he’s losing his audience and his wife. He regains them with the publication of his other “work” he’s authoring at the same—The Great Gatsby. As eternal celebrities of Western culture—the Shelleys, the Godwins, and the Fitzgeralds—their brief victories are dramatically retold in What Light Was as dialogues, verse, and meditations.

A.K. Ramanujan (1929-1993), one of India's finest poets, translators, folklorists, essayists and scholars of the twentieth century, is a stalwart in India's literary history. His translations of ancient Tamil and medieval Kannada poetry, as well as of UR Ananthamurthy's novel Samskara, are...

Meet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she's the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It's the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty--even when Prohibition kicks in--and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a...

Ninety years ago, Millie Sullivan's great-grandmother was a guest at oil tycoon Howard Dawkins' palatial estate on the shore of St. Simons Island, Georgia. Now, Millie plays a 1920s-era guest during tours of the same manor. But when her grandmother suggests there is a lost diary containing the location of a hidden treasure on the estate, along with the true identity of Millie's great-grandfather, Millie sets out to find the truth of her heritage - and the fortune that might be hers.

“Gillham is a powerful storyteller, and Annelies is marbled with spare eloquence that captures the absurdity of life after the camps. . . . A novel that reminds the world to remember Anne Frank is most welcome.” —USA Today “A haunting what-if.” —Georgia Hunter, New York Times...

Thus begins Mycroft Holmes’s valiant, if irregular, attempt to chronicle his doings. Rediscovered in 1976 and now fully translated from an obscure code, Mycroft’s diaries reveal that a brother’s lot is not always a happy one, especially when that brother happens to be London’s only consulting detective. In this humorous look at the world of Sherlock Holmes through Mycroft’s eyes, one question always remains: will Sherlock ever get a proper job?