Historical Fiction American Literature

When a Mexican heiress defies Victorian society to protect her country a British war hero makes it his new mission to protect her… Isabel Luna Valdés has long since resigned herself to being the “forgotten” Luna sister. But thanks to familial connections to the Mexican ambassador in...

#1 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE “A picaresque, swashbuckling adventure.”—The Washington Post Book World They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of...

Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, weirdly archaic and powerfully novel, Zama takes place in the last decade of the 18th century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown who has been posted to Asunción, the capital of remote Paraguay. There, eaten up by pride, lust, petty grudges, and paranoid fantasies, he does as little as he possibly can while plotting his eventual transfer to Buenos Aires.

Robert E. Lee is remembered by history as a tragic figure, stoic and brave but distant and enigmatic. Using dozens of previously unpublished letters as departure points, Pryor produces a stunning personal account of Lee's military ability, his beliefs, and his time, shedding new light on every aspect of the complex and contradictory general's life story.

Sapphira Dodderidge, a Virginia lady of the 19th century, marries beneath her and becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful slave. One of Cather's later works...

There is no easy path for a woman aspiring to power. A concubine at the palace learns quickly that there are many ways to capture the emperor's attention. Many paint their faces white and style their hair attractively, hoping to lure in the One Above All with their beauty. Some present him with fantastic gifts, such as jade pendants and scrolls of calligraphy, while others rely on their knowledge of seduction to draw his interest. But young Mei knows nothing of these womanly arts, yet she will give the emperor a gift he can never forget.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read It is no surprise that Little Women, the adored classic of four devoted sisters, was loosely based on Louisa May Alcott’s own life. In fact, Alcott drew from her own personality to create a heroine unlike...

Two brothers are exposed to the brutal realities of life and the seductive cruelty of power in this riveting debut novel—a story of savagery and race, injustice and honor, set in the untamed frontier of 1880s Australia—reminiscent of Philipp Meyer’s The Son and the novels of Cormac...

Tenochtitlán, 1487. Una confederación de pueblos rebeldes le hace frente al imperio mexica: interrumpe sus vías de comercio y se niega a pagar sus tributos. El ejército de la Triple Alianza, dirigido por el huey tlahtoani Ahuízotl, responde con una inminente declaración de guerra....

As he struggles to rekindle the faith of a guilt-ridden Wehrmacht veteran, a morose widow, and her grieving teenage son, Fr. Viktor Koch, C.P. is haunted by self-doubt. What is driving him to stay in the Third Reich? Is he following a higher plan, or the mystic compulsion of his German heritage? Exposed to American ideals, his parishioners grow restless under Nazi rule. Relying upon his ingenuity to keep them out of prison, Fr. Viktor solicits aid from an unlikely intercessor-the Nazi charity worker who confiscated his monastery for state purposes.

At 26, Bushrod Carter is already an old soldier, a veteran of all his regiment's campaigns since Shiloh. Now, on an Indian summer afternoon in 1864, Bushrod finds himself in the line of battle once again, on a plain below the obscure village of Franklin, Tennessee. The dark flower of his destiny is opening in the twilight, just as it has on other fields, and Bushrod must pass once again under its shadow if he is to see tomorrow.

The National Book Award winning author returns to his original fictional territory--the lives of the dispossessed in San Francisco--with a parable about the limitations of desire and life at the margins of society In such earlier works of fiction as The Rainbow Stories and The Royal Family...

January '42. L.A. reels behind the shock of Pearl Harbor. Local Japanese residents are rounded up and slammed behind bars. Massive thunderstorms hit the city. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops tag it a routine dead-man job. They're wrong. It's an early-warning signal of Chaos...

Mr. Midshipman Easy is the 1836 novel by Frederick Marryat, a retired Captain in the 19th century Royal Navy. The novel is set during the Napoleonic Wars, in which Marryat himself served with distinction. It was adapted twice into films in 1916 and in 1935 as Midshipman Easy. Captain Frederick Marryat (July 10, 1792 - August 9, 1848) was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story.

The Young Carthaginian chronicles the struggle of the Second Punic War (218-203 BC) and the attempt of Hannibal to conquer Rome. At first, the struggle of Carthage against Rome was a struggle for empire, but it became a struggle for existence. Hannibal presses on despite formidable geographical barriers and the corrupt leadership in Carthage which time and again undermined all his efforts.

When Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa’s hand in marriage, he presents her with a wedding gift: the young slave she grew up with, Sarah. Sarah is also Allen’s daughter and Clarissa’s sister, a product of his longtime relationship with his house slave, Emmeline. When Clarissa’s husband suspects that their newborn son is illegitimate, Clarissa and Sarah are sent back to her parents, Cornelius and Theodora, in shame, setting in motion a series of events that will destroy this once-powerful family.

A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II. Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post–Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s...

In a time before time at the top of the world, in a harsh and unforgiving age of ice, courage will sustain three remarkable souls through trials as bitter as the chill winds of the eternal winter. Claimed by a brutal, despised enemy, Kiin must sacrifice her love for the sake of her tribe and the safety of her children. Left widowed and helpless among the Whale Hunters, Kukutux now faces the impossible challenge of surviving alone. While Samiq, wounded and a hunter no more, must take up the mantle of leadership and guide a devastated people abandoned by their gods.

Abducted by Mohawk Indians at 14 and renamed Burning Sky, Willa Obenchain is driven to return to her family's New York frontier homestead after many years building a life with the People. At the boundary of her father's property, Willa discovers a wounded Scotsman lying in her path.

The Red Tent meets The Scarlett Letter in this haunting historical novel set in a colonial New England whaling village. “When was it that the sense of trouble grew to fear, the fear to certainty? When she sat down to another solitary supper of bread and beer and picked cucumber? When she heard...