Historical Fiction Classics

In this exciting tale, the legend of Amy Robsart and her secret marriage to the earl of Leicester comes alive in a blend of historical fact and fanciful fiction.

This is a journey of both escape and discovery for four exquisitely different women, a month of bliss and privacy for four weary souls. Their refuge on the Italian Riviera provides the perfect backdrop for a story about the search for spiritual harmony within and without.

At the outbreak of World War I, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He's soon caught up in enemy fire, and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to the trenches to find him and bring him home.

In this searing novel, Kathrine Kressmann Taylor brings vividly to life the insidious spread of Nazism through a series of letters between Max, a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin, his friend and former business partner who has returned to Germany in 1932, just as Hitler is coming to power. A powerful and eloquent tale about the consequences of a friendship - and society - poisoned by extremism, Address Unknown remains hauntingly and painfully relevant today.

In his unforgettable first novel, Hemingway artfully illuminates the plight of the Lost Generation, weaving a poignant tale of love and loss in the aftermath of World War I. The story follows two expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s: Jake Barnes, an American war veteran and journalist, and Lady Brett Ashley, an independent Englishwoman exploring the opportunities afforded by a new era of liberated women and sexual freedom. Impotent due to an injury suffered during the war, Jake must navigate his hopeless love for Brett in a changed world of waning morality.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

In Clea, the concluding part of the Alexandria Quartet, Darley returns to Alexandria now caught by war-fever. The conflagration has its effect on his circle - on Nessim and Justine, Balthazar and Clea, Mountolive and Pombal - and a clarity of purpose emerges as the story moves toward its cadence.

A collection of Smith's apace adventure stories featuring Captain Volmar, including the never before published novella, "Red World of Polaris."

It sounds idyllic: a leisurely drive through the sun-drenched landscape of Provence. But Charity's dream holiday turns into a nightmare when she becomes embroiled in a sinister plot to kidnap a young boy. She soon finds herself in a deadly pursuit and must uncover whom to trust...and whom to fall for.

"I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall." A heartwarming story about two children, Anna and Caleb, whose lives are changed forever when their widowed papa advertises for a mail-order bride. Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton from Maine answers the ad and agrees to come for a month. Sarah brings gifts from the sea, a cat named Seal, and singing and laughter to the quiet house. But will she like it enough to stay? Anna and Caleb wait and wonder -- and hope. Performed by Glenn Close

Les Miserables is set in Paris after the French Revolution. In the sewers and back streets we encounter "the wolf-like tread of crime," and assassination for a few sous is all in a day's work. We weep with the unlucky and heartbroken Fantine, and exult with the heroic revolutionaries of the barricades; but above all we thrill to the steadfast courage and nobility of soul of ex-convict Jean Valjean, always in danger from the relentless pursuit of the diabolical Inspector Javert.

Rob Roy follows the adventures of Francis, a businessman's son who falls out of favor with his father and is sent to stay in the Scottish Highlands. At the house of his uncle, he meets Rashleigh, the greedy and malicious youngest son, and Diana Vernon, Rashleigh's beautiful young cousin. Seeing that Diana is attracted to Francis, Rashleigh determines to destroy him. But Francis seeks the help of Rob Roy MacGregor, a powerful and enigmatic outlaw.

"The Great Gatsby", F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

Step up to the gates. After years in the wilds, Lenk and his companions have come to the city that serves as the world's beating heart. The great charnel house where men die surer than any wilderness. They've come to claim payment for creatures slain, blood spilled at the behest of a powerful holy man. And Lenk has come to lay down his sword for good. But this is no place to escape demons.

Based loosely on the tale of Puss in Boots, Reserved for the Cat takes place in 1910 in an alternate London. A young dancer, penniless and desperate, is sure she is going mad when a cat begins talking to her mind-to-mind. But her feline guide, actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, helps her to impersonate a famous Russian ballerina and achieve the success she's been dreaming of.

Rich, handsome, and fashionably jaded, Jason, Lord Radford, knows he must marry to get an heir, but assumes that any well bred young lady will do, so he offers for Caroline Hanscombe, whose name he draws at random. Caroline is pressured by her family to accept, but shy and musical, she finds her new fiancé alarming. Will this be a match made in heaven or hell? Or might Caroline quietly find herself a man who suits her better?

Once there was a mermaid called Amelia who could never be content in the sea, a mermaid who longed to know all the world and all its wonders, and so she came to live on land. Once there was a man called P. T. Barnum, a man who longed to make his fortune by selling the wondrous and miraculous, and there is nothing more miraculous than a real mermaid. Amelia agrees to play the mermaid for Barnum and walk among men in their world, believing she can leave anytime she likes. But Barnum has never given up a money-making scheme in his life, and he's determined to hold on to his mermaid.

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

Un soir de juin 1940, lorsqu'il se retrouve face à un peloton d'exécution improvisé, un garçon de six ans découvre la guerre. Il sait que, désormais, plus rien ne sera comme avant. Ce livre audio dit la misère, la faim, la fuite, les exactions vues par les yeux d'un enfant, puis l'interminable voyage dans le train qui l'emmène dans un camp. Ce récit est écrit comme il a été vécu: avec les tripes, par un gamin de la guerre qu'on a amputé de sa jeunesse. C'est aujourd'hui un classique étudié dans des écoles.

Bee Ridgway’s wildly inventive debut novel, The River of No Return, blends romance, conspiracy, and time travel for a tale sure to intrigue listeners. When soldier and aristocrat Nick Falcott is sent from a Napoleonic battlefield in 1815 to modern-day London, he never expects to go back - until the Guild calls for him. Returning home as if from the dead, Nick reunites with his lost love, Julia Percy, and enlists her help in finding a mysterious object known as the Talisman.