Historical Fiction Classics

A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated Tales of the Otori trilogy.

The Watter's Mou, meaning "the water's mouth," revolves around the romance between a young coast guard officer and his girlfriend, the daughter of a fisherman. The officer, William Barrow [or Sailor Willy], is tasked with dealing with smuggling going on among the local fishermen, including his girlfriend’s father. Maggie MacWhirter's father had fallen upon hard times, when once his fishing boat had brought him a prosperous living.

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

Dispatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary's historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again. And that's just the start. Max finds herself in a race against time when an old enemy is intent on destroying St Mary's. An enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself.

Nurse Amy Leatheran had never felt the lure of the "mysterious East", but she nonetheless accepts an assignment at Hassanieh, an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert, to care for the wife of a celebrated archaeologist. Mrs Leidner is suffering bizarre visions and nervous terror. "I'm afraid of being killed!" she admits to her nurse. Her terror, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded, and Nurse Leatheran is soon enough without a patient. The world's greatest detective happens to be in the vicinity, however....

It's the end of the 19th century in San Francisco's Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned Daoshi exorcist, is a young widow burdened with yin eyes - the unique ability to see the spirit world. Her spiritual visions and the death of her husband bring shame to Li-lin and her father - and shame is not something this immigrant family can afford.

In post-Arthurian England, 10-year old Amby and the troupe of traveling players he belongs to are on the run from a conqueror. He has been gifted with second-sight, and when the troupe stumbles upon an unoccupied castle he is the only one in the group who senses the power that lies within the stone building. In the near future, the Fisher King, Mordred and Morgan le Fay seek to gain control of Dr. Elaine Brusen’s hypostater, a machine capable of altering fundamental reality.

First published in 1816 and generally considered Jane Austen's finest work, Emma is a humorous portrayal of a heroine whose injudicious interferences in the life of a young parlour-boarder in a neighboring village often lead to substantial mortification. Austen brings to life a myriad of engaging characters as she presents a mixture of social classes as she did in Pride and Prejudice.

Renowned gamester and the first to admit that he is entirely void of a romantic disposition, Max Ravenscar regards all eligible females with indifference and unconcern. But when he meets the woman his young cousin Adrian is bent on marrying - the beautiful Deborah Grantham, mistress of her aunt's gaming house - he finds that none of his experience in risk and gambling has prepared him for such a worthy opponent.

Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, and husbands and wives.

1812. Napoléon rompt brutalement la paix avec la Russie. Les russes, pris de court, n'ont d'autre choix que de se retirer précipitamment, évitant tout contact avec l'ennemi. Finissant, sous la houlette de Koutousov, par se réorganiser, ils livrent la plus terrible des batailles de l'épopée napoléonienne : la victoire de la Moskowa pour les uns ou de Borodino pour les autres, faisant plus de 70.000 morts dont beaucoup d'officiers, de généraux, de maréchaux renommés et laissant la grande armée de Napoléon exsangue et épuisée.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a bookbinder - a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born.

In the town of Night Vale, there’s a faceless old woman who secretly lives in everyone’s home, but no one knows how she got there or where she came from...until now. Told in a series of eerie flashbacks, the story of The Faceless Old Woman goes back centuries to reveal an initially blissful and then tragic childhood on a Mediterranean Estate in the early 19th century, her rise in the criminal underworld of Europe, a nautical adventure with a mysterious organization of smugglers, her plot for revenge on the ones who betrayed her, and ultimately her death and its aftermath.

As he did so masterfully in The Jungle, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair interweaves social criticism with human tragedy to create an unforgettable portrait of Southern California's early oil industry. Enraged by the oil scandals of the Harding administration in the 1920s, Sinclair tells a gripping tale of avarice, corruption, and class warfare, featuring a cavalcade of characters, including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist.

A few weeks after marrying an attractive widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterward, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by "spirits" that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still alive. Poirot has his suspicions when he is asked to find a missing person guided only by the spirit world.

At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

Sharply observant and wickedly funny, E.F. Benson's six Mapp and Lucia novels satirize the upper-middle-class social climbers in 1920s and '30s rural England. Games of bridge and cups of tea fuel hilarious gossip and vindictive plots a-plenty. It is a masterfully sustained spotlight on the minutiae of village life - a clever and ultimately heartwarming series that seems tailor-made for audio. This second volume contains the second three books.

Young Julien Sorel, the son of a country timber merchant, carries a portrait of his hero Napoleon Bonaparte and dreams of military glory. A brilliant career in the Church leads him into Parisian high society, where, 'mounted upon the finest horse in Alsace', he gains high military office and wins the heart of the aristocratic Mlle Mathilde de la Mole. Julien's cunning and ambition lead him into all sorts of scrapes.

A classic of faith, fortitude, and inspiration, this faithful New Testament tale combines the events of the life of Jesus with grand historical spectacle in the exciting story of Judah of the House of Hur, a man who finds extraordinary redemption for himself and his family. Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the first century. His old friend, Messala, arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions.

The only novel written by Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights was originally published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and at first was thought to be the work of Emily's sister, Charlotte, the author of the classic, Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights tells the tale of Heathcliff, a young orphaned gypsy boy, who is brought to the windswept moors of Yorkshire by Mr. Earnshaw, the master of Wuthering Heights.