Historical Fiction Classics

Set in the world of Larry Niven’s popular The Magic Goes Away, The Burning City transports listeners to an enchanted and ancient city bearing a provocative resemblance to our own modern society. There, Yangin-Atep, the volatile and voracious god of fire, alternately protects and destroys the city’s denizens. In Tep’s Town, nothing can burn indoors, and no fire can start - except when the Burning comes upon the city. At that time the people, possessed by Yangin-Atep, set their own town ablaze in a riotous orgy of destruction that often comes without warning

Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state.

Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky.

This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.

The story told in Vasily Grossman's Stalingrad unfolds across the length and breadth of Russia and Europe. At the heart of the novel is the Shaposhnikov family. Even as the Germans advance, the matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. Far from the front, her eldest daughter, Ludmila, is unhappily married to the Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum. Viktor's research may be of crucial military importance, but he is distracted by thoughts of his mother in the Ukraine, lost behind German lines.

Beginning with The Skystone, the first in his riveting Camulod Chronicles, Jack Whyte has embarked on an ambitious and remarkable re-telling of the Arthurian cycle, giving us a fresh and compelling take on a story that has been beloved for centuries. The Eagle brings us at last to the heart of the tale, the creation of fabled Camelot and the love story that enshrined its glory. Whyte takes us into the minds and lives of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, three astonishing but fallible people who were bound together by honor, loyalty, and love.

When Mr. Earnshaw brings a black-haired foundling child into his home on the Yorkshire moors, he little imagines the dramatic events which will follow. The passionate relationship between Cathy Earnshaw and the foundling, Heathcliff, is a story of love, hate, pity, and retribution, the effects of which reverberate throughout the succeeding generations.

A story of magic, family, a mysterious stranger . . . and a band of marauding raccoons. Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Until the day a handsome stranger pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle – and turns Otter Lake completely upside down. Maggie, the...

One of Jane Austen's most popular novels. Arrogant, self-willed, and egotistical, Emma is her most unusual heroine.

Born in the quiet village of Shambala, Kalki Hari, son of Vishnuyath and Sumati, has no idea about his heritage until he is pitted against tragedies and battles. Whisked into the province of Keekatpur, which is under the fist of Lord Kali, Kalki sees the ignominy of death trumping life all around him. He learns that he has been born to cleanse the world he lives in, for which he must journey to the North and learn the ways of Lord Vishnu's Avatar, from an immortal who wields an axe.

This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered - not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. This is no ordinary novel. This is the story of a young American soldier terribly maimed in World War I - he "survives" armless, legless, and faceless, but with his mind intact.

The orphaned Elsie Camden learned as a girl that there were two kinds of wizards in the world: those who pay for the power to cast spells and those, like her, born with the ability to break them. But as an unlicensed magic user, her gift is a crime. Commissioned by an underground group known as the Cowls, Elsie uses her spellbreaking to push back against the aristocrats and help the common man. Elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey is one elusive spell away from his mastership when he catches Elsie breaking an enchantment. To protect her secret, Elsie strikes a bargain.

Here is one of the best historical novels ever written. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia; the reptilian Tiberius; the monstrous Caligula; and finally old Claudius himself. Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction.

This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960s. Miss Jane Pittman has "endured," has seen almost everything and foretold the rest.

When Garnet Raven was three years old, he was taken from his home on an Ojibway Indian reserve and placed in a series of foster homes. Having reached his mid-teens, he escapes at the first available opportunity, only to find himself cast adrift on the streets of the big city. Having skirted the...

Merlyn Britannicus and Uther Pendragon - the Silver Bear and the Red Dragon - are the leaders of the Colony, lifeblood to the community from which will come the fabled Camulod. But soon their tranquillity is in ruins, Uther lies dead from treachery, and all that is left of the dream is the orphaned babe Arthur. Heir to the Colony of Camulod, born with Roman heritage as well as the blood of the Hibernians and the Celts, Arthur is the living incarnation of the sacred dream of his ancestors....

In a feat of virtuoso storytelling, Anne Rice unleashes Akasha, the queen of the damned, who has risen from a six-thousand-year sleep to let loose the powers of the night. Akasha has a marvelously devious plan to “save” mankind and destroy the vampire Lestat—in this extraordinarily sensual...

The Good Soldier Švejk, written shortly after the First World War, is one of the great antiwar satires - and one of the funniest books of the 20th (or any) century. In creating his eponymous hero, Jaroslav Hašek produced an unforgettable character who charms and infuriates and bamboozles his way through the conflagration that tore through the heart of Europe, upending empires and changing social history. It is the closing period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination at Sarajevo has just occurred and armies are on the march.

A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe, a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity. Set against the vividly drawn background of ancient Rome, this is a timeless story of adventure, faith, and romance, a tale of spiritual longing and ultimate redemption.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Anna Popplewell, best known for her leading role as Susan Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia films. This definitive recording includes an Introduction by Stevie Davies. Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt...