Historical Fiction Classics

Des Esseintes, dernier descendant d'une noblesse épuisée, après avoir profité un temps des plaisirs d'une vaste fortune, ayant finalement asséché la veine des amitiés charnelles, des mondanités insipides et de l'exubérance juvénile décide, fébrile, de se retirer de Paris en un pavillon qu'il aménage en havre salutaire où il pourra se consacrer en paix à la lecture et aux raffinements des sens.

Margaret Hale returns home to her family in the rural south of England, after living with a wealthy aunt for 10 years, learning how to become a proper young woman. She is not home for long before her life is uprooted and her family moves to a town called Milton, in Northern England, where her father intends to be a tutor, leaving their Pastoral life, and the Church of England behind.

In the century's darkest time, one man became the most unlikely of heroes. German-Catholic industrialist and Nazi Party member Oskar Schindler used his wealth and influence to save the lives of more than 1,300 Jews who would have otherwise died in the concentration camp at Plaszow. Here is the story on which Steven Spielberg based his powerful motion picture. If you like this, try Ursula Hegi's Stones from a River.

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.

Pride and Prejudice is a romantic novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story charts the emotional development of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage, and money during the British Regency period.

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.

《红楼梦》，中国古代四大名著之一，是一部具有高度思想性和高度艺术性的伟大作品。…… 《紅樓夢》，中國古代四大名著之一，是一部具有高度思想性和高度藝術性的偉大作品。

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store...From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures. His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English countryside and back, via a smuggling yacht, to London.

First published in March 1722, 57 years after the event that struck more than 100,000 people, Journal of the Plague Year is a compelling portrait of life during London's horrific bubonic plague. Through the eyes of H.F. (speculated to be Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, from whose journals the book was supposedly adapted) we witness great grief, depravity and despair: crazed sufferers roam the streets, unearthly screams resound across the city, death carts dump their grisly loads into mass graves, and quackery and skulduggery feed on fear. But there is kindness and courage too, as mutual support and caring are upheld through the worst of days.

In the magical world of Lyra, an innkeeper is forced to confront her darkest secret. For more than a decade, Kayl has run a modest country inn. She opened it with her husband, and they managed it together until a summer illness took him away, leaving her alone with their two children. The three of them get by, living happily together as the years pass, but everything changes the day a sorceress asks for a room.

The regiment has come to camp in Meryton. Many young ladies are pleased, but not all share their enthusiasm. Warned by Mr. Pierce, the local curate, that several of the officers have unsavory designs on the local girls, Elizabeth must find a way to honor her father, rein in her sister, and salvage the family’s reputation, all in the most ladylike way possible.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ considered "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century". It became a best-selling American novel and remained at the top of the bestseller lists until the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.The story recounts in descriptive detail the adventures of Judah Ben-Hur, a fictional Jewish prince from Jerusalem who is enslaved by the Romans at the beginning of the 1st century and becomes a charioteer and a Christian.

Darcy thought his problems were over when Pemberley hatched and successfully imprinted on humans. But baby dragons prove far more difficult than any dragon lore prepared him for. Only Elizabeth Bennet's notes offer him any help. When his imperious Aunt Catherine takes matters into her own hands, things take a turn for the worse and Pemberley’s life hangs in the balance. He desperately needs more of Elizabeth’s help, but she ignores all of his requests. Elizabeth, though, has problems of her own.

Lena Todd is the perfect spy. Nobody suspects the flirtatious debutante could be a rebel against London's vicious elite - not even the ruthless Will Carver, the one man she can't twist around her little finger. Will Carver is more than man, he's a verwolfen and he wants nothing to do with the dangerous beauty who drives him to the very edge of control. But when he finds Lena in possession of a coded letter, he realizes she's in a world of trouble. To protect her, he'll have to seduce the truth from her before it's too late.

Quizá sea ésta la novela de aventuras más leída de la historia de la literatura. Un ilusionado joven originario de Gascuña, región francesa limítrofe con España, va a París con una carta de recomendación para convertirse en un mosquetero del rey. Su nombre es D’Artagnan. Nada más empezar su viaje debe desafiar a un misterioso caballero acompañado por una bella y misteriosa dama. En el momento que llega a París es retado a duelo por 3 mosqueteros Athos, Portos y Aramis, pero justo antes del momento en que van a empezar a batirse, les interrumpe la guardia del cardenal Richelieu.

Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'; so the recording begins and ends with some of Dickens's best-known words, and between those lines is every Briton's view of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. Set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, the audiobook tells the story of a French doctor who is imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille in Paris. Upon his release, he moves to London with his daughter, Lucie, whom he had never met.

Isabelle Benson has learned that an Elemental Master is behind the attempts on her students' lives-and the would-be murderer is someone very close to her former flame, the "Wizard of London".

For Arthur Rowe the charity fête was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget 20 years of his past and a murder. Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he's a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.