Historical Letters

When Martha’s beloved father dies, he leaves her two things: a mysterious stash of letters to an English woman named "Catkins" and directions to a beach hut in the English seaside town of Wells-Next-the-Sea. Martha is at a painful crossroads in her own life and seizes this chance for a trip to England - to discover more about her family’s past and the identity of her father’s secret correspondent.

Hester Prynne commits adultery in a Puritan settlement and, as a result, is "branded" for the rest of her life by having to wear a scarlet letter "A" on her breast. Throughout the story, a complex relationship develops between Hester, her lover, her husband, and her daughter.

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, magnum opus, tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth two years after separation from her husband and is condemned to wear the scarlet letter A on her breast as punishment for her adultery. She resists all attempts of the 17th century Boston clergy to make her reveal the name of her child’s father while she struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity.

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is considered to be one of the greatest examples of true American literature. Its excellency of topic, characterization, and description has made it a permanent part of our history. Set in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, it describes the life of Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman whose existence is marred by sin. The real genius of the book is found in its description.

It is 1642 in the Puritan town of Boston. Hester Prynne has been found guilty of adultery and has born an illegitimate child. In lieu of being put to death, she is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her dress as a reminder of her shameful act.

It is 1828. Fate has brought four people together in a modest house in Abingdon, Virginia. All of them have experienced great losses in their lives, with the three adults consumed by their grief and regret. The fourth, an innocent, is a recently orphaned young boy working through his own sadness but learning to adapt to his new living situation. Alexander Dromgoole, a Revolutionary War veteran and Indian trader, is a frail and ailing old man, living out the last years of his life being boarded out by the town's Overseers of the Poor.

A seven-volume collection containing some of the most fascinating journals and letters to have been written in the last two hundred and fifty years, all performed in a dramatised setting.

A TIMELESS ROMANCE ANTHOLOGY: LOVE LETTER COLLECTION: Listeners will love this collection of six novellas - three contemporary and three historical - all with one thing in common: Romance.

Scorned by her 17th century New England Puritan village, Hester Prynne struggles to raise her precocious daughter, Pearl, who is the result of an affair and whose father is unknown. Despite being forced to wear a scarlet letter A as a brand for her adultery, Hester tries to live a life of repentance and dignity. Pearl's father comes forward as he is struggling under the weight of his own shame and sin.

After years spent in Germany struggling to come to terms with a dispirited and abusive past, Fenia Karapanos has returned to her roots in Greece. Her estranged grandfather has bequeathed her his villa in Athens, a gesture she assumes is reparation for having disowned her late mother. After taking in a grateful Syrian refugee to help her restore the property - and her life - Fenia discovers a collection of love letters hidden under the floorboards, reaching back nearly a century. In each one, Fenia unfolds another piece of her broken family history.

In this book's introduction, an autobiographical account of the author's years as an American Custom House official, Hawthorne describes how he came across a parchment from which fell a fraying piece of fabric, fantastically embroidered and inscribed with the scarlet letter A. He found himself compelled to tell the story of its owner, Hester Prynne, a young English woman who had lived in 17th-century Boston at the time when Puritan extremism - that which led to the infamous witch trials of Salem - was at its height.

A thrilling World War One spy story from the author of the acclaimed Jack Haldean series .“There’s a spy in England. Frankie’s letter. Read Frankie’s letter... ” The last words said by a dying man to Anthony Brooke in Kiel in Germany during the height of World War One. But who is Frankie? With his cover blown and the German army at his heels, English secret agent Anthony Brooke’s search to discover the truth leads him to an innocent-seeming country house.

When her sister volunteers to help renovate the two cottages she owns in France, Merle is happy to have company. The cottages are a disaster–especially one that has mostly been inhabited by rodents for years. But inside the cottage are surprises. A packet of letters dating from World War One intrigue Merle. What happened to this soldier who was writing to his girlfriend back in England? Does his last letter, telling her to forget him, mean something terrible happened to him?

After growing up in Zanzibar as part of the ruling Omani Sultanate, Sayyida Salme, the daughter of the Sultan and his surie concubine Djilfidan, took a fateful step that shaped the rest of her life. She could not have imagined what challenges lay ahead. When she chose to follow her love and became Emily Ruete, she found herself on a path to self-exile, as she moved from East to West, South to North. Taking on a new culture, language, faith, even identity, she crossed borders only to find new barriers.

Hara Duja Gatdula, queen of the island nation of Maynara, holds the divine power to move the earth. But her strength is failing and the line of succession gives her little comfort. Her heir, Laya, is a danger—a petty and passionate princess who wields the enormous power of the skies with fickle indifference. Circling the throne is Imeria Kulaw—the matriarch of a traitorous rival family who wields recklessly enhanced powers of her own—with designs to secure a high-ranking position for her son and claim the crown for her family.

'I still have that recurring fear of something happening to me before I see you again, and before I can tell you myself just how much and how often I've realised during the last few months that I love you completely and to the exclusion of all others. Remember that, because if there wasn't you, my darling Mary, the world would seem very empty and meaningless.' Mary was only 21 when she met and fell in love with the privately educated 19-year-old David in 1938.

New York, 1891: a rapidly changing city, torn between lamplight and electric light, where the burgeoning steel and railway industries attract a flood of humanity from every corner of the globe, fuelling cutthroat gangs, corruption and vice. A prostitute is found brutally murdered. Immediately fear starts to spread. The victim bears the same hallmarks as Jack the Ripper's recent killing spree in England. Could it be that the Ripper has crossed the Atlantic to fresh killing grounds? Or is this simply a copycat murder?

The Scarlet Letter is generally considered to be Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece. Set in 17th-century Boston, it follows the plight of Hester Prynne, a young woman who bears a child out of wedlock, refuses to name the father, and is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" for the rest of her life. With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne reaches back to America’s Puritan roots to probe themes of lust, sin, guilt, and redemption. This Essential Classics edition includes a new introduction by Professor Vivian Heller, PhD, in literature and modern studies from Yale University.

The remarkably life-affirming novel from the highly acclaimed author of Still Life, set in 1940s Cornwall following the unlikely friendship between an eighty-nine-year-old woman at the end of her story and a young soldier, reeling from World War II, at the start of his own. Marvelous Ways has...

Millie Ashton thinks London society is full of empty headed, arrogant fools, but when she meets Alex Radley she falls desperately in love with him. Fearing humiliation and rejection, she decides the only sensible thing to do is take her pride and go home to India. Men like Alex do not fall for girls like her, whereas every girl loses her heart to Alexander the Great. Alex Radley, Marquess of Brooke rules the ton like a god, but even gods are known to fall for mere mortals.