Historical Letters

Letters from Erastus: Field Notes on Grace is a hybrid memoir woven around 22 extraordinary letters written by abolitionist Erastus Hopkins to his daughters in the 1850s and 60s in Northampton, Massachusetts. The letters reveal an unexpected sensitivity and attempt to provide firm but gentle guidance to a family coping with years of domestic tragedy.

1905. A year after 'the affair' in Dinas Powys, Thomas Bexley has become a drunkard and recluse, haunted by terrible visions of the dead. But when news of a spate of extraordinary kidnappings reaches him, Thomas is shocked to learn that his dear friend and former mentor, Professor Elijah Hawthorn, is the lead suspect. Discovering a plea for help from Hawthorn claiming to have unearthed a gruesome conspiracy at the heart of the Metropolitan Police, Thomas embarks on a journey to prove Hawthorn's innocence.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s magnum opus exploring the themes of legalism, sin and guilt.

Robert enjoys his life in Japan, but the dark tides of war are rising, and it won't be long before foreigners are forced to leave Japan. Torn from the people he has come to think of as family, he stays in contact by exchanging letters with Makiko, letters that soon show their relationship is blossoming into something much more than friendship. The outbreak of total war sweeps all before it, and when correspondence ends with no explanation, Robert fears the worst. He will do anything to find Makiko, even launch himself headfirst into a conflict that is consuming the world.

By day, Reginald Sinclair works in the post office, but by night, he is the increasingly infamous Paladin, the gallant highwayman making young women swoon all over Somerset. With a vendetta against the wealthy that spans both past and present, Reggie's escapades allow him to take justice into his own hands while helping his uncle avoid insolvency.

Duik in de meeslepende wereld van Nathaniel Hawthorne's "De scharlaken letter." Deze tijdloze klassieker speelt zich af in het puriteinse Nieuw-Engeland en onderzoekt thema's als zonde, schuld en verlossing. Het verhaal volgt Hester Prynne, een vrouw die gebrandmerkt is met de scharlaken letter "A" van overspel, terwijl ze de complexiteiten van maatschappelijk oordeel en persoonlijke verlossing doorstaat. Hawthorne's prachtige proza en rijke symboliek brengen de personages tot leven en onderzoeken de menselijke conditie met diepgaand inzicht.

One spring evening in 1884, beautiful young courtesan Lola Deslys discovers the lifeless body of a chambermaid hidden in the gardens of the Hôtel Beau Rivage in Cannes. Even more distressing is that Lola knows the girl well. When the inquiry into her murder fails to reveal a single substantial clue, Lola is persuaded by novelist Guy de Maupassant to delve into the case on her own. Eager to exert her independence and defy conventions, Lola agrees. But she needs help in her investigation, and there’s no better partner in her pursuit - however unlikely - than Miss Gabriella Fletcher, a highborn, well-educated, and currently disgraced English governess.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Scarlet Letter is one of the great classics of American literature. Set in the harsh Puritan environment of the 17th century Boston, it describes the plight of Hester Prynne, an independent-minded woman who stands alone against society.

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.

This is a troubling story of crime, sin, guilt, punishment and expiation, set in the rigid moral climate of 17th-century New England. The young mother of an illegitimate child confronts her Puritan judges. However, it is not so much her harsh sentence, but the cruelties of slowly exposed guilt as her lover is revealed, that hold the reader enthralled all the way to the book's poignant climax.

'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.