Historical Literary Fiction Saga

Orphaned into an unforgiving foster home and raised as an outsider, Weird-Eye shoulders her unflattering nickname. She relies on her vivid imagination to sustain her work as a midwife bringing newborns into the world while World War II overruns her native Finland, desecrating life. She finds herself drawn to the handsome, otherworldly Johannes Angelhurst, a war photographer working for the SS.

In fifteenth-century Italy, Paolo Uccello recognizes the artistic talent of his young daughter, Antonia, and teaches her how to create a masterpiece. The girl composes a painting of her mother and inadvertently sparks an enduring mystery. In the present day, a copyist painter receives a commission from a wealthy Chinese businessman to duplicate a Paolo Uccello painting. Together, the painter and his teenage daughter visit China, and in doing so they begin their escape from a tragic family past.

Das Schicksal einer Familie in einer bewegten Zeit. Und eine Liebe, die alles überwindet. Augsburg, 1920. In der Tuchvilla blickt man voller Optimismus in die Zukunft. Paul Melzer ist aus russischer Kriegsgefangenschaft zurück und übernimmt die Leitung der Tuchfabrik, um der Firma wieder zu altem Glanz zu verhelfen. Seine Schwester Elisabeth zieht mit einer neuen Liebe wieder im Herrenhaus der Familie ein. Und Pauls junge Frau Marie will sich einen lang gehegten Traum erfüllen: ihr eigenes Modeatelier.

Fourteen years after the end of slavery, Lord Henry Hardin and his wife, Lady Bertha, enjoy an entitled life in Union County, Arkansas. Until he faces a devastating reality: Bertha is unable to bear children. If Henry doesn't produce an heir, the American branch of his family name will die out. So Henry, desperate to preserve his aristocratic family lineage, does the unthinkable.

The three Saperstone siblings, who are scattered throughout the country and leading very different lives, are drawn back home to Saratoga, New York, when their mother dies. What they discover there shocks them: she has left behind a much larger estate than they could ever have imagined.

Meticulously researched, and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarefied and controlled existence, at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other.

Constantly moving, from South Africa to the Persian Gulf, to Rhodesia, to England, and ultimately to suburban New Jersey, the Laments are a quirky and lovable family who live by the motto "anywhere but here." The main character, Will Lament, whom the Laments take home from the hospital as a result of a bizarre mix-up, grows up feeling that he doesn't belong.

It is 1920, and Edward Mason is making a call upon Miss Mary Bayly, the current owner of the legendary Mason family estate, the Retreat. Miss Mary is dying. She plans to give the Retreat to the closest direct descendant of the original immigrant owner that she can find. Edward believes he can charm the old lady, secure the estate and be back in Baltimore by lunchtime. Instead, over the course of a long day, he hears the stories that will forever bind him and his family to the land.

In 1920, Elsa Emerson, the youngest and blondest of three sisters, is born in idyllic Door County, Wisconsin. Her family owns the Cherry County Playhouse, and more than anything, Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child¹s game of pretend.

À la Combe aux Oliviers, la famille Valentin - Ulysse, le père, Armide et Lucrèce, ses deux filles - vit au rythme des saisons. Tout comme son père, Lucrèce, la cadette, a la passion de l'olivier. Quand, au lendemain de la Grande Guerre, elle prend la direction du domaine, elle consacre sa vie à ses arbres, au nombre desquels Noé, le plus vieux, son confident des bons comme des mauvais jours. À l'aube d'une vie nouvelle, tout bascule. Veuve et mère d'une petite Aurélie, cette femme entière conquiert le droit de vivre de nouvelles amours, traverse la Seconde Guerre en résistante et surtout se bat pour sa fille, atteinte de la poliomyélite, autant que pour la survie de ses oliviers.

In his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Norman Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: he has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler. The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, takes the young Adolf from birth through his adolescence. En route, reavealing portraits are offered of Hitler's father and mother, sisters, and brothers.

In the late 19th century, Newport, Rhode Island, was a cauldron of undeclared class warfare where reputations were made and lost in a whirlwind of parties and fancied slights. Sam Driver, railroad mogul and one of the few surviving robber barons of the lawless years after the Civil War, knocks on the door of fabled Newport, along with his daughter, Jenny, who is determined not to be turned away.

Paris, sous le Second Empire. Napoléon III confie au baron Haussmann la mission d'"assainir" la capitale en la quadrillant d'avenues et de boulevards - ce qu'il fait avec un zèle qui lui vaut le surnom d'Attila. Des quartiers entiers sont anéantis. Rue Childebert, Rose Bazelet mène une vie paisible. Jusqu'au jour où elle reçoit la lettre fatidique : sa maison doit à son tour être démolie. Mais Rose a fait à son mari disparu le serment de ne jamais quitter ce qui fut leur foyer : contre tous, elle va se battre pour sauver la demeure familiale, qui renferme un secret jalousement gardé.

Yankee transplant Daniel Musgrove can't seem to fit in at his Mississippi high school. When he meets fellow outsider Tim Cousins, things look up. But then the two boys' battles with a local bully escalate into a violent act that rocks the town.

Facing challenges in an increasingly colonial world, Chye Hoon, a rebellious young girl, must learn to embrace her mixed Malayan-Chinese identity as a Nyonya - and her destiny as a cook, rather than following her first dream of attending school like her brother. Amidst the smells of chillies and garlic frying, Chye Hoon begins to appreciate the richness of her traditions, eventually marrying Wong Peng Choon, a Chinese man. Together, they have ten children.

As the Civil War raged and goldfields beckoned, a gunman stalked the territories on a mission to kill American settlers. He would elude governors and armies, bounty hunters, and posses, until his demise at the climax of a fierce high-country manhunt. By then, Felipe Espinosa had claimed more than 30 lives to quietly become one of the nation's first serial killers and foreign terrorists.

In the winter of 1897, a trio of killers descends upon an isolated farm in upstate New York. Midwife Elspeth Howell returns home to the carnage: her husband and four of her children, murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son, Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, another shot rings out over the snow-covered plains. Twelve-year-old Caleb nurses his mother back to health, cleaning her wounds and keeping her fed, before they leave their home to seek retribution on the men who committed this heinous crime.

La leggenda di Gösta Berling è il romanzo d’esordio dela scrittrice svedese Selma Lagerlof, che fu insignita in seguito del premio Nobel per la letteratura. L’opera è una saga basata su uno stile evocativo del paesaggio e della vita degli inizi del 1800; il protagonista è un pastore protestante che ha lasciato il ministero a causa della sua dedizione all’alcool. Uomo debole e forte insieme, viene presentato con lo stesso spessore di uno degli antichi eroi dei miti nordici. Musica, dal Peer Gynt, di Grieg.

Tragically, they come from two different worlds. Elias is a Christian Arab living on the eastern side of the newly divided city, and Lila is a Jew living on the western side. A growing conflict between their cultures casts a heavy shadow over the region and their burgeoning relationship. Between them lie not only a wall of stone and barbed wire but also the bitter enmity of two nations at war.

En la Academia West Point en 1830, la calma de una tarde de octubre se rompe con el descubrimiento del cuerpo de un joven cadete colgando de una cuerda justo al lado del patio de armas. Un aparente suicidio no es inaudito en un régimen tan severo como el de West Point, pero a la mañana siguiente, sale a la luz un horror aún mayor. Alguien se coló en la habitación donde yacía el cuerpo y extrajo el corazón.