Historical Trees

A new Civil War is brewing. With the city of Bewelcome as its headquarters, Allan Pinkerton’s Detective Agency leads a siege on Hex City, the town founded by “Reverend” Asher Rook and his consort, the Mayan goddess Ixchel. Monsters prowl the battleground, rocket trails of spells crisscross the sky, and an unnatural rain falls. Sides must be taken, but Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow, spiritualist Yancey Kloves, and even Rook must choose what ruin or redemption means to each of them. Meanwhile, Chess Pargeter gears up for the greatest fight of his life—and death.

A tiny and easily overlooked item—a single hair—unexpectedly discovered in one of the great treasures of a vast museum collection leads the author on a quest to solve one of the most long-standing, highly debated mysteries of American history. A team of outstanding scientists, historians...

Abe is haunted by the sudden loss of both of his parents. Left to manage a New-Hampshire land grant and its troublesome Royal Navy mast trees with only his eccentric aunt to guide him, he finds comfort in a new friendship with Betty, a decidedly odd neighbor. Defying the Royal Governor’s crackdowns and his aunt’s commands, Abe makes choices that put him on a collision course with both. With rebellion in the air, Abe must escape detection by the Governor’s agents and solve the puzzle of Betty’s past in order to secure his future.

At once an epic family drama and a sweeping love story that spans both an ocean and a generation, Palm Trees in the Snow is an emotionally gripping and historically vivid tale of the secrets that can destroy a family - and the bonds that endure.

From the acclaimed author of Teatime for the Firefly comes the story of a man with dreams of changing the world, who finds himself changed by love 1870s India. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a...

As his arms wrapped her in a tight embrace she swayed against him, savouring the moment. There had been times during the past years when she had wondered if she would ever see him again, would ever be enclosed in those same arms. So many men hadn’t come home. After four years facing the horrors of the trenches in France, Frank Carmody returns to make a life for himself and his wife, Nina. But it’s now 1919 and everything has changed.

Forced to flee Rome, merchant Nicander meets an unlikely ally in the form of Marius, a fierce Roman legionary. Escaping to a new life in Constantinople, the two land upon its shores lonely and penniless. Needing to make money fast, they plot a wicked plan to steal precious silk seeds from the faraway land of Seres. Nicander and Marius must embark upon a terrifyingly treacherous journey across unknown lands never before completed.

Trapped between the suffocation of English boarding school and a chaotic homelife dominated by her eccentric mother, Ari longs for a different kind of life–one lived in the glamour of London, with the pop stars and fashion icons she adores. It seems impossible until she is discovered by Bill Ramsey–the notorious bad boy photographer of the Swinging Sixties set.

When her favourite beech tree is felled in a storm, Ann feels as if someone has died. But when long-hidden seed packets are found inside the trunk, Ann realizes there are more memories than her own lurking within the ancient tree. A century earlier, head gardener William Hatherwick and Hester Mordaunt, mistress of Beechgrave, share a love for the mighty estate - and an undeclared love for each other. But when war breaks out, William is sent to the battlefields of France, and as the conflict rages on, Hester grieves beneath the tree.

It is the turn of the century in an England that never was. Bright new aqua-plants are generating electricity for the streetlights; news can be easily had on the radio-viz; and in Gundisalvus' Land, the war is over and the soldiers are beginning to trickle home. Amongst these is Lt. Benjamin Braddock, survivor of the massacre that ended the war, and begrudgingly ready to return to a world that, well, doesn't seem to need him any more than it did in peacetime.

When her beloved father dies, Manon Jenkins is left homeless and alone. She longs for Caradoc Jones, son of a famous Welsh cattle drover, and, in desperation, she accepts a job as chaperone to Caradoc's spoilt sister Georgina, and joins the drovers on the road to Smithfield market in London. Non struggles to be accepted by the other women on the journey, as they walk long miles over rugged terrain. One heady, star-filled night, Caradoc finally becomes her lover, but she is devastated when he refuses to marry her.

. She is content there until, suddenly, she must make decisions that will change everything. Fraser Kyle, the owner of the florist’s, proposes marriage. Should she accept, or renew her childish love for Mark Lindsay the doctor from the orphanage who first showed Shona the Handkerchief Tree that inspired her?

When 11-year-old Lizzie Mudie loses her mother in Dundee's darkest disaster, her world is shattered. Forced to grow up too soon, Lizzie uncovers a resilience beyond her years. An unexpected inheritance – Green Tree Mill, crumbling and forgotten – offers a new path. Determined to succeed, Lizzie rises to become its formidable mistress.

After losing her husband during the Civil War, Katie Rose Kelly refuses to let tragedy define her future. Determined to rebuild her life, she journeys west to the vast Dakota Territory, where she stakes a 160-acre claim and becomes a sheepherder—one of the few women bold enough to take on such a challenge. Alone on the sweeping prairie, Katie must confront more than harsh weather and isolation. Powerful cattle barons view sheep as a threat to their grazing lands, and they are willing to intimidate anyone—especially a woman—to protect their interests.

Welsey Cunningham grew up running barefoot through the orchards of his Quaker family farm, working with horses and dreaming of one day building himself a house on his own patch of ground above the river. The Second World War interrupted those dreams: it took Wes to New Guinea as a medic and then sent him home with healing bullet wounds in his legs. While Wes was away, life in Almond Tree continued but everyone's been changed by the war.

In The Wishing Tree, Ivy Marshall, a savvy, determined woman, finds out her husband has cheated on her on the same day her sister’s perfect boyfriend proposes on national television. When Ivy’s mother asks her to return to her family’s beach home to plan her sister’s upcoming wedding...

Geneviève (Vivi) Dubois, a métisse, half-Lao/half-French, turns eighteen and leaves the French orphanage in Vientiane where she has been trapped for fourteen unhappy years. With only a distant memory of being torn from her mother’s arms at age four, she is determined to uncover what happened to her parents and locate her missing twin brother. But where to start? Orphanage and government officials refuse to reveal her origins. She leaves her strict, Catholic upbringing behind and emerges into the deeply divided world of 1931 French colonial Laos.

As the nineteenth century draws to a close, the struggle for women’s suffrage has finally reached New Zealand. But when the tide of change rolls in, it threatens to engulf two young women from very different backgrounds, who are coming of age amid the tumult.

At her assisted living center in Wedding Tree, Louisiana, 93-year-old Amelie O'Connor is in the habit of leaving her door open for friends. One day she receives an unexpected visitor - Kat Thompson, the ex-fiancée of her late husband, Jack. Kat and Jack were high school sweethearts who planned to marry when Jack returned from France after World War II. But in a cruel twist of fate, their plans were irrevocably derailed when a desperate French girl overheard an American officer's confession in a Parisian church...

The question of how the American colonists made the long trip from being subjects of the British king to being citizens of the independent United States has nearly as many answers as there were people. Within this Tales from a Revolution collection, you'll be transported to the time when the American Revolution tested how a Tuscarora clan member, a former slave, and an orphaned teen would all navigate the tumultuous times of the American Revolution. Includes: The Smoke, The Freedman, and The Tree.