Historical Women

Maisie Dobbs got her start as a maid in an aristocratic London household when she was thirteen. Her employer, suffragette Lady Rowan Compton, soon became her patron, taking the remarkably bright youngster under her wing. Lady Rowan’s friend, Maurice Blanche, often retained as an investigator by the European elite, recognized Maisie’s intuitive gifts. The outbreak of war changed everything. Ten years after the Armistice, in the spring of 1929, Maisie sets out on her own as a private investigator, one who has learned that coincidences are meaningful, and truth elusive.

December 1899. After the death of her beloved grandmother, Cleopatra Fox moves into the luxury hotel owned by her estranged uncle in the hopes of putting hardship and loneliness behind her. But the poisoning of a guest throws her new life, and the hotel, into chaos. Cleo quickly realizes no one can be trusted, not Scotland Yard and especially not the hotel’s charming assistant manager. With the New Year’s Eve ball approaching fast and the hotel’s reputation hanging by a thread, Cleo must find the killer before the ball, and the hotel itself, are ruined.

For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex World War II relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject—the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist - and confidante - to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own....

When Lisa Najeeb Halaby was 26, her father introduced her to King Hussein of Jordan. Within a year, she became his fourth wife. Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. King Hussein was not only the head of state in Jordan but also considered the spiritual leader of all Muslims. This memoir provides a vital perspective on 30 years of turbulent world history from the Arab point of view.

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand.

Sophia Alexander, the beautiful daughter of a famous surgeon in Berlin, has had to grow up faster than most young women. When her mother falls ill, Sophia must take charge of her younger sister Theresa, look after her father and the household, while also volunteering at his hospital after school. Meanwhile, Hitler's rise to power and the violence in her very own town have Sophia concerned, but only her mother is willing to share her fears openly. After tragedy strikes and her mother dies, Sophia becomes increasingly involved in the resistance.

England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she's interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country - only to witness a murder upon her arrival.

New York, 1898. The only thing more shocking than Arthur Stanhope III’s unexpected death is the revelation that his will bestows his company—and most of the vast fortune that goes with it—to the nearest male heir, leaving his mother, wife, and daughter nearly impoverished. His widow, Sylvia, quickly realizes she must set aside her grief to ensure their daughter, Adelaide, is launched into society as soon as the appropriate mourning period passes.

While Wolf contemplates whether or not to continue investigating, it seems that the dowager has taken matters into her own hands and is investigating a case independently. But why has she gone missing from her home for two nights, and what mischief has she gotten herself into? Tracking down the elderly woman takes Tabitha and Wolf into some of the darkest, most dangerous corners of the city. What on earth is the exasperating dowager caught up in that she seems to have become entangled with London’s prostitutes?

This wonderful novel is set in what is known as the Soviet period of stagnation - the 1970s, or late Brezhnev era. The university-educated narrator wistfully looks back on a few months in mid-decade when he left his cynical and jaded friends in Leningrad to travel to a small provincial town near the White Sea. Ostensibly writing about provincial folk customs, but also hoping to gather material for an anti-Soviet satire, he instead meets Vera, a woman much older than he who has waited 30 years for her lover to return from World War II.

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Little Hatred comes a stunning fantasy novel that finds the world in an unstoppable revolution where heroes have nothing left to lose as darkness and destruction overtake everything. Chaos. Fury. Destruction. The Great Change is upon us . . . Some...

The year is 1920: Flying in the face of convention, legendary American adventuress Beryl Helliwell never fails to surprise and shock. The last thing her adoring public would expect is that she craves some peace and quiet. The humdrum hamlet of Walmsley Parva in the English countryside seems just the ticket. And, honestly, until America comes to its senses and repeals Prohibition, Beryl has no intention of returning stateside and subjecting herself to bathtub gin.

Caroline Grant is struggling to accept the end of her marriage when she receives an unexpected bequest. Her beloved great-aunt Lettie leaves her a sketchbook, three keys, and a final whisper...Venice. Caroline’s quest: to scatter Juliet “Lettie” Browning’s ashes in the city she loved and to unlock the mysteries stored away for more than 60 years.

The Isle of Jersey was once a warm and neighborly community, but in 1943, German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets, imposing a harsh rule. Nazis have ordered Grace La Mottée, the island's only librarian, to destroy books that threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides the stories away in secret. Along with her headstrong best friend, she wants to fight back. So she forms the Wartime Book Club: a lifeline, offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of reading.

Early in the Great War, men left Britain’s factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. “Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun,” the recruitment posters beckoned. Thousands of women—cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives—answered their nation’s call. These “munitionettes” worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear.

Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion - the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century. Elizabeth’s 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only 25 years old, the young queen saw herself as the nation’s Protestant savior, aiming to provide new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary’s reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.

When six-year-old Alice Hilton disappears on New Year's Eve 1979 from Yew Tree Manor, suspicion immediately falls on local boy Bobby James. Bobby claims he knows nothing about it, but his family has a grievance against Alice's landowner father. Tragically the child is never found. Decades later, Willow James, an architect working on a development at Yew Tree Manor, discovers that the land surrounding the house is holding a secret.

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was just a kid, her mom died when she was 17, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she's laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother - and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, "He always loved her."