English Historical Fiction

The spunky Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson has returned to the exotic Nile valley. Parasol aloft and hot on the trail of an unexplored tomb, she must outwit a shadowy evildoer, a questionable antiquities dealer, and her loquacious son, Ramses.

Having escaped Egypt with the other Hebrews during the Exodus, Shira is now living in freedom at the foot of Mount Sinai. When the people rebel by worshipping a golden idol, the ensuing chaos gives Shira an unexpected opportunity to assist a midwife. When the experience awakens a new desire in her, she defies her mother's wish for her to continue in the family weaving trade and pursues her heart's calling as an apprentice midwife.

Adair Radcliffe is only a child when her family perishes in the War of the Roses, so her real father, the womanizing King Edward IV, takes her in, honoring his promise to her mother. Once Adair turns 16, the king marries her off without her knowledge - and to her later outrage - in a wedding by proxy. But when tragedy leaves her a widow twice over, Adair realizes that her already tenuous social position has sunk even lower. Now, all she can do is hope that the Scottish laird to whom she is sold will have mercy on her. But little does master or servant suspect that love knows no rank.

The shocking murder of Sir Henry Claybourne leaves Regency London shaken and horror-struck. But for genteel spinster Miss Emmeline St. Germaine, the crime slices far too close to home. Just hours before the knight's death she held a dagger to him, threatening him to stay silent as she rescued a scullery maid he had procured for his pleasure. Did the man - or woman - who murdered the knight know of her visit? Her secret identity at risk, her reputation and life in jeopardy, Emmeline must solve the crime or face scandalous exposure and ruination for a crime she did not commit.

Meet Hunter Buchanon, a towering mountain of a man who learned how to track prey in Georgia, kill in the Civil War, and prospect in the Black Hills of Dakota. Now he's trying to live a peaceful gun-free life - but fate has other plans for him. When Hunter Buchanon rescued a wounded coyote pup - and named him Bobby Lee - he had no idea the cute little varmint would grow up to be such a loyal companion.

Eric Ward thinks there is something odd about Arthur Egan’s life and death. But Ward is a former police inspector and trained to be suspicious. Egan left a large sum. But Ward makes no progress tracing the dead man’s offspring. A photograph of an unknown tombstone is his only clue. He discovers Egan served a term for manslaughter and that the evidence against him may have been planted. Why had he accepted his fate so meekly?

Elizabeth Black is the headmistress of a girls' school in 1830s Victorian London. She is also a well-respected author of stories written both for and about the upper-class ladies of Victorian society. But by night, she writes very different kinds of stories - the Penny Dreadfuls that are all the rage among the working-class men. Under the pseudonym Charles King, Elizabeth has written about dashing heroes fighting supernatural threats, intelligent detectives solving grisly murders, and dangerous outlaws romancing helpless women.

Recent college grad Emma Damon knows the Rose Room in Hartley Hall is off limits, which is exactly why she can't wait to get inside. Once she enters the forbidden room, Emma learns more about the history of the museum than she ever intended to know. Waking up confused and shocked in 1816, all Emma wants is to return to her cozy home with flushing toilets and disposable razors. But when she's mistaken for someone else, Emma must pretend to be everything she's not.

When a dispute among the fellows of St. Severin's College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the Duke of Denver he is "the Visitor" - charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife Harriet to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.

A thousand years ago, the Navigator crossed the great deep in ships lit with 16 stones touched by Oum'ilah, the God of Gods. Over time the stones were scattered, and a prophecy arose declaring that a "child of no man" would gather them again, obtain immortality, and reign forever as god and king of Candelarr. Two religious groups have sprung up around the prophecy, each with its own champion.

It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe, eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty, is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card.

Evangeline "Evie" Parker, Countess of Woodridge, has trekked out to her country estate, Halton House. It's time to pick up the reins and re-establish herself in the district. No easy task when one of her afternoon tea guests is poisoned. Is it a coincidence when another guest is found dead from poison? Scotland Yard steps in. While Evie trusts they will find the killer, she takes exception when the finger of suspicion is pointed at her.

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation casts a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues - a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris - a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

With his work in Montana completed now that the Callahan-Warren feud has ended in marriage rather than bloodshed, Degan Grant sets out for California because it is far away from the home he wants to forget - until the US Marshal who saved his life calls in a favor. All Degan has to do is apprehend three outlaws on the marshal's list and turn them over to the law. Easy enough, he figures, for a man no one wants to tangle with. But then a bold young woman crosses his path.

The daughter of a Scottish lord with a dark and treacherous past, Rosalind Melbourne has spent years distancing herself from her past. After escaping her tyrannical father and marrying an aging English lord, she has become a powerful widow with a business empire at her command. Her business dealings are everything to her, leaving her no time for love. Especially not with her business rival, Ashton, a man with a scandalous reputation as striking as his blue eyes.

Determined to find the men responsible for her disgraced father's murder, Lady Arianna Hadley disguises herself as a man and contrives to be hired as a chef in one of London's aristocratic households. But when the prince regent is poisoned by Arianna's special chocolate dessert, she finds her own quest has become intertwined with a far more deadly intrigue. The earl of Saybrook is asked by the government to investigate. When someone tries to kill them both, they become reluctant allies in the hunt to discover what evil is afoot.

A walking scandal surviving on little more than wits, whisky, and wicked skills in the bedchamber, Benedict Chatham, the new Marquess of Rutherford, is at the end of his rope. Deeply in debt and down to his last farthing, he must marry nothing short of an absolute fortune, or risk utter ruin. Enter Miss Charlotte Lancaster, unfashionably tall heiress to just such a fortune and a clumsy, redheaded disaster in her five London seasons. While she dreams of leaving England for a life of trade in America, her father schemes to trade her dowry for a title.

The king's sudden death leaves his son Manasseh as the new ruler. Overcome with sorrow, Manasseh is angry toward God and begins a reign of terror that shocks the kingdom. His own insecurity prompts the death of his closest advisors, dividing the faithful in two. Barely escaping the carnage, his best friend Joshua suffers the excruciating loss of his family and plans revenge.

Fate has lavished beauty on the Merridew sisters - that is, all save the eldest. But plain Prudence bears no grudge; she loves her four beautiful sisters infinitely. So when their abusive grandfather is laid up with an injury, she seizes the opportunity to concoct an ingenious plan that will allow all five of them to escape the clutches of their legal guardian. All it will take is a little matrimonial deception....