English Historical Fiction

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

The land of Terre d'Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. It is said that angels found the land and saw it was good...and the ensuing race that rose from the seed of angels and men live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

An unforgettable Regency romantic adventure, Captured by a Rogue Lord concerns the passionate exploits of a titled British lord and reluctant pirate endangered by his desire for an inquisitive beauty who's coming perilously close to uncovering his secret identity.

When Evangeline is sent to live in a small mill town in Northern England as a schoolteacher in 1871, she finds herself struggling to fit in with an unfamiliar culture. Raised with the high-class Victorian values and ideals of a sophisticated upbringing, she is unprepared for the poverty she finds in the gritty factory town of Smeatley, where the locals speak with a hard-to-understand Yorkshire accent and struggle to thrive with few resources or opportunities. Though she has no training as a teacher, she must prove herself successful before her grandfather will release her inheritance.

Gayle Windham, earl of Westhaven, is the first legitimate son and heir to the duke of Moreland. To escape his father's inexorable pressure to marry, he decides to spend the summer at his townhouse in London, where he finds himself intrigued by the secretive ways of his beautiful housekeeper. Anna Seaton is a beautiful, talented, educated woman, which is why it is so puzzling to Gayle Windham that she works as his housekeeper.

How to seduce an estranged husband - and banish debt! - in four wickedly improper, shockingly pleasurable steps.... 1. Learn the most intimate secrets of London's leading courtesan. 2. Pretend to be a courtesan yourself, using the name Juliet Leighton. 3. Travel to Venice and locate said husband. 4. Seduce husband, conceive an heir, and voila, your future is secure! For Julia, the Duchess of Colton, such a ruse promises to be foolproof. After all, her husband has not bothered to lay eyes on her in eight years.

The windswept Scottish Highlands hold great beauty, but also great danger. So when Aimil Mengue's abducted by a feuding clan, she's right to fear for her life - and her virtue. For Aimil's keeper is the infamous warrior Parlan MacGuin. Aimil sets out to hate him, but Parlan is more honorable - and infinitely more alluring - than expected. Though betrothed to another, Aimil cannot deny her startling desire for the man who holds her captive. Parlan MacGuin knows well his reputation as a fierce warrior; he uses it to claim land and lovers.

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....

Under the cover of "Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective", Charlotte Holmes puts her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. Aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, Charlotte draws those in need to her and makes it her business to know what other people don't. When the estranged wife of her dear friend Lord Ingram is discovered dead on his estate, all signs point to him as the murderer. With Scotland Yard closing in, Charlotte goes under disguise to find out the truth.

Garnering three RITAs and a Christy Award, Francine Rivers is acclaimed for classics like Atonement Child. Set in the 1850s Smoky Mountains, this Gold Medallion-winner tells the gripping tale of a girl who's desperate to remove the guilt of her sister's death and anxious to absolve her departed grandmother of sins. While seeking the elusive Sin Eater, she uncovers a hideous secret and finds the truth.

Seven years ago a woman with too many secrets and a man with too many lies fell in love. Then she left him. Isabel's quiet life as an assistant to one of London's famous apothecaries hides a deadly secret. A secret that could see her put on trial for witchcraft if the authorities uncover the truth. But when the authority figure who turns up at her shop is Sir Nicholas Merritt, she's at risk of losing more than her life. She could lose her heart and soul, and the man she loves.

Madeleine Talmage Force is just 17 when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialite. Despite their 29-year age difference and the scandal of Jack's recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love. On their honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace away from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time - and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner.

Bengtsson's hero, Red Orm-canny - courageous and above all lucky - is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships. Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he fights for the Caliph of Cordova. Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies.

Finding himself the man of the family, London dancing master Alec Valcourt moves his mother and sister to remote Devonshire, hoping to start over. But he is stunned to learn the village matriarch has prohibited all dancing, for reasons buried deep in her past. Alec finds an unlikely ally in the matriarch's daughter. Though he's initially wary of Julia Midwinter's reckless flirtation, he comes to realize her bold exterior disguises a vulnerable soul - and hidden sorrows of her own.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Orphaned as an infant, Susan Trinder was raised by Mrs. Sucksby, “mother” to a host of pickpockets and con artists. To pay her debt, she joins legendary thief Gentleman in swindling an innocent woman out of her inheritence. But the two women form an unanticipated bond and the events that follow will surprise every listener. Fingersmith was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize, and was chosen as book of the year 2002 by more organizations than any other novel. Sarah Waters was named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards.

An American classic, Ben-Hur is both a vivid historical epic and the powerful story of one man's spiritual journey from slavery to vengeance to redemption. Born the son of a Jewish nobleman, Ben-Hur is condemned to the galleys for life for accidentally dislodging a piece of tile that falls on the Roman procurator. He is betrayed by his best friend, manages to escape his imprisonment, and gains revenge and glory before the cheering multitudes in the chariot races at the Roman circus in Antioch.

London, 1885. Amelie Hampton is a hopeless romantic, which makes her the perfect columnist to answer lonely heart letters in The Marriage Gazette. When Amelie plays matchmaker with two anonymous lonely hearts, she also decides to secretly observe the couple’s blind date. To her surprise, the man who appears for the rendezvous is Harold Radcliffe - a grieving widower and a member of Amelie’s book club.

Lady Sophie Windham has maneuvered a few days to herself at the ducal mansion in London before she must join her family for Christmas in Kent. Suddenly trapped by a London snowstorm, she finds herself with an abandoned baby and only the assistance of a kind, handsome stranger standing between her and complete disaster.

After fulfilling a pledge to a dying friend, Zacharias Hamilton is finally free. No family entanglements. No disappointing those around him. Just the quiet bachelor existence he's always craved. Until fate snatches his freedom away when the baker of his favorite breakfast bun is railroaded by the city council. Despite not wanting to get involved, he can't turn a blind eye to her predicament...or her adorable dimples.