English Historical Fiction

Shy, bookish Sophie Brightwell is expected to make an advantageous match to improve her family's fortunes. Sophie's plans to make a spectacular debut go horribly awry when she and her three closest friends are expelled from a young ladies' academy for unbecoming conduct. Since the ton will be sure to close their doors on these disgraced debutantes, they determine that unconventional means need to be employed in husband hunting. Rakehells, the beau monde's wickedest members, might be the only men willing to overlook a young lady's besmirched reputation. But how does one catch a rake?

Two-time Christy Award winner Lynn Austin is hailed for her inspiring historical novels. As in Candle in the Darkness Austin transports us back to the turbulence of the Civil War.

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.

Society believes the worst of Justin Alastair, the notorious Duke of Avon. When he encounters a young boy, Léon, who is running from his abusive brother, Avon employs the boy as his page, parading him around parties and other society events in full view of his bitter rival, the Comte de Saint-Vire. But the truth is soon uncovered: Léon is a girl named Léonie and is actually the legitimate child of the Comte and his wife. While Avon is intent on his plan to reveal the Comte’s duplicity and ruin him, he is charmed by Léonie’s kindness, falls in love, and becomes a changed man.

What happened to Dr. Jonathan Brandon, a dashing RAF flight surgeon, who disappeared from London in 1945? Kidnapping? Murder? Or did Brandon merely vanish of his own free will, seeking another life? American teacher Anne Howard is stunned by a different explanation - that her British grandmother's long-lost fiance was unwillingly wrenched back through time to Elizabethan England. Anne knows time travel is nonsense - until she is handed a fresh-cut thornless rose, a bloom extinct for over 400 years.

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.

London, 1819. Four years ago, Darius, the earl of Redgrave, fled London two weeks before his wedding to Lady Mary’s sister and married another woman. Now a widower, he has returned to seek a new wife. At first, Lady Mary doesn’t recognize the handsome lord as the cad who ran out on her sister. After giving him the cut direct in a London ballroom, she finds herself running into him everywhere she goes and fighting a forbidden attraction. Not only has Mary sworn off men, Redgrave is so very wrong for her. But she cannot stop thinking of his kisses.

As fierce and indomitable as any man, Isabelle of Langston rules the family lands with an iron hand after her father's death. But the brazen beauty meets her match in Hugh Fauconier, bold knight and rightful Saxon heir to Langston Keep. By the King's hand, he is made her husband. Hugh's virile prowess reveals to Belle the delicious pleasures of the flesh, as their turbulent days of verbal sparring melt into nights of erotic abandon. But a treacherous plot enslaves Hugh to the evil Vivienne d'Bretagne, a sorceress whose sexual magic is as powerful as it is dark.

When destiny brought Sir Balfour Murray and his wounded brother down the same road as Maldie Kirkaldy, she offered her services as a nurse even as she tried to deny the desire this dark-eyed knight had ignited at first sight. Soon they discover that they both share a mission of vengeance, but Maldie cannot tell him her true identity - to do so would brand her a spy.

Tongues were set wagging when Elizabeth Markham's glamorous young parents were killed, sinking their only child to the unspeakable class of poor relation. Forced to live with her cruel, miserly uncle Julius, Elizabeth is forbidden to partake in the season's festivities. Marriage is her only escape, and she enacts a daring plan to trick her way into the Duke of Dunster's exclusive house party, to snare one of the eligible dandies sure to dance attendance on her.

Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a law degree from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's legal rights. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen is going through the paperwork, she notices something strange.

The wealthy Agatha Dawson is dead and there are no apparent signs of foul play. Lord Peter Wimsey, however, senses that something is amiss and he refuses to let the case rest - even without any clues or leads. Suddenly, he is faced with another murder - Agatha's maid. Can super-sleuth Wimsey find the murderer and solve the case before he becomes the killer's next victim?

In 1944, American naval officer Lt. Wyatt Paxton arrives in London to prepare for the Allied invasion of France. He works closely with Dorothy Fairfax, a "Wren" in the Women's Royal Naval Service. Dorothy pieces together reconnaissance photographs with thousands of holiday snapshots of France - including those of her own family's summer home - in order to create accurate maps of Normandy. Maps that Wyatt will turn into naval bombardment plans. As the two spend concentrated time together in the pressure cooker of war, their deepening friendship threatens to turn to love.

A Roman soldier, Marcellus, wins Christ's robe as a gambling prize. He then sets forth on a quest to find the truth about the Nazarene's robe, a quest that reaches to the very roots and heart of Christianity. Set against the vividly drawn background of ancient Rome, this is a timeless story of adventure, faith, and romance, a tale of spiritual longing and ultimate redemption.

When a murder is committed, a lady's companion finds herself in the role of amateur sleuth...1789, London: When Emily Fanshawe, Marchioness of Polbrook, is found strangled in her bedchamber, suspicion immediately falls on those residing in the grand house in Hanover Square. Emily's husband - Randal Fanshawe, Lord Polbrook - fled in the night and is chief suspect - much to the dismay of his family. Ottilia Draycott is brought in as the new lady's companion to Sybilla, Dowager Marchioness, and soon finds herself assisting younger son Lord Francis Fanshawe in his investigations.

In this sweeping saga, three Swedish sisters endure an 1890s Atlantic crossing, an Ellis Island detention, and various other trials as they struggle to find love, faith, and home. First came their mother's death. Then their father's suicide. For orphans Elin, Kirsten, and Sofia, life stretches on like an endless winter. When circumstances become unbearable, they write their Chicago relatives, desperate for a safe haven.

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.

Robin Loxleigh and his sister Marianne are the hit of the Season, so attractive and delightful that nobody looks behind their pretty faces. Until Robin sets his sights on Sir John Hartlebury's heiress niece. The notoriously graceless baronet isn't impressed by good looks, or fooled by false charm. He's sure Robin is a liar - a fortune hunter, a card sharp, and a heartless, greedy fraud - and he'll protect his niece, whatever it takes.

On his way to his betrothal, young Lord Penric comes upon a riding accident with an elderly lady on the ground, her maidservant and guardsmen distraught. As he approaches to help, he discovers that the lady is a Temple divine, servant to the five gods of this world. Her avowed god is the Bastard, "master of all disasters out of season", and with her dying breath she bequeaths her mysterious powers to Penric.

As Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark on their 11th adventure together, they find themselves immersed in the world of silent filmmaking. Here, the pirates are real—and unlike the shooting done with a camera, this sort can be deadly.