English Historical Fiction

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Thirty-year-old Eve Sharland is browsing a Pennsylvania antique store when she discovers an old brass lantern tucked away on a shelf. She picks it up and sees something behind one of the sooty glass panes. To her surprise, she finds an unopened letter stuck inside. The letter is postmarked December 24, 1885, and it is addressed to Evelyn Sharland in New York City. Eve gasps and drops the letter. That's her name!

Restaurant owner Whitney Monroe is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of a decaying Gilded Age hotel on North Carolina's Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things at the Excelsior are more complicated than they seem. Whitney's estranged stepfather is entrenched on the third floor, and the downstairs tenants are determined to save the historic building. Searching through years of stored family heirlooms may be Whitney's only hope of quick cash.

With his laughing eyes and wild, rakish good looks, Lord Rannulf Bedwyn is a hard man to resist. To Judith Law, a woman in need of rescue when her stagecoach overturns, Rannulf is simply her savior, a heroic stranger she will reward with one night of reckless passion before she must become a companion to her wealthy aunt. Imagine Judith's shock when the same stranger turns out to be among England's most eligible bachelors, and when he arrives at Harewood Grange to woo her cousin.

Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state.

Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now 15 and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears.

Internationally best-selling novelist Irvin D. Yalom explores the mindsets of two men separated by 300 years. Using his skills as a psychiatrist, he explores the inner lives of Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish 17th-century secular philosopher, and of Alfred Rosenberg, outspoken Nazi ideologue, faithful servant of Hitler, the main author of racial policy for the Third Reich, and a godless mass murderer....

Rosalind Newbury is counting down the days until her wedding to the Duke of Marlow, a man she has only met twice. The marriage is more an agreement between two families and less a romantic connection between two hearts, but Rosalind becoming a duchess will elevate her family’s status to dizzying heights. And the duke is a kind man who will care for Rosalind, even if he doesn’t love her.

Rescued from a pandemic’s wreckage and raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft, orphan Nora Beady cares little for Victorian conventions. While other young ladies busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora perfects her sutures and anatomical illustrations. Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft’s private clinic, Nora is his most trusted - and secret - assistant. That is, until the new surgical resident, Dr. Daniel Gibson, arrives.

When Liam Sutherland was 15, he saved a Sassenach lassie's life and secretly vowed to always keep her safe. As the prized warrior for his clan and youngest son of the laird, his responsibilities at the castle continue to mount, and just when he's about to forge a name for himself, he receives a mysterious missive with the power to make him leave everything behind. Cora Segrave, daughter of an English baron, owes her life to the Scot who saved her years ago during a border raid. When her family home is destroyed and they are taken prisoner, there is only one man she knows can save her.

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....

In early 1943, Magda Ritter's parents send her to relatives in Bavaria, hoping to keep her safe from the Allied bombs strafing Berlin. Young German women are expected to do their duty - working for the Reich or marrying to produce strong, healthy children. After an interview with the civil service, Magda is assigned to the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat. Only after weeks of training does she learn her assignment: she will be one of several young women tasting the Führer's food, offering herself in sacrifice to keep him from being poisoned.

Desperate to escape his mother's matchmaking, Vincent Hunt, Viscount Darleigh, flees to a remote country village. But even there, another marital trap is sprung. So when Miss Sophia Fry's intervention on his behalf finds her unceremoniously booted from her guardian's home, Vincent is compelled to act. He may have been blinded in battle, but he can see a solution to both their problems: marriage. At first, quiet, unassuming Sophia rejects Vincent's proposal. But when such a gloriously handsome man persuades her that he needs a wife of his own choosing as much as she needs protection from destitution, she agrees.

Framed for murder, Dewey "Mac" McKenzie is running for his life. Though Mac's never even made a pot of coffee, he talks his way onto a cattle drive heading west as a chuckwagon cook. Turns out he has a natural talent for turning salt pork and dried beans into culinary gold. He's as good with a pot and pan as he is with a gun, which comes in handy on a dangerous trail drive beset with rustlers, hostile Indians, ornery weather, and deadly stampedes. Mac can hold his own with any cowboy twice his age. At least until the real showdown begins . . .

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred unpicks the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

The book probes the possible roles of four brothers in the unresolved murder of their father, Fyodor Karamazov. At the same time, it carefully explores the personalities and inclinations of the brothers themselves. Their psyches together represent the full spectrum of human nature, the continuum of faith and doubt. Ultimately, this novel seeks to understand the real meaning of faith and existence and includes much beneficial philosophical and spiritual discussion that moves the reader towards faith.

Winner of the 2001 Christy Award, Lynn Austin captures the turmoil of the Civil War in this stirring novel. From vast plantations to the cramped closets of the Underground Railroad, it follows one young woman's inspiring journey of risk and sacrifice.

A mistress should never be foolish enough to fall in love with her protector, nor trust him with her financial future. Mariah Desmond did both, and now her dearly departed protector has left her with nothing.Forced to seek another protector, she's determined that this time, she'll lead with her survival instinct-not her heart. But when she attends one of Vivien Manning's infamous parties, the familiar face of her late lover's best friend throws her for a loop.

Will two of London's most notorious rogues be outmatched in the game of love by two clever young ladies? When Lady Gillian Carnaby reads of her own betrothal to a hitherto unknown Baron Hopwood in the London Times, she is shocked to learn that the man is real. Worse, Hopwood is merely a minor title for Josiah Hawtrey, Marquess of Thorne, a man with such a scandalous reputation that London society is quite willing to believe he would become affianced to a noblewoman he has never met. To save her reputation, Gillian and the Marquess must go through the motions of a betrothal.

If you are not yet a Katharine Ashe fan, you will most assuredly be one after listening to this enthralling tale featuring pirates, smugglers, mistaken identities, British lords and ladies...and a beautiful, successful, yet shockingly unwed Regency miss who seeks help in a most perilous clandestine matter from a rogue English marquis, the only man she ever truly desired.