English Historical Fiction

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

When famine visits Bethlehem, Boaz holds out hope for rain while his relative Elimelech moves his wife, Naomi, and their sons to Moab. For a while it appears the Lord is blessing Elimelech's family, and his sons marry two lovely Moabite women. But calamities strike one after another, leaving Naomi alone in a foreign land with only her childless daughters-in-law for comfort.

Laird Callum MacLean vowed to marry Maggie MacDonnell. But when his father's supposed suicide makes him Laird of a clan, he's too busy unmasking his father's killer to bring her into his dangerous new home. Maggie's home isn't any safer, so she does what any resourceful Highland lass would do. She escapes - and finds herself toe-to-toe with Callum, who's determined to fulfill his promise. Maggie can't bring herself to trust him with her heart again. But with a traitor still at large, they must rely on each other in every way, or their clans - and their love - will be destroyed.

Laird Lachlan MacKay never planned on leading his clan, but when his older brother was murdered, he was left with no choice. His vow to avenge his brother has led him to the MacPherson clan - and their bewitching healer, Amber. Amber MacPherson is desperate. Dressed as a boy to escape her clan's treacherous leader, she runs right into Lachlan - who orders her detained. At first she causes him nothing but frustration, especially when she blackmails him into helping her clan. But when she's threatened by the same man who murdered his brother, Lachlan will do whatever it takes to keep her safe - and by his side.

The Deerslayer is the first of the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper. Here we meet Natty Bumppo as a young man living in upstate New York in the early 1740s. The action begins as Bumppo, called "Deerslayer", and his friend Hurry Harry approach Lake Glimmerglass, or Oswego, where the trapper Thomas Hutter lives with his daughters, the beautiful Judith and the feeble-minded Hetty. Hutter's floating log fort is attacked by Iroquois Indians, and the two frontiersmen join in the fight.

Drawing from the author's original, uncensored journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin's journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo More, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair is with writing itself.

When a maid in the upper class Ellison household is strangled, Inspector Pitt is called in to investigate. He finds a world ruled by strict manners and social customs, where the inhabitants of the Ellison's neighborhood appear to be more outraged by the thought of scandal than they are by murder. Inspector Pitt finds a most unlikely ally in Charlotte, the Ellison's spirited daughter. But as the murders continue, Charlotte and Pitt find themselves drawn together by more than the investigation.

Katherine Carew: Illegitimate daughter of an English earl. Abducted to Scotland at age 14. No family, no reputation, no rules. Rolfe McTavish: Heir to an honorable Highland laird. Can't believe how well tomboy Kate can fight. About to learn how much of a woman she really is. Scotland is seething with plots, the vengeful Gordons are spoiling for a fight, and the neighboring clans are at each other's throats.

The Duke of Riverton has chosen his future wife with the same logic he uses to make every decision. However, his perfect bride eludes his suit, while the beautiful Isabella Berkeley seems to be everywhere. When the time comes, will Griffith and Isabella be able to set aside their pride and initial notions to embrace their very own happily-ever-after?

Charles Humphrey, the Earl of Lonsdale, is infamous for his seductions. With laughing, gray eyes and a halo of blond hair, he's every woman's wicked dream. Beneath that devil-may-care grin he has a painful past that has made him sure love was not for him, even as the rest of his friends, the members of the League of Rogues, settle down in wedded bliss. When he accidentally rescues a mysterious beauty with eyes as haunted as his own and shares one life-changing kiss with her, she vanishes in the night. Charles vows to find this angel who might yet save his soul.

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style - the iconic little black dress - and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII - as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

In the winter of 1835, young Charles Dickens is a journalist on the rise at the Evening Chronicle. Invited to dinner at the estate of the newspaper's co-editor, Charles is smitten with his boss' daughter, vivacious 19-year-old Kate Hogarth. They are having the best of times when a scream shatters the pleasant evening. Charles, Kate, and her father rush to the neighbors' home, where Miss Christiana Lugoson lies unconscious on the floor. By morning, the poor young woman will be dead.

A national best seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first book of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.

It is 1884, and when a fellow landlady finds her lodger poisoned, Mrs. Hudson turns to Sherlock Holmes. The police suspect the landlady of murder, but Mrs. Hudson insists that her friend is innocent. Upon investigating, the companions discover that the lodger, a civil servant recently returned from India, was living in almost complete seclusion, and that his last act was to scrawl a mysterious message on a scrap of paper. The riddles pile up as aged big game hunter Allan Quatermain is spotted at the scene of the crime when Holmes and Watson investigate.

Thomas McNulty, having fled the Great Famine in Ireland and now barely 17 years old, signs up for the US Army in the 1850s and with his brother in arms, John Cole, goes to fight in the Indian Wars - against the Sioux and the Yurok - and, ultimately, in the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in. Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry's latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language.

Against the romantic backdrop of Edwardian Egypt, the irresistible Amelia Peabody and her charmingly unconventional family prove themselves to be formidable foes of villainy. In The Ape Who Guards the Balance, Amelia must muster all of her considerable skills of detection to unravel a snarled web of stolen archeological treasures, murderous cults, and fallen women.

The fledgling church is being scattered by persecution. It is spearheaded by a fanatical young Pharisee who does not realize he is unwittingly aiding a divine mandate to spread the truth “unto the ends of the earth …”Young Julia has everything money can buy —except for acceptance by either Gentiles or Judeans in Tiberias. When she discovers the secret her beloved Greek father has kept all these years, she is devastated. Julia and her Hebrew mother are indeed less than second-class citizens.

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.

Sir John Dewey Fanning (Jack to his familiars) is magistrate in a corner of Oxfordshire plagued by one incident of petty mischief after another. To add to his aggravation, his matchmaking mama is due for a prolonged visit, just when his domestic staff is at sixes and sevens. Jack turns to Miss Madeline Hennessey both to organize his household and to serve as his mother's temporary companion, despite the fact that he's long harbored feelings for the ever-competent (and lovely!) Miss Hennessey.

Lady Jane Lovelace has conceived the idea of approaching the most notorious man-about-town, Lord Charles Welbourne, with a most unique proposition. When he counters her offer with a condition that he thinks will halt her impudence, much to the surprise of both, she accepts. A novel of passion and intrigue, The Westerby Inheritance is a thrilling installment in an emotionally charged romantic saga, all played out against a backdrop of elegant 18th-century society.