Historical Diaries

Carrie Grinnell put all her hopes and her few possessions in a carpet bag and boarded a train heading West. She had found a husband through an advertisement for a mail order bride. Carrie gets off the train anxious to meet her intended Mr. Bowen, a cattle rancher, but he is nowhere to be found. In his stead is a cowboy sent to fetch her.

At the turn of the new year in 1948, Amil and his family are trying to make a home in India, now independent of British rule. Both Muslim and Hindu, twelve-year-old Amil is not sure what home means anymore. The memory of the long and difficult journey from their hometown in what is now Pakistan lives with him. And despite having an apartment in Bombay to live in and a school to attend, life in India feels uncertain.

No one loves books more than Miss Mary Channing. Perhaps that's why she's reached the ripe old age of six-and-twenty without ever being kissed. Her future may be as bland as milk toast, but Mary is content to simply dream about the heroes and adventures she reads about in her books. That way she won't end up with a villain instead.

Ein Glücksfall für die Historiker: Harry Graf Kessler (1868 – 1937) beschreibt das Zeitgeschehen in den Jahren 1930 + 1931. Seine Beobachtungen sind sehr genau und zeugen von der Bildung eines aufgeklärten Europäers. Besonders elegant sind die etwas schmunzelnden manchmal aber auch etwas bitter klingenden voranschreitenden Kommentare. Ein Rezensent drückte es sehr treffend aus: "Ein wunderbarer Zeitzeuge, klug und aufmerksam". 30/31 sind die Jahre des Aufstiegs der Nazis und deren Kriege mit den liberaleren Kräften.

Über seine Mutter Gertrud schrieb der Künstler Einar Schleef einen Roman. Er nannte ihn "Gertrud" und versuchte darin, ihre ostdeutsche Gedankenwelt nachzuempfinden, von der er seit seiner Flucht in den Westen getrennt war. Mit ihr schrieb er sich auch Briefe. Die Angst der Mutter, die Unbedenklichkeit des Sohnes, die Anhänglichkeit und die Unabhängigkeit - es sind Kräfte, die sich anziehen und gleichzeitig abstoßen.

1916-1919: Rosa Luxemburg, Frau ihrer Zeit- gebildet, erkennend, störend, verurteilt, eingesperrt, ermordet. Ihre Briefe schreibt sie an ihre Freundin Sophie - über Vögel, Büffel und Insekten. Über Schmerzen, Leichtigkeit und Lebensmut. Ihre Ohnmacht und ihr Mitgefühl, ja ihre Lebenslust, spiegeln sich in jedem ihrer Briefe. Sie führen in die Welt einer Gefangenen, die über ihr politisches Denken nicht schreiben darf.

Can their love withstand the trials of war? Georgiana Darcy and Edward Fitzwilliam want only to be together. But when the former Emperor Napoleon escapes from his exile on the Isle of Elba, Britain is plunged into renewed war with France...and Edward is once more called away to fight. To be with the man she loves, Georgiana makes the perilous journey to Brussels, in time to witness the historic downfall of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

He was not the first dashing cavalryman to charm a naive country girl, but he was the first to win Miss Calhoun's heart. When he promises his love to her, she trusts him, and realizes that her future lies westward.

It is the Roaring Twenties and Monica Woodard bobs her hair and raises the hem of her dresses, but she doesn't feel liberated. The last lavish party of the season at aloof tycoon Jared Fitzgerald's "Mansion on the Rock," an event not to be missed, is that night. Reluctantl,y Monica agrees to go along with friends to crash it.

During the night of July 16,1918, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children - Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei - along with four loyal servants were brutally murdered by Bolsheviks. For many years, there were rumors that the tsar’s youngest daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, had survived that dreadful night and vanished. Anastasia did indeed disappear...but it was not the grand duchess.

A family secret might destroy a couple's hope for marriage.Elizabeth Canning discovers an awful secret in her estranged aunt’s diary. Believing her chances for a happy marriage are spoiled, she leaves her fiancé a letter and flees town. In hopes that distance will heal her broken heart, she takes refuge in her grandparents’ Pennsylvania home.Anticipating a Christmas Eve wedding with Elizabeth, David Stinner is confused by her letter and desperate to find her. Can David root out the truth? FInd out.

Miss Sophie Kendall is happiest arranging the secret meetings of the Debutante Underground, a group of women who come together to discuss the weekly advice column The Debutante’s Revenge. What makes Sophie most unhappy is her impending march down the aisle to a man she does not love. But her family’s finances are in increasingly dire straits.

Miss Fiona Hartley’s huge dowry should have ensured that finding a husband would be quick. True, she’s a tad older than the average debutante and spends too much time sketching brutally honest character portraits. She desperately needs a husband, so she can access her dowry, lest the man blackmailing her reveals a secret that would ruin her family. So desperate in fact, that she’s willing to do the unthinkable - propose marriage to the most surly, irritable gentleman in town.

The real love story of Frankenstein! Released from a promise to keep portions of her journey secret, Mary Shelley lays her soul bare in the intimacy of love, loss, and betrayal, the search for a mother's validation, and inspiration as a woman artist discovering her voice.