Historical Diaries

On 3 September, 1939, Amy Browning decided to start a diary. It was a momentous day for so many reasons: It was Amy's 18th birthday, her sister had just given birth, and on the radio it was announced that Great Britain was now at war. As the months went by, things began to change. The bombing started, and Amy's fears grew for her boyfriend, Ian, in the RAF....

It's 1746, and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help - a kindly duke who taught him to write - is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.

Майстер корабля — письменницький дебют Юрія Яновського. Це модерністський роман, стилізований під мемуари, який передає атмосферу 20-х років двадцятого століття. Він має ознаки пригодницького, автобіографічного і водночас утопічного та мариністичного фантастичного романів. Текст побудовано як спогад оповідача й головного персонажа, але в його структуру також вплетено менші тексти, відмінні за жанром та стилістикою — це листи, фантазії, мрії, перекази, ідеї сценаріїв тощо. Таким чином читач стає свідком захопливого кількарівневого дистанціювання від реальності.

Secrets are told, so that with time, they may be discovered. Were Betsy Wheeler’s father and brother criminals? The sheriff, Noah Sommers, intends to find out and arrest them. Betsy finds her mother’s diary, and is confused by the entries because they didn’t make sense at first. When she finds the key to the entries, she discovers more than she’d ever imagined. Things were far from what appeared on the surface.

Nel Higgins is the 16-year-old daughter of Frank Higgins, a deranged Lutheran pastor. After Nel’s mother passes away, she finds herself and her sister, Annie, at the mercy of her father in Yankton, Dakota Territory, 1876. Bereft and frightened, Nel knows, deep in her heart, that neither she nor Annie will survive unless they can escape his evil clutches. Then, when unforeseen circumstances lead to Frank's sudden death, the two girls soon board the famous riverboat, the Far West. Once on board, Nel finds herself following the path of American destiny toward Fort Abraham Lincoln.

Discover the story of Australia in the Great War through the eyes and stories of John Murray - a would-be journalist, aspiring artist, and young soldier. John’s dairies capture the history, events, and experiences of Australians, as each instalment builds to tell the story of Australia’s journey from peacetime through to the war’s end. Share a young Australian’s hopes, his insights, and his pain, as war changes the fabric of his world and his family.

Kate and Cecy and their new husbands, Thomas and James, are off on a Grand Tour. Their plans? To leisurely travel about the Continent, take in a few antiquities, and - of course - purchase fabulous Parisian wardrobes. But once they arrive in France, mysterious things start to happen. Cecy receives a package containing a lost coronation treasure, Thomas's valet is assaulted, and Kate loses a glove. Soon it becomes clear that they have stumbled upon a dastardly, magical plot to take over Europe.

Bloodied and barely conscious, a teenage boy wakes up at the side of a railway track in the middle of nowhere. It’s night and the dead of winter–bone-chillingly cold. Where he is and how he got there, he doesn’t remember. Nor does he remember anything else for that matter–not even his own name. The only clue left behind is a backpack covered in a foot of snow lying next to him. The one thing he knows for sure is that if he doesn’t get up and start moving, he’s going to freeze to death.

Dear Mr Bigelow is an enchanting selection of weekly 'pen-pal' letters written between 1949 and 1961 from an unmarried woman working at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth, to a wealthy American widower, living on Long Island, New York. Frances Woodsford and Commodore Paul Bigelow never met, and there was no romance - she was in her forties when he died aged ninety-seven - yet their epistolary friendship was her lifeline.

Elle fut avant tout une star européenne de beauté et de vertu. Sa célébrité rehaussa l'importance de son salon au point que le nom de Récamier est devenu un symbole dans tous les salons. Chateaubriand fut son seul véritable amour.

Il diario epistolare (1877-1902) della più famosa eroina del selvaggio West americano, indirizzato alla figlia Janey, letto dalla calda e appassionata voce dell'attrice Lucia Schierano...

In the wake of her father's death, Rose Newlin finds solace in her work as a book restorer. Then, one rainy Connecticut afternoon, a struggling painter appears at her door. William Lomazzo brings with him a 16th-century treatise on art, which Rose quickly identifies as a palimpsest: a document written over a hidden diary that had purposely been scraped away. Yet the restoration sparks an unforeseen challenge when William - a married man - and Rose experience an instant, unspoken attraction.

England, 1441: Lady Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, hopes to become Queen of England before her interest in astrology and her husband's ambition leads their enemies to accuse her of a plot against the king. Eleanor is found guilty of sorcery and witchcraft. Rather than have her executed, King Henry VI orders Eleanor to be imprisoned for life.

"I looked up the word "scandal" in my dictionary last night. No wonder there has been such a fuss." It's December 11th 1936 and 10 year old Lilibet hears of some news that will change her and her family's life forever. She decides to keep a secret diary chronicling these extraordinary events. Will she fulfil her destiny, and also remember which the main course fork is and which the dessert fork is? Can Lilibet's younger sister Margaret end her mischievous ways, and become a worthy member of the League of Ovaltineys?

She was a longtime lover of JFK. She was the ex-wife of a CIA chief. She was the sister-in-law of the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee. She believed in mind expansion and took LSD with Timothy Leary. She was a painter, a socialite, and a Bohemian in Georgetown during the Cold War. And she ended up dead in an unsolved murder a year after JFK’s assassination. The diary she kept was never found. Until now...

Thus begins Mycroft Holmes’s valiant, if irregular, attempt to chronicle his doings. Rediscovered in 1976 and now fully translated from an obscure code, Mycroft’s diaries reveal that a brother’s lot is not always a happy one, especially when that brother happens to be London’s only consulting detective. In this humorous look at the world of Sherlock Holmes through Mycroft’s eyes, one question always remains: will Sherlock ever get a proper job?

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is perhaps the most well known collection of reminiscences. He maintained it, in secrecy, from 1660, the year of the Restoration, until 1669 when fear of blindness prevented his daily labours. Though it covers less than a decade, it offers a lively and detailed insight into a period and a personality, for he noted events in both public and private life. Famous passages include descriptions of The Plague and the Great Fire of London.

These letters were arranged in two volumes by Albert Bigelow Paine, Samuel L. Clemens's literary executor, as a supplement to Mark Twain, A Biography, which Paine wrote. They are, for the most part, every letter written by Clemens known to exist at the time of their publication in 1917. They begin with a fragment of a letter from teenaged Sam Clemens to his sister, Pamela, and conclude with a letter to his attorney two weeks before his death. These letters give us some degree of insight into the evolution of Twain's style of speech and prose over the period of his lifetime.

Behind the glittering façade of London high society, repressed passions smolder. When recently widowed Lilly, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, receives a scandalous invitation, she's tempted to indulge her forbidden desires. But in this provocative world of illicit art and masked balls, embracing sensual freedom comes at a high price. As Lilly's wanton adventures entangle her with her dearest friend and a seductive artist, she discovers that true liberation lies not only in unbridled pleasure, but in daring to be her authentic self.

It is 1522, in Bruges, The Spanish Netherlands. Juan Luis Vives, a renowned academic, born into a Jewish family in Valencia in 1492 has fled Spain to avoid the fires of the Inquisition. Even here, though, he is not safe and he finds that the 'eyes and ears' of the king of Spain are far-reaching. With the net closing in, England's Sir Thomas More offers him the role of tutor to Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII; he eagerly accepts.