Historical Fiction American Literature

In 1908 Jialing is only seven years old when she is abandoned in the courtyard of a once-lavish estate near Shanghai. Jialing is zazhong - Eurasian - and faces a lifetime of contempt from both Chinese and Europeans. Without her mother's protection, she can survive only if the estate's new owners, the Yang family, agree to take her in.

It is the dawn of a new century, and Olivia Stewart is heiress to an empire. Her family numbers among the Four Hundred - those considered the wealthiest and most distinguished in America. Unfortunately their wealth has nearly disappeared, and now their security rests upon the Stewart daughters marrying well. Olivia's sister, Eleanor, was engaged to Harrison Bennett, one of the nation's wealthiest men, but has since died. Now the pressure is on Olivia to take her place, despite her suspicions about Eleanor's fiancé.

An abused and unwanted daughter of the First Men Tribe, young Kiin knows the harsh realities of life in a frozen land at the top of the world. In an age of ice nine millenia past, her destiny is tied to the brave sons of orphaned chagak and her chieftain mate kayugh - one to whom, Kiin is promised, the, other for whom she yearns But the evil that her own family spawned drags the tormented young woman far from her people - where savage cruelties, love and fate will strenghten and change her... and give her the courage to fight for the future of her own helpless progeny.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

Teenage beauty Johnnie Wise has seen her share of hardship. Sold into prostitution at an early age, she is an accessory to a murder that sparks terrible race riots. Her boyfriend, Lucas, wants to give her a better life, but Johnnie has a powerful effect on men, and gangster Napoleon Bentley will stop at nothing to have her.

In the tradition of In the Time of the Butterflies and The Kite Runner, a tender, evocative novel about the years leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war. On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries.

When Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa’s hand in marriage, he presents her with a wedding gift: the young slave she grew up with, Sarah. Sarah is also Allen’s daughter and Clarissa’s sister, a product of his longtime relationship with his house slave, Emmeline. When Clarissa’s husband suspects that their newborn son is illegitimate, Clarissa and Sarah are sent back to her parents, Cornelius and Theodora, in shame, setting in motion a series of events that will destroy this once-powerful family.

Born just fifteen months apart, Subhash and Udayan Mitra are inseparable brothers, one often mistaken for the other in the Calcutta neighborhood where they grow up. But they are also opposites, with gravely different futures ahead. It is the 1960s, and Udayan—charismatic and impulsive—finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty; he will give everything, risk all, for what he believes.

The epic story of a world before Columbus - and a woman bound by a sacred legacy that will live for all time...She is called Antelope, the daughter of Kwani - She Who Remembers. Possessed of the same mystical powers that made her mother beloved and feared, Antelope takes her infant daughter and follows her wandering mate to the fabled city of the Great Sun. Here, her beauty arouses the lust of the city’s supreme ruler - a man who will become her most terrible enemy.

For Ilka Weissnix, everything is new. Having recently arrived in the United States, she is determined to escape the immigrant communities of New York and boards a train headed west to discover "the real America". She finds Carter Bayoux "sitting on a stool in a bar in the desert, across from the railroad."

With the outbreak of the American revolution, Abigail Lovell's family is torn apart - while her schoolmaster father is an outspoken loyalist and prominent figurehead in the community, she and her two brothers engage in acts of espionage to undermine the British forces in Boston. Her sickly older brother, James, operates the patriots’ spy ring while Abigail acts as a courier, eluding increasingly aggressive British patrols. Meanwhile, her younger brother, Benjamin, slips out of Boston to fight alongside Abigail’s love, Ezra, in the battles at Lexington and Concord.

The dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, recurrent themes of Paul Bowles’s writings, are dramatized with brutal honesty in this novel set in Fez, Morocco, during that country’s 1954 nationalist uprising. Totally relevant to today’s political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations, The Spider’s House is perhaps Bowles’s best, most beautifully subtle novel.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea opens in the early 1970s with young César, a street tough of Afro-Cuban descent, standing outside a US Navy recruitment office at the crack of dawn. The Vietnam War is raging, the navy has only recently begun the serious process of integration, and the country is reeling from racial turmoil and unrest.

When Malena Sevilla's tidy, carefully planned world collapses following her father’s mysterious suicide, she finds a letter - signed with an “A” - that reveals that her mother, whom she thought dead, is very much alive in San Isidro, a quaint town tucked in the Andes Mountains. Intent on meeting her, Malena arrives at Alameda Street and meets four sisters who couldn’t be more different from one another, but who share one thing in common: all of their names begin with an A.

When Luke Jensen traps fugitive Ben Craddock in Arapaho Springs, he's ready to collect on his bounty. But the job's not done - not by a long shot. A raid by a savage gang known as the Legion of Fire has left the peaceful settlement looted, burned to the ground, and the ashes scoured for female hostages - including the marshal's daughter. For Luke this is more than a hunt. It's now a rescue.

Junie Kim just wants to fit in. So she keeps her head down and tries not to draw attention to herself. But when racist graffiti appears at her middle school, Junie must decide between staying silent or speaking out. Then Junie’s history teacher assigns a project and Junie decides to interview her grandparents, learning about their unbelievable experiences as kids during the Korean War. Junie comes to admire her grandma’s fierce determination to overcome impossible odds, and her grandpa’s unwavering compassion during wartime.

The Comanche warrior Horseback is born on the same day that the first horse comes to his people. He matures into a powerful leader of uncommon wisdom and vision. Through the strong medicine granted to him by the spirits and the love of Teal, the most beautiful woman in his tribe, Horseback is destined to forge a new direction and lead the Comanches to rule the plains.

A Vegas cocktail waitress. An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: Each is haunted by a tragedy from her past. Cynthia, Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes. On impulse, they decide to open The Secret Spice, an elegant cafe on the magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural occurrences, the ship hides her own dark secrets.

The Road Home lies in the shadows of Manifest Destiny and Wounded Knee; it is etched into the landscape of an old man’s memory and into the stubborn dreams of a young man’s heart. In one of Jim Harrison’s greatest works, five members of the Northridge family narrate the tangled epic of their history on the expanses of the Nebraska plains. They strive to understand their fates, to reconcile with demons of the past, to live in accordance with the land, and to die with grace.

Unafraid to use her assets, young Johnnie has wiled her way into the lives of several dangerous men. She also happens to be connected to three murders. Now that her enemies are closing in from all sides, it seems her luck may run out.