Historical Fiction Classics

The Betrothed is a cornerstone of Italian culture, language, and literature. Published in its final form in 1842, The Betrothed has inspired generations of Italian readers and writers. Giuseppe Verdi composed his majestic Requiem Mass in honor of Manzoni. Italo Calvino called the novel “a classic that has never ceased shaping reality in Italy” while Umberto Eco praised its author as a “most subtle critic and analyst of languages.”

Ethan Frome is a luckless farmer trapped in a loveless marriage to his domineering wife Zeena. When her cousin Mattie comes to stay with them, she brings much more into their home than just her suitcase. Will Ethan’s newfound spark cause him to set his world afire or will his marital devotion squelch the flames of his desire?

The touching story of a young, mortally ill priest who spends his last days working among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia.

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

After rejecting the life his father has laid out for him, Frank Osbaldistone is sent to the North of England to live with his Uncle, where he is to repent his sins. However, when his father's wealth and reputation are threatened, he is drawn to the Scottish Highlands, where he must retrieve a set of stolen documents. It is here that he is pulled into a number of skirmishes relating to the Jacobite uprising of 1715, and where his path frequently crosses with the mysterious maverick outlaw known as Rob Roy....

Lyman Frank Baum was an American children's book writer best-known for creating the popular Wizard of Oz series. Baum was a prolific writer who wrote 14 novels in the Oz series, plus 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and about 42 scripts. He often wrote under pseudonyms. Of all the books, the one that made Baum a household name was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood...and, possibly, their death.

Raison et Sentiments: À la suite du décès de leur père, les soeurs Dashwood et leur mère, injustement privées de leur héritage, sont contraintes de réduire drastiquement leur train de vie et de quitter leur propriété pour s’installer dans le Devonshire, à Barton Cottage. Orgueil et Préjugés: Dans un petit village d'Angleterre, Mrs Bennet ne songe qu'à marier ces cinq filles. La nouvelle de l'installation à Netherfield, le domaine voisin, de Mr Bingley, célibataire et beau parti, suscite une agitation toute particulière chez toutes les jeunes filles des alentours.

It is Charlotte's first night at boarding school. But when she wakes up, the girl in the next bed is not the person who was sleeping there the evening before. And the new building outside her window seems to have metamorphosed into a huge, dark cedar tree! Somehow, Charlotte has slipped back forty years... A classic time travel mystery from acclaimed author Penelope Farmer.

Hailed as Charlotte Brontë’s “finest novel” by Virginia Woolf, Villette is the timeless semi-autobiographical tale of Lucy Snowe. Left with no family and no money, Lucy goes against her own timid nature and travels to the small city of Villette, France, where she becomes a school teacher in Madame Beck’s school for girls. During her stay, she falls in love—twice—and discovers an independent, inner strength rarely seen in women of her time.

When Margaret Hale moves with her father from the comfort of the south of England to the industrial north, she is at first repulsed by what she sees; and then when she discovers the conditions under which the workers are forced to live, she is outraged. But this throws her into direct conflict with the powerful young mill-owner, John Thornton. Using personal passions to explore deep social divisions, North and South is a great romance and one of Elizabeth Gaskell's finest works.

Losing no faithfulness to Bunyan’s original text, Christiana’s Journey: The Pilgrim’s Progress, Book Two follows the adventures of Christiana, her four boys, and a host of memorable characters who either help or hinder their progress on their journey to faith.

Anna Karenina is beautiful, married to a successful man, and has a son whom she adores. But a chance meeting at a train station in Moscow sets her passionate heart alight, and she is defenceless in the face of Count Vronsky's adoration. Having defied the rules of nineteenth-century Russian society, Anna is forced to pay a heavy price.

First published in 1861, The Mill on the Floss was a best-seller in its day. This classic novel explores the traditions and moral expectations of an English rural community. Maggie Tulliver is a girl of uncontrollable romantic ideals. But her brother, along with most of society, cannot accept her brashness and vitality. Narrator Jill Tanner gracefully unfolds this tragic tale of love and loss.

Arguably Jane Austen's most popular novel, Emma is a vivid, captivating, and irresistibly witty classic about love and marriage.

A classic of faith, fortitude, and inspiration, this faithful New Testament tale combines the events of the life of Jesus with grand historical spectacle in the exciting story of Judah of the House of Hur, a man who finds extraordinary redemption for himself and his family. Judah Ben-Hur lives as a rich Jewish prince and merchant in Jerusalem at the beginning of the first century. His old friend, Messala, arrives as commanding officer of the Roman legions.

Wayétu Moore’s powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia’s early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him.

All alone in Singapore, proper Miss Primrose Tunstell must steal helium to save her airship, the Spotted Custard, in a scheme involving a lovesick werecat and a fake fish tail. When she uncovers rumors of a new kind of vampire, Prim and the Custard crew embark on a mission to Peru. There, they encounter airship pirates and strange atmospheric phenomena, and are mistaken for representatives of the Spanish Inquisition. Forced into extreme subterfuge (and some rather ridiculous outfits) Prim must also answer three of life's most challenging questions.

In New Orleans in 1937, a man and woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion. In Mississippi ten years earlier, a convict risks his one chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. From these separate stories Faulkner composes a symphony of deliverance and damnation.

Des Esseintes, dernier descendant d'une noblesse épuisée, après avoir profité un temps des plaisirs d'une vaste fortune, ayant finalement asséché la veine des amitiés charnelles, des mondanités insipides et de l'exubérance juvénile décide, fébrile, de se retirer de Paris en un pavillon qu'il aménage en havre salutaire où il pourra se consacrer en paix à la lecture et aux raffinements des sens.