Historical Fiction Classics

With Uther, Jack Whyte, author of the richly praised Camulod Chronicles, has given us a portrait of Uther Pendragon, Merlyn's shadow - his boyhood companion and closest friend. And the man who would sire the King of the Britons. From the trials of boyhood to the new cloak of adult responsibility, we see Uther with fresh eyes. He will travel the length of the land, have adventures, and, through fate or tragedy, fall in love with the one woman he must not have.

Now a major motion picture from MGM and Paramount studios, the story follows Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman whose childhood friend, Messala, betrays him. Accused of trying to murder the new Roman governor in Jerusalem, Judah is sentenced to the galley ships and vows to seek revenge against the Romans and Messala. But a chance encounter with a carpenter from Nazareth sets Judah on a different path.

Life’s always an adventure for the Athena Club...especially when one of their own has been kidnapped! After their thrilling European escapades rescuing Lucina van Helsing, Mary Jekyll, and her friends return home to discover that their friend and kitchen maid Alice has vanished - and so has their friend and employer Sherlock Holmes! As they race to find Alice and bring her home safely, they discover that Alice and Sherlock’s kidnapping are only one small part of a plot that threatens Queen Victoria, and the very future of the British Empire.

In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses audiences in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its original publication, here is a new translation of the classic story of the life and loves of a poet/physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara.

It is 1793 in France, the year of the guillotine. Already, Louis XVI has been sentenced to the scaffold, and Terror reigns. The architects of the Revolution (Marat, Danton, and Robespierre) have set up the Convention, an embryo parliament, designed to stem social chaos. But ideals topple in the face of political necessity, alliances founder, and intrigue is a way of life.

On a quest to find her sister's killer, Mac is a major player in a deadly game, but with one great advantage: she knows how to find the Sinsar Dubh, an ancient book of magic so dark it corrupts anyone who touches it. What Mac soon discovers is worse than she had imagined. Surrounded by treachery, her enemies indistinguishable from her allies, she can be certain of only one thing: as All Hallows' Eve approaches, her time is running out.

Serena Carlow's former love now controls her future happiness. After her father's unexpected death, Serena's jilted ex-fiancé—the Marquis of Rotherham—is made the sole trustee of her wealth and marriage prospects. Eager for an escape, she moves to Bath and encounters her childhood sweetheart, the dashing Hector Kirkby—but will Rotherham approve the match? Before long, they are all entangled in a confusion of marriage and manners the likes of which Regency Bath has rarely seen.

Sarah, Plain and Tall, Skylark, and Caleb's Story, all unabridged and all performed beautifully by Academy Award-winning actress Glenn Close, make up this exquisite audio collection.

Cluny Brown refuses to know her place in society. Last week, she took herself to tea at the Ritz. Then she spent almost an entire day in bed eating oranges. So, to teach her discipline, her uncle, a plumber who has raised the orphaned girl since she was a baby, sends her into service as a parlor maid at one of England's stately manor houses. While everyone around her struggles to keep pace with a rapidly changing world, Cluny continues to be Cluny, transforming those around her with her infectious zest for life.

The most popular and beloved American historical novel ever written, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is unparalleled in its portrayal of men and women at once larger than life but as real as ourselves. Now best-selling writer Alexandra Ripley brings us back to Tara and reintroduces us to the characters we remember so well: Rhett, Ashley, Mammy, Suellen, Aunt Pittypat, and, of course, Scarlett.

When the shah is thrown out of Iran, the nation's turmoil becomes world headlines. Caught in this shifting world of fanaticism, ambition, duplicity, and violent death are the foreign helicopter pilots who have been servicing the oil fields up and down the country. Their one objective is to make a bold, concerted escape to safety across the Gulf.

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Hero Wantage is desperate to change her fate. When the dashing Lord Sherry proposes out of the blue, Hero is overjoyed—she'll escape a life as a governess and, once they wed, he can finally claim his inheritance. But as Hero attempts to social climb in glamorous London society, Sherry is concerned that her naivety will ruin them both and takes drastic action. The chaos that follows will push friendships—and hearts—to breaking point.

The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The family serves as a metaphor for the old society that crumbled after the Industrial Revolution, as a Midwestern town spreads and darkens into a city.

Completed six years after Dostoyevsky's own term as a convict, The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of life in a Siberian prison camp, and the physical and mental effects it has on those who are sentenced to inhabit it. Alexandr Petrovitch Goryanchikov, a gentleman of the noble class, has been condemned to 10 years of hard labor for murdering his wife.

Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with The Winds of War and continues here in War and Remembrance, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.

Renowned gamester and the first to admit that he is entirely void of a romantic disposition, Max Ravenscar regards all eligible females with indifference and unconcern. But when he meets the woman his young cousin Adrian is bent on marrying - the beautiful Deborah Grantham, mistress of her aunt's gaming house - he finds that none of his experience in risk and gambling has prepared him for such a worthy opponent.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.

Her eccentric and childless guardian, Mr. Penicuik, is leaving Kitty all of his vast fortune - but with one condition. She must marry one of his five grand-nephews. However, Kitty's clear favourite - the rakish Jack Westruther - doesn't appear at all interested in the arrangement. To make Jack jealous, Kitty impulsively convinces his cousin, the kind-hearted and chivalrous Freddy Standen, to enter into a pretend engagement. But the more time she spends with Freddy, the more Kitty wonders whether Jack is the right choice after all....