Historical Fiction Classics

The epic of Thesus, the boy-king of Eleusis, ritually preordained to die after one year of marriage to the sacred queen but who defies God's decree and claims his inheritance - the throne of Athens. This re-creation of a Greek myth is written by the author of The Last of the Wine.

Even as a 14-year-old orphan, Simon Beauvallet knows his own mind. Later, friend and foe alike will know better than to cross the flaxen-haired mountain of a man whose exploits in battle have earned him knighthood, lands and gilded armour. After Agincourt, he has no equal save the king himself in generalship - until his legendary prowess is baulked by a woman. In Normandy, the icy rage of Simon the Coldheart must melt - or quench Lady Margaret, spitfire of Belremy.

At the outbreak of World War I, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He's soon caught up in enemy fire, and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to the trenches to find him and bring him home.

Winter 1847, the Star of the Sea sets sail from Ireland for New York. Among the refugees are a maidservant, bankrupt Lord Merridith, an aspiring novelist, and a maker of revolutionary ballads. Each is connected more deeply than they know.

A haunting and enigmatic tale that will keep you awake and wondering long after you've finished this classic mystery. Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling.... St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return....

One of the turning points in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is Miss Elizabeth Bennet's passionate refusal and denunciation of the equally passionate but infinitely more repressed Fitzwilliam Darcy. However, unforeseen events can lead to the most unexpected consequences. During a visit with her friend, Charlotte Collins, at Hunsford, Elizabeth falls prey to illness for almost the first time in her life just as Mr. Darcy comes to call. Befuddled by her illness, she misinterprets his proposal of marriage, and a simple nod of acknowledgment is mistaken for acceptance.

Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White - along with their clever birds: the raven, Neville; and the parrot, Grey - have been agents of Lord Alderscroft, the Elemental Fire Master known as the Wizard of London, since leaving school. Now Lord Alderscroft assigns them another commission: to work with the famous man living at 221 Baker Street - but not the one in flat B. They are to assist the man living in flat C. Dr. John Watson and his wife, Mary, themselves Elemental Masters of Water and Air, take the occult cases John's more famous friend disdains.

Set in Venice at the close of World War II, Across the River and into the Trees is the bittersweet story of a middle-aged American colonel, scarred by war and in failing health, who finds love with a young Italian countess at the very moment when his life is becoming a physical hardship to him.

This novel centers on the figure of Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, a member of the dying class of the landed gentry, who spends most of his time lying in bed gazing at life in an apathetic daze, encouraged by his equally lazy servant Zakhar and routinely swindled by his acquaintances. But this torpid existence comes to an end when, spurred on by his crumbling finances, the love of a woman, and the reproaches of his friend, the hardworking Schtoltz, Oblomov finds that he must engage with the real world and face up to his commitments.

Based loosely on the tale of Puss in Boots, Reserved for the Cat takes place in 1910 in an alternate London. A young dancer, penniless and desperate, is sure she is going mad when a cat begins talking to her mind-to-mind. But her feline guide, actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, helps her to impersonate a famous Russian ballerina and achieve the success she's been dreaming of.

Martin Luther's Bondage of the Will (1525) is a response to Desiderius Erasmus's "Diatribe on Free Will.’ The work is considered as one of the great masterpieces of the Reformation. Luther writes powerfully about man's depravity and God's sovereignty in his direct style, which combines spirituality and humor. For Luther, the crucial issue was the ability of free will, and the extent to which it is subject to God's sovereignty.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town with a bizarre but seductive proposition for local landowners. He proposes to buy the names of their serfs who have died but who are still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them. But what collateral will Chichikov receive for these "souls"?

Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.

In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.

In Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes that attempt to explain what really happened between the tempestuous Justine, her husband, Nessim, Clea the artist, and Pursewarden the writer; new figures emerge and play key roles.

A stand-alone battle book, set this time in the eighteenth-century in the rebellious colony of Massachusetts.This new novel takes place during the very early days of the rebellion, or the War of Independence, before Washington and before the organization of a colonial army. A small British fleet with a few soldiers on board had sailed in to be met, to their surprise, with an overwhelming strength of local militia.

Almost before the last echoes of the famous guns have died away, the three Navarone heroes are parachuted into war-torn Yugoslavia to rescue a division of partisans and fulfil a secret mission, so deadly that it must be hidden even from their own allies.

PASSION, MENSONGES, TRAHISONS, DUELS, MEURTRES : UN EXCELLENT ROMAN DE CAPE ET D'ÉPÉE ! Paris, une nuit de février 1578. Six ans ont passé depuis le massacre de la Saint-Barthélémy. Dans une ruelle sombre des abords de la Bastille, Bussy d'Amboise, gentilhomme courageux et loyal, tombe dans l'embuscade que les mignons du roi Henri III lui ont tendue. Seul contre cinq, il ne doit la vie sauve qu'à l'intervention providentielle d'une belle inconnue blonde comme un ange : Diane de Méridor.

Catriona, first published in 1893, is the sequel to Kidnapped and continues the adventures of David Balfour and his friend Alan Breck. Balfour returns to the city in order to defend Breck against false charges in the Appin murder. In so doing, he becomes a pawn in a game between feuding Scottish clans; he also sets eyes on a young woman whose involvement in the same matter becomes as central to his actions as his desire to vindicate his comrade in arms.

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert of Green Gables had no intention of adopting the talkative, mischievous, red-headed girl the orphanage in Nova Scotia sent by mistake. What they wanted was a sturdy, sensible boy to help with the chores. Instead, they got 11-year-old Anne Shirley, whose capacity for adventure was only matched by her bright spirit and love of life. Still, there was something about the little girl that gave them second thoughts. She was keen of wit with a scintillating effervescence that was purely captivating. Just perhaps....