Historical Fiction Classics

When Mr Collins visits Longbourn, Elizabeth Bennet is shocked by the sycophantic behaviour of her family toward the Longbourn heir. Mrs Bennet declares that any of her daughters had better accept the man if he offers for them, and Elizabeth quickly comes to suspect that her father will not defend them should they wish to refuse. Despite her protestations, Elizabeth finds herself engaged to her cousin against her will and her sisters turned against her, showing Elizabeth harsh revelations about Jane's true character.

Eleven-year-old Adam loved to travel throughout 13th-century England with his father, a wandering minstrel, and his dog, Nick. But when Nick is stolen and his father disappears, Adam suddenly finds himself alone.

Pride and patriotism lend fervor to greed and cruelty, and Fitzwilliam Darcy is caught at the centre of a decades-old international feud. Taken far from England, presumed dead by his family, and lost to all he holds dear, only one name remains as his beacon in the darkness: Elizabeth. Georgiana Darcy is now the heartbroken heiress to Pemberley, and Colonel Fitzwilliam her bewildered guardian. Vulnerable and unprepared, Georgiana desperately longs for a friend, while Fitzwilliam seeks to protect her from his own family.

Madame de Clèves, jeune beauté parfaite en tout point, fait des débuts remarqués à la cour de la reine dauphine, belle-fille d'Henri II. Pour ce modèle de vertu, l'image de Diane de Poitiers plane tout au long du roman comme le contre-exemple absolu. Mais sous des dehors innocents, la Princesse de Clèves, par sa faculté à analyser et à maîtriser ses sentiments, fait preuve d'une personnalité étonnante et rarement exposée avec tant de justesse auparavant.

Julio Desnoyers, a wealthy young Spanish American, tries to escape the dirt, blood, and horror of World War I. Why should he fight on foreign soil for a country that is his father's land and not his own? But everywhere he turns, war and its ravages follow Julio, changing everything. His lover Marguerite no longer desires their old life of abandoned intimacy, and his father has no use for his cowardly, profligate son. When Julio finally decides to fight, the world and his family know him for a different man.

Calico Road runs through a tiny Lancashire hamlet up on the edge of the moors, miles from anywhere. Its folk are an independent breed - and in 1827 they are a thorn in the side of the vicious mill owner in the valley below. Toby Fletcher's father ignored his bastard son while alive. Now Toby is the new owner of the rambling old inn, an unwitting keeper of its secrets. Then Meg Staley comes to Calico - a woman who was strong enough to survive one tragedy but found it harder to withstand a second blow.

King Raven has brought hope to the oppressed people of Wales - and fear to their Norman overlords. Deceived by the self-serving King William and hunted by the treacherous Abbot Hugo and Sheriff de Glanville, Rhi Bran is forced again to take matters into his own hands as King Raven. Along the way Friar Tuck has been the stalwart supporter of the man behind the legend - bringing Rhi Bran much-needed guidance, wit, and faithful companionship. Aided by Tuck and his small but determined band of forest-dwelling outlaws, Rhi Bran ignites a rebellion that spreads through the Welsh valleys.

The beautiful, flirtatious Zuleika has the dons and undergraduates of Oxford University literally lining up to die for her in this biting tragic-comic satire.

Doing time in Texas is no picnic. But getting sent to The Walls in Huntsville is a fate worse than hanging. If the guards don't kill you, the prisoners will. And if it weren't for the fact that the man who framed Hank Fallon and murdered his family could be inside The Walls, Hank would never step one foot in that heinous helltrap - let alone go undercover as an inmate. But this isn't just another assignment. This is his chance for revenge.

It’s 1936, in Flint Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud’s got a few things going for him. 1. He has his own suitcase full of special things. 2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: flyers advertising Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! Bud’s got an idea that those flyers will lead him to his father.

Kate Chopin’s novel, a landmark work of early feminism, is seen as a precursor to the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. The upper-class Creole society of New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast at the end of the 19th century is brought to audio in a stirring performance by Academy Award-winning actress Kim Basinger.

First conceived during a rainy summer holiday in the Highlands of Scotland in an attempt to amuse his stepson, Treasure Island began with the map. Young Lloyd Osbourne had drawn a crude version of an island, and Stevenson, looking over the boy's shoulder, began to elaborate, christening various curves and smudges the famed names of Skeleton Island and Spyglass Hill and finally adding the three red crosses marking the buried treasure.

Richard Whitestone is an Elemental Earth Master. Blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, he has sworn never to set eyes on his daughter, Suzanne. But when he finally sees her, a dark plan takes shape in his twisted mind - to use his daughter's body to bring back the spirit of his long-dead wife.

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.

Isabelle Benson has learned that an Elemental Master is behind the attempts on her students' lives-and the would-be murderer is someone very close to her former flame, the "Wizard of London".

The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. Published in November 1880, Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing the novel set in 19th-century Russia. Fydor Karamazov, a mean and disreputable landowner, has three sons, Dmitry, a profligate army officer; Ivan, a writer with revolutionary ideas; and Alexey, a religious novice.

"The Heroic Slave" is the only work of fiction by the eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The narrative was inspired by Madison Washington, a slave on the Creole who led a rebellion on the ship in November 1841, and had it sail to Nassau in the Bahamas instead of New Orleans. The short story appeared in the collection Autographs for Freedom (1852).

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.

El consejo de un abogado a sus hijos mientras él defiende el verdadero ruiseñor de la novela clásica de Harper Lee —un hombre negro acusado de violar a una niña blanca. A través de los ojos de Jem y Scout Finch, Harper Lee explora con humor y honestidad inquebrantable la irracionalidad de la actitud de los adultos hacia la raza y la clase en las profundidades del sur en la década de 1930. La conciencia de una ciudad impregnada de prejuicios, violencia e hipocresía se enfrenta con la resistencia y heroísmo silencioso de la lucha de un hombre por la justicia.

"Une journée d'Ivan Denissovitch", c'est celle du bagnard Ivan Denissovitch Choukhov, condamné à dix ans de camp de travail pour avoir été fait prisonnier au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le récit nous montre sa journée depuis le coup sur le rail suspendu dans la cour qui marque le lever, jusqu'au court répit du soir et au coucher, en passant par les longues procédures de comptage, la peur des fouilles, les bousculades au réfectoire, les travaux de maçonnerie par un froid terrible dans l'hiver kazakhe, les menues chances et malchances de la journée.