Historical House Fiction

Gold fever swept the world in 1897. The chance for untold riches sent thousands of dreamers on a perilous trek toward their fortunes, failures, or deaths. Follow four English aristocrats and their Irish servant as they misguidedly haul their dreams across cruel Canadian terrain toward the Klondike gold fields.

This third volume in The Lymond Chronicles, the highly renowned series of historical novels, takes place in 1551, when Francis Crawford of Lymond is dispatched to embattled Malta, to assist the Knights of Hospitallers in defending the island against the Turks. But shortly the swordsman and scholar discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks, where various factions vie secretly for master.

A fighter, rogue, and ladies man, Alan Lewrie has done the unthinkable and gotten himself hitched--to a woman and a ship! The woman is the lovely Caroline Chiswick. The ship is the gun ketch, Alacrity, bound for the Bahamas and a bloody game of cat and mouse with the pirates who ply the lunatic winds there. But while war comes naturally to the young husband, politics doesn't.

Life for Lady Adelaide Bell was easier if she hid in her older sister's shadow - which worked until her sister got married. Even with the pressure of her socially ambitious mother, the last thing she expected was a marriage of convenience to save her previously spotless reputation. Lord Trent Hawthorne couldn't be happier that he is not the duke in the family. He's free to manage his small estate and take his time discovering the life he wants to lead.

Czechoslovakia, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a newly trained psychiatrist who studied under Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle surrounded by forests, on a site that is well known for concealing dark secrets going back many centuries. The asylum houses six inmates - the country's most treacherous killers - known to the terrified public as the Devil's Six. Viktor intends to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon he calls The Devil Aspect.

Jenny Sutherland is pretty, but the lovely country girl is also vain. Her guardian has decided that a London season is just the thing to give the fair Jenny a sorely deserved set-down. Meanwhile, the handsome Duke of Pelham, owner of 67 Clarges Street, has returned from Europe at last - to find a wife. Used to women doting on him, the Duke turns the ton against the disdainful Jenny who dares to spurn him at her very first London soiree. Alas, he’s fallen in love with the miss he’s just ruined!

From within the hopelessness and terror of China's Cultural Revolution, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening, and the magical power of storytelling. "An unexpected miracle," raves the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "a delicate, and often hilarious, tale."

Survival. A Hebrew girl first tasted it when she escaped death nearly 70 years ago as the Babylonians ransacked Jerusalem and took their finest as captives. She thought she'd perfected in the many years among the Magoi and the idol worshipers, pretending with all the others in King Nebuchadnezzar's court. Now, as Daniel's wife and a septuagenarian matriarch, Belili thinks she's safe and that she can live out her days in Babylon without fear - until the night Daniel is escorted to Belshazzar's palace to interpret mysterious handwriting on a wall.

In October 1886, Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the British War office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma, where a rare Erard grand piano is in need of repair. On his journey to Burma, Edgar encounters prophets and thieves, soldiers and tale-spinners, and an enchanting woman as elusive as the surgeon-major who owns the piano will turn out to be. Edgar encounters a place more mysterious and dangerous than he could ever have imagined.

It is the year 1815, and Mr. John Caesar is determined to help his sister, Mary, successfully navigate the marriage mart. A high-stakes endeavor at the best of times, this task is made slightly more difficult by his family’s nontraditional background, the pernicious whims of the ton, and the ever-present complication of living in a world full of scheming fairies and capricious gods. Despite all that, John knows that his parents wish to see his sister comfortably settled. He also knows that the sooner he sees Mary’s future secured, the sooner he can get his own wish.

Adam Stark had found gold. In the confusion of the mesas and canyons near Rockinstraw Mountain, Stark, his wife, Consuelo, and his sister, Miriam, were quietly working a rich vein while keeping their presence a secret from raiding Apaches. Worried that his wife might leave him, Stark wanted to make enough money to take her to San Francisco, where she could enjoy the style of life she craved. But when Taggart, a stranger on the run from a vicious bounty hunter, enters their camp, tensions soon mount. Consuelo, against all good judgment, cannot resist testing Taggart.

I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. So begins Alexander’s extraordinary confession on the eve of his greatest crisis of leadership. By turns heroic and calculating, compassionate and utterly merciless, Alexander recounts with a warrior’s unflinching eye for detail the blood, the terror, and the tactics of his greatest battlefield victories.

The year is 1471. Within the circus of statecraft, where the lions of Burgundy, Cyprus, England, and Venice stalk and snarl, Nicholas wields a valued whip. Having wrested his little son Jordan from his estranged wife, Gelis, he embarks on the greatest business scheme of his life—beginning with a journey to Iceland. But while Nicholas confronts merchant knights, polar bears, and the frozen volcanic wastelands of the North, a greater challenge awaits: the vengeful Gelis, whose secrets threaten to topple all Nicholas has achieved. Here is Dorothy Dunnett at her best.

Mano Majra is a place, Khushwant Singh tells us at the beginning of this novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the "ghost train" arrives, a silent funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refuges, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endures and transcends the ravages of war.

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail he was left stranded at the dock.

Under the direction of famed explorer Porter Stone, an archaeological team is secretly attempting to locate the tomb of an ancient pharaoh who was unlike any other in history. Stone believes he has found the burial chamber of King Narmer, the near mythical god-king who united upper and lower Egypt in 3200 B.C., and the archaeologist has reason to believe that the greatest prize of all - Narmer's crown - might be buried with him. No crown of an Egyptian king has ever been discovered, and Narmer's is the elusive crown of the two Egypts.

Lord Guy Carlton, late of His Majesty’s regiment and weary from the war in France, has only wine, women, and song in mind when he rents Number 67 Clarges Street. He certainly has no desire for a serious attachment! Then his merry eyes spot the lovely but very proper Miss Esther Jones. Though Esther’s business acumen has made her one of the richest women in England, her innocence could make her a victim of the wild ways of the ton - unless the downstairs staff at Clarges Street devise a campaign to reform the rake who is laying siege to her heart.

In Mummies in the Morning, Jack and Annie get another mummy when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to ancient Egypt after reading a book on the same subject. There, they find themselves in a pyramid, face to face with a long dead queen named Hutepi. She needs their help finding her copy of the Book of the Dead for a trip to the underworld. Will Jack and Annie be able to solve the puzzle, or will they end up as mummies themselves?

When he falls ill on his way home from school, 15-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder.

With startling insight, Danielle Steel explores women's choices: between home and adventure, between the love for family and the passion for a cause, between sacrifice and desire. But at the heart of Mirror Image is a fascinating, realistic portrait of identical twins, two vastly different sisters who lead their lives and follow their destinies against a vivid backdrop of a world at war.