Historical House Fiction

In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of seventeen, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her.

Sarah Jennings knows there’s one place she can go to find some peace and quiet during her difficult divorce. But arriving at her beloved father’s home in the countryside, she finds him unwell and hunched over boxes of files, studying the records from Cedar Hall, the crumbling orphanage in town. He says that hidden behind the wrought iron gates and overgrown ivy are secrets about their family, and he asks for her help.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice.

The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future—the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her. While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war.

On the isle of Ithaca, queen Penelope maintains a delicate balance of power. Many years ago, her husband Odysseus sailed to war with Troy and never came home. In his absence, Penelope uses all her cunning to keep the peace—a peace that is shattered by the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra. Orestes' hands are stained with his mother's blood. Not so long ago, the son of Agamemnon took Queen Clytemnestra's life on Ithaca's sands. Now, wracked with guilt, he is slowly losing his mind.

RITA Award finalist and Christy Award winner Julie Klassen delivers historical romances brimming with the eloquence and intensity of Jane Austen. In an abandoned gatehouse on an old estate, Mariah Aubrey lives in seclusion. She supports herself by writing novels in secret—at a time when such writing is considered improper and unladylike. Soon the wealthy and ambitious Captain Bryant leases the estate and is intrigued by the beautiful girl in the gatehouse.

The Duke of Riverton has chosen his future wife with the same logic he uses to make every decision. However, his perfect bride eludes his suit, while the beautiful Isabella Berkeley seems to be everywhere. When the time comes, will Griffith and Isabella be able to set aside their pride and initial notions to embrace their very own happily-ever-after?

The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter, Blanca, embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban.

Christine and her older brother, Henry, grew up in the Delaney family as loved and nurtured as if they had been born to Elizabeth and Wynn. Now adults, they are ready to make new lives for themselves. Henry has found love and is planning a wedding. Christine is delighted for her brother, but she is still carrying scars from a broken relationship. And the war in Europe causes uncertainties at every turn, while the Northland still calls to her heart.

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name. As Lucienne Carlier, Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border and earns a new nickname from the Gestapo for her remarkable ability to evade capture: The White Mouse.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.

Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of the illustrious yet financially troubled Struan empire, is racing to undo the damage his predecessor left behind and to once again stand on stable ground. And he’ll do whatever it takes—including striking a hard-fought deal with an American millionaire. But his rival, Quillan Gornt, has other plans. Suddenly caught in a dubious plot involving Soviet spies, Hong Kong’s criminal underground, and the hostile takeover of his company, Dunross holds nothing back in the fight for the Noble House.

On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.

This audio collection includes the first eight stories from The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne: Dinosaurs Before Dark, The Knight at Dawn, Mummies in the Morning, Pirates Past Noon, Night of the Ninjas, Afternoon on the Amazon, Sunset of the Sabertooth, and Midnight on the Moon. Join Jack and Annie in adventures in time and space!

Lady Miranda Hawthorne acts every inch the lady, but inside she longs to be bold and carefree. Entering her fourth Season and approaching spinsterhood in the eyes of society, she pours her innermost feelings out not in a diary but in letters to her brother's old school friend, a duke - with no intention of ever sending these private thoughts to a man she's heard stories about but never met.

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva. The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself.

Few outsiders will ever witness the dark misdeeds of the Heavenly Host. And among this secret society, where exiled Georgian aristocrats gather to indulge their carnal desires, fewer still can match the insatiable appetite of their chief provocateur, the mysterious Viscount Rohan. Pursuit of physical pleasure is both his preferred pastime and his most pressing urge, until he encounters the fascination of a woman who won't be swayed.

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Ruined beyond repair and shunned by London society, lovely Miranda Rohan rebelliously embraces the freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose. However, this dangerous course throws her under the power of the darkly enigmatic Lucien de Malheur - known to many as the Scorpion. Seeking to destroy the Rohans, Lucien traps Miranda in a marriage she thinks is based on friendship but instead is rooted in vengeance.

Demonstrating once again her gift for spellbinding storytelling, Anne Rice makes real for us a great dynasty of four centuries of witches - a family given to poetry and incest, murder and philosophy, a family that over the ages is itself haunted by a powerful, dangerous, and seductive being called Lasher who haunts the Mayfair women. Moving in time from today's New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and the France of Louis XIV, from the coffee plantations of Port-au-Prince to Civil War New Orleans and back to today, Anne Rice has spun a mesmerizing tale.