Historical House Fiction

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”

They say behind every great man, there's a woman. In this case, there are three. Stella Crater, the judge's wife, is the picture of propriety draped in long pearls and the latest Chanel. Ritzi, a leggy showgirl with Broadway aspirations, thinks moonlighting in the judge's bed is the quickest way off the chorus line. Maria Simon, the dutiful maid, has the judge to thank for her husband's recent promotion to detective in the NYPD. Meanwhile, Crater is equally indebted to Tammany Hall leaders and the city's most notorious gangster, Owney "The Killer" Madden.

Lorsqu'un élève est retrouvé mort au très prestigieux internat de Fleat House, au cœur du Norfolk, c'est tout d'abord la piste de l'accident qui est privilégiée. Mais pour Jazz Hunter,enquêtrice londonienne sollicitée pour l'investigation, tout porte à croire qu'il s'agit d'un meurtre... La victime, Charlie Cavendish, fils d'un grand avocat,avait en effet beaucoup d'ennemis. Alors que les mystères et les mensonges se multiplient à Fleat House, Jazz doit enquêter sur l'histoire des lieux et de ses occupants, et bientôt des secrets vieux de plus de trente ans refont surface.

After renowned fashion designer Cressida Westcott loses both her home and her design house in the London Blitz, she has nowhere to go but the family manor house she fled decades ago. Praying that her niece and nephew will be more hospitable than her brother had been, she arrives with nothing but the clothes she stands in, at a loss as to how to rebuild her business while staying in a quaint country village.

Best-selling author Alison Weir turns her masterly storytelling skills to the early life of young Elizabeth Tudor, who would grow up to become England's most intriguing and powerful queen. Sweeping in scope, The Lady Elizabeth is a fascinating portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time - whose dangerous and dramatic path to the throne shapes her future greatness.

It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke's wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet's rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they'd hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke's son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe.

Bill Canavan rode into the valley with a dream to start his own ranch. But when he managed to stake claims on the three best water holes, the other ranchers turned against him. No one is more determined to see Canavan dead than Star Levitt. Levitt is an unscrupulous businessman who has been accumulating cattle at an alarming rate. Suspicious after witnessing a secret meeting between the riders of warring ranches, Bill begins noticing other dubious behavior: Why is Levitt's fiancée, Dixie Venable, acting more like a hostage than a willing bride-to-be?

Mrs. Braithwaite, self-appointed queen of her English village, finds herself dethroned, despised, and dismissed following her husband’s selfish divorce petition. Never deterred, the threat of a family secret being revealed sets off hot-foot to London to find the only person she has left - her clever daughter, Betty, who took work there at the first rumbles of war. But when she arrives, Betty’s landlord, the timid Mr. Norris, informs her that Betty hasn’t been home in days - with the chaos of the bombs, there’s no telling what might have befallen her.

When Gaylord Riley walked away from the Coburn gang, he had money and a dream. He worked hard and built a cabin, gathered a herd of cattle, and fell in love with Marie Shattuck. But when he is confronted with false accusations of rustling and murder, Riley is forced to defend his new law-abiding way of life. Outnumbered and facing a lynching party, Riley is surprised when his old friends return to lend him a hand. But how can they help him and keep themselves out of jail?

Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.

Sixteen-year-old Echo Sackett has never been far from her Tennessee home - until she makes the long trek to Philadelphia to collect her inheritance. In the wilderness Echo can take care of herself as well as any man, but she never imagined the challenge that awaits: a crooked city lawyer who intends to take advantage of her by any means necessary. Echo will need all of her wits to best this scoundrel and make it back home in one piece.

Texas: a land of sprawling diversity and unparalleled richness; a dazzling chapter in the history of our nation; a place like no other on Earth. Through the remarkable lives of four families, this epic saga spans four centuries and two continents and charts the dramatic formation of several great dynasties from the age of the conquistadors to the present day. A richly compelling novel of a proud people eager to meet the challenge of the land, Texas is James Michener's most magnificent achievement.

In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek’s entire life is written in advance. He’ll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family’s strong women, he starts to do just that–until a patient’s son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men’s unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.

Miss Isabelle Catherine Hutting would rather be lounging in the library than circling the ballroom in search of a husband any day. So when Cat hears that the town's infamous Spinster House is open for a new resident, she jumps at the chance to put all this marriage business behind her. But first she must make arrangements with her prospective landlord, Marcus, the duke of Hart - the most handsome man she's ever seen and the only man who's ever impressed her in the least.

Barnabas Sackett was leaving England to make his fortune in the New World. But as he settled his affairs, he learned that a royal warrant had been sworn out against him and that men were searching for him in every port. At issue were some rare gold coins Sackett had sold to finance his first trip to the Americas—coins believed to be part of a great treasure lost by King John years before.

Filled with exciting tales of the frontier, the chronicle of the Sackett family is perhaps the crowning achievement of one of our greatest storytellers. In The Warrior's Path, L'Amour tells the story of Yance and Kin Sackett, two brothers who are the last hope of a young woman who faces a fate worse than death.

Hopalong Cassidy has received an urgent message from the dead. Answering an urgent appeal for help from fellow cowpuncher Pete Melford, he rides in only to discover that his old friends has been murdered and the ranch Pete left to his niece, Cindy Blair, had vanished without a trace. Hopalong may have arrived too late to save Pete, but his sense of loyalty and honor demands that he find that cold-blooded killers and return to Cindy what is rightfully hers.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of people with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes listeners into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history.

After their fateful adventure in China, Captain Will Laurence of His Majesty's Aerial Corps and his extraordinary dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent new orders from Britain. Three valuable dragon eggs have been purchased from the Ottoman Empire, and Laurence and Temeraire must detour to Istanbul to escort the precious cargo back to England. Time is of the essence if the eggs are to be borne home before hatching.

Lily is haunted by memories of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower and asks the gods for forgiveness.