Historical Literary Fiction Saga

Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

The Awakening Land trilogy traces the transformation of a middle-American landscape from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The trilogy includes The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) and follows the varied fortunes of Sayward Luckett and her family in southeastern Ohio. The Town tells how Sayward completes her mission and lives to see the transition of her family and her friends, American pioneers, from the ways of wilderness to the ways of civilization.

The Peacock Feast opens on a June day in 1916 when Louis C. Tiffany, the eccentric glass genius, dynamites the breakwater at Laurelton Hall - his fantastical Oyster Bay mansion. The explosion shakes both the apple crate, where Prudence, the daughter of Tiffany’s prized gardener, is sleeping and the rocks where Randall, her seven-year-old brother, is playing. Nearly a century later, Prudence receives an unexpected visit at her New York apartment from Grace, a hospice nurse and the granddaughter of Randall, who Prudence never saw again after he left at age 14 for California.

Moses Froben was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps, the bastard son of a deaf-mute woman, banished to the church tower to ring the loudest and most beautiful bells ever each day. His life is simple but content, until the day his father recognizes Moses' singular sense of hearing and its power to expose his sins. Cast into the world with only his ears to protect and guide him, Moses finds refuge in the choir of the historic Abbey of St. Gall and becomes its star singer, only to endure the horrifying act of castration....

How did the families who live on Manhattan's Upper East Side get to where they are today? As much a penetrating social history as it is engaging fiction, East Side Story tells of the Carnochans, a family whose Scottish forebears establish themselves in New York's textile business during the Civil War. From there they quickly move on to seize prominent positions in the country's top schools and Manhattan's elite firms. As the novel unfolds, family members across the generations recount their stories, illuminating lives steeped in both good fortune and moral jeopardy.

Peter Behrens' eagerly awaited second novel is The O’Briens. In the character of Joe O’Brien - ambitious railroad magnate and industrialist, fiercely loyal family man, brooding troubled soul - he gives us one of the most compelling and complex characters to come along in years. A brilliant follow-up to The Law of Dreams, and yet standing masterfully on its own, The O’Briens is a tragic, romantic, and ultimately hopeful epic of great heart, imagination and narrative force.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband. So say the friends and family of impoverished widow Octavia Darcy when she unexpectedly inherits a fortune, but she has a different view and looks forward to a new life of independence.

Known for her beauty and boldness, Abigail MacGregor must preserve herclan's dangerous secret: that her mother is the true heir to the English Crown. If the wrong people find out, it will mean war for her beloved Scotland. To keep peace, she embarks for London, unprepared for the treachery that awaits - especially from her wickedly handsome escort. He is the enemy, but his slow, sensuous kisses entice her beyond reason.

In 1914, Britain faces a new kind of war. For Edward and Beatrice Hunter, their children, servants and neighbours, life will never be the same again. For David, the eldest, war means a chance to do something noble; but enlisting will break his mother's heart. His sister Diana, nineteen and beautiful, longs for marriage. She has her heart set on Charles Wroughton, son of Earl Wroughton, but Charles will never be allowed to marry a banker's daughter.

Paris, 1921. Lorsque Valentine se marie avec l'héritier de la prestigieuse maison de fourreurs, la Maison Fontenoy, elle est loin de se douter de la vie qui l'attend. Malgré l’amour que lui porte son mari André et la naissance de ses deux enfants - Camille et Maxence -, Valentine s'enfonce dans un profond ennui et la frustration la gagne peu à peu. Lassée par ce quotidien et ce rôle d'épouse et de mère qui ne la comble pas, elle décide de partir pour assouvir ses aspirations.

As the Japanese begin their assault on Singapore, Sarah Fuller is forced to leave her parents and fiancé, Philip, behind. The long journey to England is fraught with danger, and Sarah and her sister Jane don’t even know if their great-aunt is alive, let alone waiting for them. They arrive in Cliffehaven, on the south coast of England, and here Sarah must find work to support them both. When the Women's Timber Corps takes over the local estate, Sarah enlists as a lumberjill.

Guerreros y eremitas, boyardos y siervos, héroes y heroínas románticos, ancianas damas ricas, buscadores de fortuna y exiliados... Los personajes de Rusia habitan en un mundo contradictorio de bosques, estepas, iconos y hachas, fe ortodoxa y persecución a los judíos, hermosas iglesias, palacios magníficos y pueblos miserables; de arte popular ruso y operas suntuosas, de Tolstói y Lenin, Chaikovsky y Rasputín.

June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother Michael are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin's home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family's revolutionary past.

Rhoda Middleton suspects her husband Peter is having an affair. But when Rhoda tracks the mysterious woman down, she finds she is not his lover after all, but the wife of his wartime best friend, Archie Foster. There is only one problem - Rhoda has never even heard of Archie Foster.

Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between.

Told from three different perspectives, this sweeping saga begins in 1935 Portugal, in the grip of Salazar’s authoritarian regime, where upper-class Jenny enters into an uncommon marriage with the beguiling António. Keeping up appearances, they host salons for the political and cultural elite. In private, Jenny, António, and his lover, Pedro, share a guarded triangle, build a profound relationship, and together raise a daughter born under the auspices of rebellion.

Based on the life of West Texas pioneer J.D. "Big John" Sanders, Generations is a celebration of Irish heritage, a story of indomitable spirit and unfailing vision, and of relentless pursuit of the American dream. After a whirlwind romance with the formidable Nora Brooks, Big John forges a cattle town in the rugged West Texas frontier during World War I. Thirty years later, Marion Kidd Sanders journeys to New York in pursuit of fame and fortune and brings the family name to new heights.

In 1944, 20-year-old Marlene visits her older cousin, Eva Braun - Adolf Hitler's mistress - at the Fuhrer's Bavarian mountain retreat. There, Marlene finds herself in a strange paradise. The two women skinny-dip in a nearby lake, watch films in a private cinema, and flirt with the SS officers at the dinner table. But soon a mission of mercy forces Marlene to question her allegiance to both her cousin and her country - and to face the chilling reality that exists outside her sheltered world.

The Magnificent Ambersons chronicles the changing fortunes of three generations of an American dynasty. The family serves as a metaphor for the old society that crumbled after the Industrial Revolution, as a Midwestern town spreads and darkens into a city.

"A Tale of Two Cities" is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature. The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution.