Historical Sagas

Lancashire, 1857. Liza, 17 ans, est employée au service des Pringle, un jeune couple qui la traite bien. Mais son père exige soudain qu'elle revienne vivre parmi les siens pour s'occuper de sa mère malade et de ses jeunes frère et sœur. Liza déchante, mais sa déception n'est rien comparée à la décision qu'a prise pour elle son père : elle épousera un veuf bien plus âgé qu'elle. Pour échapper aux avances pressantes de cet homme qui lui répugne, Liza s'enfuit.

In the grand storytelling style that is his signature, James Michener sweeps us back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago. Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the early Hebrews and their persecutions, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, all the way to the founding of present-day Israel and the Middle East conflict.

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.

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.

The saga of a land from the time when the volcanic islands rose out of the sea to the decade in which they become the 50th state. Michener uses individuals' experiences to symbolize the struggle of the various races to establish themselves in the islands.

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.

It's centuries since I've seen one single other member of my own species. Oh, there have been others. I've heard of them, chased after them, and in some instances almost found them. Mark, I say almost. But not in centuries have I touched my own flesh and blood, as humans are so fond of saying. Never in all this time....

On a muggy August day in 2002, Alex Lind disappears without a trace. On an equally stifling August day in 1658, Matthew Graham finds her on an empty Scottish moor. Life will never be the same for Alex—or for Matthew.Due to a series of rare occurrences, Alexandra Lind is thrown three centuries backwards in time. She lands at the feet of Matthew Graham—an escaped convict making his way home to Scotland in this the year of our Lord 1658.

The Story of a New Name follows Elena Ferrante's critically acclaimed My Brilliant Friend, featuring Lila and Elena. The two protagonists are now in their 20s, and marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila. Meanwhile Elena continues her journey of self-discovery.

The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world filled with unrest wrestles for control over this new world order: A mother’s husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects his wealth no matter the cost, all the while war cries are heard from France.

In 1890, Corrine Dixon meets and is swept away by the charms of rich, sophisticated, and handsome Garland Foxworth. After discovering that she’s pregnant, Garland does what appears to be the honorable thing and marries her in a huge wedding ceremony on the luxurious Foxworth Hall grounds while both families keep her pregnancy a secret. Now the mistress of the labyrinthine estate, Corrine discovers that nothing is what is seems. Garland is not the man she expected, and she’s uncomfortable with his intense infatuation with his deceased mother’s memory.

Orphaned as a child by a blood feud and sold as a slave to an exiled chieftain in Ireland, the boy Hasting had little hope of surviving to adulthood. The gods had other plans. A ship arrived at his master's longphort carrying a man who would alter the course of his destiny and take him under his wing to teach him the ways of the Vikings. His is a story of a boy who was a slave, who became a warlord, and who helped topple an empire.

Here is the dazzling saga of two women: the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults; many of life's great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women's friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives. Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up - a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos.

In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker - a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia.

Told in a smart, assured, and compelling voice, this is the story of Caroline, the young wife and childhood sweetheart of Jacob, who together live on a farm raising their daughter, Rachel, just outside of Gettysburg. When Jacob joins the Northern army to do his duty and help save the Union, no one anticipates he will not return. Caroline gets news that he is wounded and has been taken to Washington, DC, with his regiment, and so she must find her way there and navigate the thousands of other wounded soldiers to find him.

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.

The Great Extermination has begun. In the Capitol, Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan hatches a plot to kill every member of the untouchable caste in all of Lok, down to the last man, woman, and child. As a member of the Order of Inquisition, Vokkan has no official say in the creation of Law, but he has powerful allies willing to do his bidding. Through them, he has convinced the Judges that the genocide will be swift, complete, and without complication. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Lauren Francis-Sharma's 'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in a seaside village in the north of Trinidad where young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman, the risks and rewards in Marcia's life amplify forever.

All her life, Hannah Sterling longed for a close relationship with her estranged mother. Following Lieselotte's death, Hannah determines to unlock the secrets of her mother's mysterious past and is shocked to discover a grandfather living in Germany. Thirty years earlier, Lieselotte's father is quickly ascending the ranks of the Nazi party, and a proper marriage for his daughter could help advance his career.

The first book in the best-selling Conqueror series featuring Genghis Khan and his descendants. Temujin, the second son of the khan of the Wolves tribe, was only 11 when his father died in an ambush. His family were thrown out of the tribe and left alone, without food or shelter, to starve to death on the harsh Mongolian plains. It was a rough introduction to his life, to a sudden adult world, but Temujin survived, learning to combat natural and human threats.