Historical Women

The Gallagher family has called Deeprath Castle home for 700 years. Nestled in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, the estate is now slated to become a public trust, and book lover and scholar Carragh Ryan is hired to take inventory of its historic library. But after meeting Aidan, the current Viscount Gallagher, and his enigmatic family, Carragh knows that her task will be more challenging than she'd thought.

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.

In 1677, an invisible wall separates settlers in New France from their Huron neighbors. Yet whether in the fledgling city of Quebec or within one of the native tribes, every woman's fate depends on the man she chooses - or is obligated-to marry. Drawn into unexpected friendship through their loves, losses, and dreams of home and family, Claudine Deschamps, Gabrielle Giroux, and Manon Lefebvre will have to call on their bravery and resilience to succeed in this new world.

A sheltered life in the countryside has left Diana Lindsay restless to see the wider world, for both herself and the son she is raising alone. She cannot marry, but perhaps as a courtesan she will find love and protection despite her painful past. Gathering her courage, she moves to London - and finds herself the city's most desired woman, as admired for her charm as for her beauty. But it is one man who captivates her - handsome, haunted, and harboring a secret as deep as her own....

Generations of Sassers have made moonshine in the Brushy Mountains of Wilkes County, North Carolina. Their history is recorded in a leather-bound journal that belongs to Jessie Sasser's daddy, but Jessie wants no part of it. As far as she's concerned, moonshine caused her mother's death a dozen years ago. Her father refuses to speak about her mama, or about the day she died. But Jessie has a gnawing hunger for the truth - one that compels her to seek comfort in food.

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King garners widespread acclaim for her suspenseful novels rich with historical detail. Set in the vibrant Paris Jazz Age, The Bones of Paris introduces private investigator Harris Stuyvesant, an American agent who’s been given the plum assignment of locating beautiful young model Philippa Crosby. But when Philippa’s trail ends at the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, Stuyvesant discovers a world where art meets sexual depravity - and where a savage killer lurks in the shadows.

Epic in scope, Marge Piercy's sweeping novel encompasses the wide range of people and places marked by the Second World War. Each of her 10 narrators has a unique and compelling story that powerfully depicts his or her personality, desires, and fears. Special attention is given to the women of the war effort, like Bernice, who rebels against her domineering father to become a fighter pilot, and Naomi, a Parisian Jew sent to live with relatives in Detroit, whose twin sister, Jacqueline - still in France - joins the resistance against Nazi rule.

In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London - each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy's off visiting their daughter at school. But when a teacher is found dead, Daisy is once again in the thick of it.

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home–a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva–having been told that their beloved adoptive father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage–a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . . .

Lord Simon Devere returns from the Burmese War haunted by the vivid memory of his slain cousin and powerless to know reality from dreams. Unable to sleep lest he awaken in the cell of his nightmares, he sits in the dark, incapable of believing he is truly home - and safe - in England. Jenny Blackwood is determined not to let her mother and sisters succumb to an unkind fate. With a head for numbers, she becomes the skilled bookkeeper "Mr. Cavendish". One unexpected client is the nobleman cruelly named by gossips as Lord Despair.

Annie Trimble lives in her own world. Shunned by the town for being a simpleton, Annie is kept close to home by her parents. She enjoys her freedom roaming the woods and befriending wild creatures. Frequently taunted by children and adults, Annie's world is shattered when one man takes the torment too far. Shocked by his brother's cruelty toward the girl, Alex Montgomery will do whatever it takes to make amends - even when it means marrying Annie. Soon Alex is charmed by her innocence and begins to realize that the beautiful young woman is not as slow-witted as everyone believes.

Though Frederica chafed at the restricted life she lived as the adopted daughter of an infamous bluestocking, she did agree with the philosophy. Until men learned to appreciate intellectual equals, Frederica was better off without them. But her sister’s elopement has sparked fires of romance in Frederica’s well-educated head, making her ripe for the considerable charms of Lord Harry Danger, who has saved her from a pack of drunken thugs. Now if he would only treat her as an equal and stop the silly flirting.

Ariana loves her life as a schoolteacher in a little frontier town. But one evening after classes are done and she prepares to hurry home, her life changes in an instant when a band of rough outlaws abduct her and take her far away from all she has ever known. Trapped in a small shack, Ariana prays and waits, her emotions swinging between terror and boredom as days stretch into weeks. Still, the outlaws refuse to tell her why they've taken her or what they plan to do. Then the boss' son appears in the doorway of her cabin.

It's late 1936, and King Edward is in turmoil, having fallen in love with the scandalously divorced and even more scandalously American Wallis Simpson. He wants to marry her but knows that doing so will jeopardize his crown. Edward confides in his dear friend Darcy, Georgie's husband, and the couple agree to hide Wallis in their home while Edward figures out what to do. But unbeknownst to Georgie and Darcy, Sir Hubert, the owner of the estate, has given a film crew permission to shoot a motion picture about Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn on the grounds

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

The foggy streets of London's Whitechapel district have become a nocturnal hunting ground for Jack the Ripper, and no woman is safe. Flower girl Constance Piper is not immune to dread, but she is more preoccupied with her own strange experiences of late. Clairvoyants seem to be everywhere these days. In desperation, even Scotland Yard has turned to them to help apprehend the Ripper.

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.

Charlotte Griffolino knows a rake when she sees one - and the man her niece longs to marry most definitely qualifies. Stuart Drake is handsome, charming - and penniless. That he is interested in more than Susan's considerable inheritance is highly unlikely. That he will be immune to Charlotte's allure is even more unlikely. With a Viscount title in his future, Stuart expects it shouldn't be difficult to marry an heiress. Still, once he meets Charlotte, how hard will it be to charm her? Quite, actually. Now Stuart has only one option: to take revenge on her through seduction.

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious 12-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.