Historical Women

England, late 1547. King Henry VIII is dead. His 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth is living with the king's widow, Catherine Parr, and her new husband, Thomas Seymour. Seymour is the brother of Henry VIII's third wife, the late Jane Seymour, who was the mother to the now-ailing boy king. Ambitious and dangerous, Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth that ends with Catherine sending her away. When Catherine dies a year later and Seymour is arrested for treason soon after, a scandal explodes.

Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.

Victorian London, 1897: Sherlock Holmes has been asked by South African mogul Cecil Rhodes to stop an international ring of diamond smugglers. An alluring woman wants Watson to help raise funds for her charity. Lucy and Jack are looking forward to their wedding and moving into a new home. But then a new series of murders take place in Whitechapel, and Lucy is targeted by a notorious killer. The Baker Street team will need more than their usual deductive brilliance to defeat their latest adversary, or else the case of the Ripper could be their last.

A "rich and riveting" New York Times bestseller based on the true story of a female journalist who defied all the rules while covering World War II (Publishers Weekly, starred review). New York City/Paris, 1942: When American model Jessica May arrives in Europe to cover the war as a...

England, 1919. Verity Kent's grief over the loss of her husband pierces anew when she receives a cryptic letter suggesting her beloved Sidney may have committed treason before his untimely death. Determined to dull her pain with revelry, Verity's first impulse is to dismiss the derogatory claim. But the mystery sender knows too much - including the fact that during the war Verity worked for the Secret Service, something not even Sidney knew.

A young woman begs Sherlock Holmes to help find her missing fiancé, but the great detective makes an uncharacteristic mistake. Then Sherlock’s daughter, Lucy James, takes on a missing-person case of her own, but she must also keep a vicious criminal away from Becky, Lucy’s 10-year-old sister-in-law. Little Becky soon becomes dangerously involved in both cases. No one foresees the devastating news that Sherlock Holmes has been murdered.

More malefaction, malevolence, and misdeeds rise to the surface as Holmes investigates. A complicated string of clues leads him to a ring of corrupt cops with a deadly agenda.

In 1972 on Mudas Summers's 17th birthday, her beloved mama Ella is found hanging from the rafters of their home. Most people in Peckinpaw, Kentucky, assume that Ella's no-good husband did the deed. Others think Ella grew tired of his abuse and did it herself. Muddy is determined to find out for sure either way, especially once she finds strange papers hidden among her mama's possessions

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything - everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else. Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.

With both of her parents dead, Princess Selene and her two surviving brothers are left at the mercy of their captors, taken from Egypt and put on display as war trophies in Rome. Trapped in an empire that reviles her heritage and suspects her faith, Selene struggles for survival in a court of intrigue. She can't hide the hieroglyphics that carve themselves into her hands nor can she stop the emperor from using her powers for his own ends.

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in this powerful novel of magic, family, and the suffragette movement. "A gorgeous and thrilling paean to the ferocious power of women. The characters live, bleed, and roar. "―Laini Taylor, New York...

Imagine being a 13-year-old girl in love with boys, school, family - life itself. Then suddenly, in a matter of hours, your life is shattered by the arrival of a foreign army. This is the memoir of Elli Friedmann, who was 13 years old in March 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary. It describes her descent into the hell of Auschwitz, a concentration camp where, because of her golden braids, she was selected for work instead of extermination. In intimate, excruciating details she recounts what it was like.

It’s 1968, London is in full swing, and the Savoy Hotel is at the height of its legendary glitz and glamour, welcoming the rich, famous, and aristocratic into its rarified world of perfection. Royals wait upstairs in luxurious suites for discreet encounters. All is as it should be at the Savoy. If only it weren’t for the dead body in Room 705. Could it be murder? Impossible! Who could have done such a thing? Suspicion falls upon Priscilla Tempest, the quick-witted Canadian head of the Savoy press office who has a penchant for champagne, the wrong sort of men—and trouble.

A rousing tale of espionage and unsung valor, this is the captivating true story of Vera Atkins, Great Britain's spymistress from the age of 25. With her fierce intelligence, blunt manner, personal courage, and exceptional informants, Vera ran countless missions throughout the 1930s. After rising to the leadership echelon in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by Winston Churchill, she became head of a clandestine army in World War II.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER GMA BOOK CLUB PICK AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR From the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène comes a gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, an enthralling historical saga that recreates the danger, romance, and sacrifice of an era and brings to life one courageous, passionate American—Mildred Fish Harnack—and her circle of women friends who waged a...

Season Two, Volume One. Four cryptic cases involving murder, mayhem, and mysterious disappearances. Is one mastermind behind them all?

Sherlock and Lucy must defeat two ruthless organizations on two continents in this season two finale of the Sherlock and Lucy series. Their clever archenemy, the evil Lord Sonneborne, will fight them to the bitter end. But the Baker Street team is equally determined. Their own lives, and the life of Lucy's mother, are at stake, in a struggle to change the future of the British Empire.

When our story begins, Julia Child is an eager but inexperienced codebreaker longing to prove herself in the male-dominated world of intelligence, and Josephine Baker is, well, Josephine Baker—a world-famous entertainer who is now leading a double life as a spy for the French Resistance. When a golden opportunity arises to infiltrate a high-stakes Nazi gala in Vichy France, Julia must put aside her by-the-book mentality to assist her unorthodox new partner.

Surrey, England, 1938. After 30 devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband’s appeal for divorce. It’s Ellie’s opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She’s taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora—each needing escape—impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.