New England Historical Fiction

Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth; and the defiant Hester Prynne, who, unwilling to name her partner in adultery, is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" on the breast of her gown for the remainder of her life.

Seeking a new life, the Oberstrasse family lands on the wild Maine coast in 1753. They find that the American frontier teems with conniving swindlers, hostile French and Indians, killing diseases, and then a powerful movement for independence from Britain. They have come because Christianne has decided that their infant sons will never soldier for the Landgraf of Hesse like their father, hired out to serve King George of England. Expecting to till the soil, Johann finds that opportunity on the rocky coast comes from the forest, not land, so he learns carpentry and trapping.

Sarah Orne Jewett's fiction depicts, with humor and dignity, the lives and values of the people of New England before the turn of the century. This unabridged collection of four of her best stories, beautifully performed in the dialect of Southern Maine by Tana Hicken, presents the spirit and the humor of a place and an era long past. "Martha's Lady" is the wonderful story of the bond that develops between two young women - one a visiting cousin, the other an awkward and newly employed maid.

Staid, responsible Elodie Buchanan is the eldest of 10 sisters growing up in a small English market town in 1861. The girls barely know their father, a plant hunter usually off adventuring through China, more myth than man. Then disaster strikes: Mr. Buchanan reneges on his contract to collect an extremely rare and valuable orchid. He will be thrown into debtors' prison while his daughters are sent to the orphanage and the workhouse.

New Hampshire, 1865. Marion Abbott is summoned to Brawders House asylum to collect the body of her sister, Alice. She’d been found dead after falling four stories from a steep-pitched roof. Officially: an accident. Confidentially: suicide. But Marion believes a third option: murder. Returning to her family home to stay with her brother and his second wife, the recently widowed Marion is expected to quiet her feelings of guilt and grief. Just when the search for the truth seems hopeless, a stranger approaches Marion with chilling words: I saw her fall.