Historical Fiction Classics

Unjustly imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille, Dr. Alexandre Manette is reunited with his daughter, Lucie, and safely transported from France to England. It would seem that they could take up the threads of their lives in peace. As fate would have it though, the pair are summoned to the Old Bailey to testify against a young Frenchman - Charles Darnay - falsely accused of treason. Strangely enough, Darnay bears an uncanny resemblance to another man in the courtroom, the dissolute lawyer's clerk Sydney Carton. It is a coincidence that saves Darnay from certain doom more than once.

The exhilerating tale of Takeo continues in book II of the internationally best-selling Tales of the Otori trilogy, a sweeping saga set in a mythical, medieval Japan.

From the best-selling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll's beloved classic. When Alice toppled down the rabbit hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?

Civil War veteran Clint Turner is a happy man working as a blacksmith in Macon, Texas. He loves to see his neighbors use the metals forged from his hands until all that changes dramatically when an outlaw gang kills his brother-in-law and his sister. From then on, he has only one thing on his mind – a mixture of justice and vengeance. To accomplish his mission, Clint campaigns to become sheriff of Macon County. The law enforcement job for Clint would see him put to good use his six shooter, his wits, and his sense of justice.

In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend other cultures--and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence--perhaps even the limits of human life --when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the dessert.

In 1780s London, a prosperous merchant finds his quiet life upended when he unexpectedly receives an unusual creature - and meets a most extraordinary woman - in this much-lauded, atmospheric debut that examines our capacity for wonder, obsession, and desire. One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London. The captain of one of Jonah’s trading vessels is waiting eagerly on the front step, bearing shocking news. On a voyage to the Far East, he sold the Jonah’s ship for something rare and far more precious: a mermaid.

In 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only 18, Annie travels alone halfway across the country to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law - and there they marry. But Carl and Annie’s first year together is much more difficult than they anticipated as they find themselves in a faraway place with little money and few friends. With hardship and poverty weighing heavily upon them, they come to realize that their greatest sources of strength, loyalty, and love will help them make it through.

‘Like Father, Like Son’ is a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ novella variation which presents the reader with a peculiar and unexpected connection between two beloved characters who barely speak to each other in canon. Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, an intelligent, excessively arrogant, and proud gentleman, the master of one of the greatest estates in Derbyshire, is visiting his amiable friend, Mr Charles Bingley, at his newly acquired property of Netherfield. While Mr Bingley’s affable nature and lively manners ensure he becomes everyone’s favourite and gains the admiration of Miss Jane Bennet, ...

A contemporary man, John Thornburn (a meek, non-violent and unpredictable artist) and woman, Derval (his tough, confrontational, strong and warrior-like lover) time travel to ancient Ireland to avenge a Viking attack. Packed with fascinating details of historical time and place in Irish history and delicately balanced on the border between realism and fantasy, the story centers around one of the most famous and beautiful illuminated manuscripts in history, the legendary but entirely real Book of Kells.

Twenty years later, time has weakened the resolve of the Musketeers and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England, Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.

Doctor. Scholar. Soldier. Peter Blood has been all these. But when he is exiled and sold unjustly into slavery, he finds there is another title he must own - Pirate. Now a man without a country, he wreaks his revenge upon the Spanish Main as a buccaneer. The only thing that saves him from absolute dissolution is the love he still harbors for Miss Arabella Bishop. Now, he is forced to balance the dictates of his conscience with his natural genius for piracy.

News from his family’s ranch finally brings successful frontier lawyer, Creed Cooley, back home to Young County, Texas. But it’s not good news. A young ranch hand has been accused of murder. Creed’s mother is dying. And the decades-long feud with the neighboring Glass Ranch is boiling over. The rival cattleman at the head of it all, Jasper Glass, has hated the Cooleys his whole life. He wants their land – and now he’s going to shed more blood to come out on top. With aid from the Border Boys, a notoriously brutal gang of outlaws, and their shadowy leader, Rainer Flynn, Jasper is ...

Jodi Taylor’s best-selling series The Chronicles of St. Mary is back with a bang…St. Mary’s has been rebuilt, and it’s business as usual for the history department. But first there’s the little matter of a 17th-century ghost that only Mr. Markham can see. Not to mention the minor inconvenience of being trapped in the Great Fire of London…and an unfortunately timed comfort break at Thermopylae, leaving the fate of the Western world hanging in the balance.

When Sheriff Mapes is summoned to a sugarcane plantation to find a dead Cajun farmer, he knows who committed the crime. Mapes finds himself powerless, however, when nearly 20 elderly black men confess to the murder. Can justice be served, or will the dead man's brutish father pass judgment his way?

With one army defeated in a victory that will be remembered through the ages, now the Red Knight must fight again. For every one of his allies, there is a corresponding enemy. Spread across different lands and on sea, it will all come down to one last gamble. And to whether or not the Red Knight has guessed the foe's true intentions. With each throw of the dice, everything could be lost.

Without family or means, the strong-willed Lucy Snowe escapes the English countryside for the town of Villette. Though overwhelmed by a new culture and a foreign language, Lucy finds employment at an all-girls boarding school. Her self-reliance is soon compromised by her affections for two men: the kindhearted Dr. Bretton and the imperious professor M. Paul Emanuel. As Lucy longs for both independence and passion in a patriarchal society, fate plays its hand.

Selina sees beauty everywhere, including in the fields of cabbages. She has a natural curiosity about farming and oversteps the woman's traditional role by having the audacity to ask the men questions. She soon marries Pervus DeJong, a farmer. Selina eagerly offers suggestions for operational improvements, but Pervus ignores her, preferring to use the unprofitable farming methods employed by his father.

Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented thing: he lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life.

Far from the battlefields of Gettysburg or Shiloh or Bull Run, deadly raids in the name of the Confederacy raged on the plains of Eastern Kansas. In a time when boys grew up fast and were called upon to do things beyond their years, this is the story of one such young man. His name, Branson Hawk. Although the cost to young Branson was beyond anything he could have imagined, one goal became a constant in his life as he tried to pick up the pieces: make the marauders pay. It was a promise to his ma, a promise he was bound to keep no matter the consequences.

In a vivid depiction of Ancient Greece and its legendary heroes, The Mask of Apollo tells the story of Nikeratos, the gifted tragic actor at the centre of political and cultural activity in Athens, 400 B. C. Wherever he goes, Nikeratos carries a golden mask of Apollo, a relic and reminder of an age when the theatre was at the height of its greatness and talent. Only a mascot at first, the mask gradually turns into Nikeratos' conscience as he encounters famous thinkers, actors, and philosophers, including the famous Plato himself.