Historical Fiction Classics

Marcus, a Roman officer in Nero's army, risks his career, his family, and even his life when he falls in love with a Christian woman named Callina. In order to win Callina's love, Marcus must come to understand the true meaning of her religion, even as Rome sinks under the excesses of Nero and Christians are thrown to the lions. Quo Vadis brims with passion and life as it explores one of the turning points in history.

Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s.

When justice slumbers, vengeance rides… When Gideon Ward returns to Edgewood to bury his murdered sister, he finds a town strangled by fear. Malcolm Bryce, a ruthless ranch baron, rules through intimidation and bloodshed, while the law turns a blind eye to the mounting body count. Though haunted by his violent past in the Civil War, Gideon must decide whether to honor his late father's pacifism, or embrace the brutal justice the frontier demands. As smaller ranchers face burning barns and deadly accidents, Gideon soon discovers that his sister's death points to an ugly conspiracy. With ...

This gripping tale follows Paul and his mates as they navigate the horror, boredom, and stupidity of the First World War. We see the pain of one comrade, who loses a leg, while his friends covet the pair of boots he can no longer wear. We follow Paul’s company as it is whittled down in combat from 150 men to 32. Paul, wounded, goes home on leave, but he feels alienated from his family, who do not understand what he has gone through and to whom he cannot explain it.

The Betrothed is a cornerstone of Italian culture, language, and literature. Published in its final form in 1842, The Betrothed has inspired generations of Italian readers and writers. Giuseppe Verdi composed his majestic Requiem Mass in honor of Manzoni. Italo Calvino called the novel “a classic that has never ceased shaping reality in Italy” while Umberto Eco praised its author as a “most subtle critic and analyst of languages.”

Persuasion, Jane Austen's last novel, is a tale of love and marriage told with irony and insight. Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth have met and seperated years before. Their reunion, after the passage or irrecoverable years of their youth, forces a recognition of the false values that drove them apart.

After his parents freeze to death, seventeen-year-old Garret Brassfield takes responsibility for his surviving kin and their herd of starving cattle. It’s the Big Die Up – the worst winter in anybody’s memory. With the little help he has left, Garret fights to spare his loved ones from a lonely, frigid death on the open range and learns the ways of ranching so they may survive. Come springtime, everybody’s cattle are half-dead and the money has evaporated from the once booming industry… with one exception. Delmer Potter. His fortunes are securely built on a foundation of ...

Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down.

Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.

For the first time as an Orbit special edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend.

On a quest to find her sister's killer, Mac is a major player in a deadly game, but with one great advantage: she knows how to find the Sinsar Dubh, an ancient book of magic so dark it corrupts anyone who touches it. What Mac soon discovers is worse than she had imagined. Surrounded by treachery, her enemies indistinguishable from her allies, she can be certain of only one thing: as All Hallows' Eve approaches, her time is running out.

Stone Tobin’s life on the frontier has never been short of hazards. But nothing can keep him from what’s important: caring for his adopted son, Clyde. After years of supporting himself and Clyde through his talents of wet-plate photography, Stone’s sense of justice takes them off the beaten path when he and Clyde stumble upon a woman in deep trouble. Hazel Allen. Soon after learning of her husband’s role in her parents’ untimely deaths, she was abducted by an outlaw gang. There’s a steep reward for her return – but her powerful husband, Wesley, hopes she’s killed before she ...

In this, the final Horatio Hornblower adventure, C.S. Forester throws his hero into one of the most challenging missions yet. Upon discovering highly confidential papers dispatched by Bonaparte, Hornblower sets off to enlighten the Admiralty about his game-changing, new findings. Troubled after having been informed of Pierre-Charles Villeneuve's escape into Spain, they welcome Horatio's news and send him off on a high-priority assignment that they believe will lead to England's victory over Napoleon.

When the Emperor's army comes recruiting, Mai signs up, seeing it as the perfect escape from her stepmother and a lifetime of drudgery. Armed with her mother's armor and a pair of magic shoes, Mai marches off to war only to find herself sharing a tent with the General's arrogant nephew, Prince Yi. The best swordsman in the Empire, Prince Yi wants to make war, not love, but the Emperor insists this will be Yi's last campaign before he must marry. Prince Yi has never met his match until now.

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

Having inspired a classic film and Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny is Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life—and mutiny—on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater. It was immediately embraced upon its original publication as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of the Second World War. In the intervening half century, this gripping story has become a perennial favorite, selling millions throughout the world, and claiming the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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 ...

Celeste is about to become one of the thirteen Fées Gardiennes, a centuries-old sisterhood of fairy godmothers. To be granted full status, she must usher her first protégé onto their path of destiny. Where better to find a starry-eyed ward than in the land of magic and illusion called Hollywood? It’s 1927. The moviemaking business is booming when Celeste befriends a young studio seamstress whose dreams outshine everyone else’s. Rose is talented and underappreciated and could use some enchanted intervention in her life.

This famous novel deals with the early frontier period of American history and is set in 1757 during the Seven Years War between the French and the British. Intrepid frontiersman and scout Natty "Hawkeye" Bumppo has lived among Indians for most of his life, respecting their customs and acquiring the skills of an experienced woodsman.

Filled with unforgettable characters, rich in history and social realism, Anna Karenina is a masterpiece of world literature, a story that fires the imagination and touches the heart.