Historical Homes

Summer 1939: After touring an unsettled Europe to promote her latest book, Romily Temple returns home to Island House and the love of her life, Jack Devereux. But when Jack falls ill, his estranged family are called to his bedside. With war now declared, each member of the family is reluctantly forced to accept their new stepmother and confront their own shortcomings. But can Romily cope with the life that has been so unexpectedly thrust upon her?

Home from the Hill is the story of that tragic day and the dramatic events leading up to it. The biggest landowner in the county, Captain Wade Hunnicutt was a charismatic war hero whose legendary hunting skills extended to the wives of his friends and neighbors. Humiliated by her husband's philandering, Hannah grew to despise Captain Wade but was too proud to ask for a divorce; instead, she devoted herself to her only child. Torn between his mother's adoration and an overwhelming need to win his father's approval, Theron tried to become his own man.

Nine-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada's twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn't waste a minute - she sneaks out to join him. So begins a new adventure of Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan.

Once a wistful romantic, Opal Martin now simply aspires to scrub the remnants of the War Between the States from her tattered life. But when a nearly drowned soldier appears and asks if he can die on her porch, she must guard against the sudden revival of her heart’s hope for love. Haunted by the war, Tristan Stuart just wants to escape the pain. But when he wakes up at a house that looks too much like home, with a woman determined to mend him, he may discover a new life worth fighting for.

Award-winning Florida novelist Patrick Smith's first novel, The River Is Home, revolves around a Mississippi family's struggle to cope with changes in their rural environment. Poor in material possessions, Skeeter's kinfolk are rich in their appreciation of their beautiful natural surroundings. The river on which they live—with its food supply, steamboats, and floods—figures strongly in their lives as the source of life, change, and death. Though their life is a simple one, it's filled with friendship, loyalty, love, and compassion.

In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871, Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle and her habit of speaking her mind plainly. But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn't, her older sister Agatha flees, running off with a pack of "pigeoners" trailing the passenger pigeon migration. And when the sheriff returns to town with an unidentifiable body - wearing Agatha's blue-green ball gown - everyone assumes the worst.... Except Georgie.

The year is 1840. Twenty-three years ago, Horatio Lord Hornblower was governor of the island of St. Helena and hailer to its only prisoner, Napoleon Bonaparte. First mutual respect, and later shared tragedy, forged a clandestine friendship between the two men. Now King Louis Philippe of France has requested that the remains of the late emperor be returned, and Queen Victoria has granted that request. The French have also requested that the former-Governor Lord Hornblower attend the exhumation as the official British representative.

Home Fires is the powerful saga of the Gordon family--real people, names unchanged. Spanning nearly five decades, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, their story has the scope, depth, wealth of incident, and emotional intensity of a great novel, and an abundance of humor, scandal, warmth, and trauma--the recognizable components of family life. This is also a masterful chronicle of the turbulent postwar era, illuminating the interplay between private life and profound cultural changes.

Can the worst of enemies find friendship or even love? Newly-hired companion April Stringham steps off the train in 1890s Los Angeles expecting to find wild Indians, cattle drives, cowboys, saloon girls, bandits and shootouts on every corner, just as her dime novels guaranteed. A confirmed old maid, April has nowhere to go should her new job be less than imagined. There would be no turning back. Successful attorney Noah Chandler is about to marry the girl of his dreams. His youthful fiancé might be beautiful and rich, but it’s her family’s business contacts that make her a prize beyond...

It's January 1943 when Rita Vincenzo receives her first letter from Glory Whitehall. Glory is an effervescent young mother, impulsive and free as a bird. Rita is a sensible professor's wife with a love of gardening and a generous, old soul. Glory comes from New England society; Rita lives in Iowa, trying to make ends meet. They have nothing in common except one powerful bond: The men they love are fighting in a war a world away from home. Brought together by an unlikely twist of fate, Glory and Rita begin a remarkable correspondence.

She never expected to kiss an outlaw…and like it. While traveling to meet her intended, Kinsley Paulson is faced with a decision: stand up to the outlaw threatening to take all she holds dear or do as he says and kiss him. She does what she must to keep her family’s possessions. Kinsley throws her arms around the man and experiences her first kiss. And she enjoys it more than she should, especially since she’ll soon be saying her vows. Kinsley pushes aside the kiss that changes her life and meets her groom. She knows he’s hiding something. She won’t rest until she discovers his ...

Hunger. Unemployment. Homelessness: realities of life during the Great Depression. Thrust into these realities, all Maggie Ehlke wants is a home and family of her own. Instead, she’s sent to her sister’s home in Dubuque to earn her keep by helping with her sister’s twins. But circumstances soon send Maggie to the widower Iverson’s farm to keep house and raise his younger three daughters. Iverson’s grown son, the agonizingly shy Romy, dreams of life on the road. But the death of his mother cuts his dreams short while bringing the spirited “Miss Maggie” into his world. Amidst ...

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

In Berkeley, California, in 1944, Homicide Detective Al Sullivan has just left the swanky Claremont Hotel after a drink in the bar when a presidential candidate is assassinated in one of the rooms upstairs. A rich industrialist with enemies among the anarchist factions on the far left, Walter Wilkinson could have been targeted by any number of groups. But strangely, Sullivan’s investigation brings up the specter of another tragedy at the Claremont, ten years earlier: the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the Bainbridge family, one of the wealthiest in all of San Francisco.

A wartime train station encounter changes a lifetime... After losing her fiancé in WW1, Margaret Parker settled into a quiet, lonely life as the town librarian in North Platte, NE. After the US enters WW2, Margaret volunteers as the historian for the Servicemen’s Canteen organized by the women of North Platte. When Captain Tom Carver strolls into the Canteen, he’s immediately drawn to Maggie and works hard to woo her, via letters, as he heads off to war. While reluctantly falling in love long-distance, Maggie also opens her heart to the teenaged girl she supervises and the townswomen ...

No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world.

The luck of a gambling hand had changed his fate and now the young cowboy was ready to start a new life. Bud After serving time in the Louisiana State Prison, Bud Downey spent many months winning a small fortune as a gambler. Feeling confident that he had won enough money, he packed up his stake to begin his journey to Limason, Texas—Home. After his last winning hand at the gambling table, a couple of disgruntled cowboys were angry that they had lost all their money to the smooth-talking young man. As Bud traveled near the border of Lafayette, Louisiana, he was ambushed, shot and left for...

Ten years ago, US State Department intelligence officer Jordan Weiss’s idyllic experience as a graduate student at Cambridge was shattered when her boyfriend Jared drowned in the River Cam. She swore she’d never go back—until a terminally ill friend asks her to return. Jordan attempts to settle into her new life, taking on an urgent mission beside rakish agent Sebastian Hodges. Just when she thinks there’s hope for a fresh start, a former college classmate tells her that Jared’s death was not an accident—he was murdered.

Award-winning author of A Room of My Own and A Place Called Morning, Ann Tatlock delivers a soul-searching inspirational story of faith and friendship.

In 2013, Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, having returned to Kuwait from Berkeley in the wake of her mother’s sudden death eleven years earlier. Her main companions are her grandmother’s talking parrot, Bebe Mitu; the family cook, Aasif; and Maria, her childhood ayah and the one person who has always been there for her. Sara’s relationship with Kuwait is complicated; it is a country she always thought she would leave, and a country she recognizes less and less, and yet a certain inertia keeps her there.