Historical Sagas

When Edward de Salis travels to America after the death of his first wife, he is astonished to find himself falling in love with Marguerite, a young woman many years his junior. Full of hope for the future, he returns to his Irish estate, Cashelmara, but in 19th-century Ireland - a country racked by poverty and famine - his family eventually becomes trapped in a sinister spiral of violence that Edward could never have foreseen.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Six Tudor Queens series explores the private side of the legendary king Henry VIII and his dramatic and violent reign in this extraordinary historical novel. Young Henry began his rule as a magnificent and chivalrous Renaissance prince who embodied every virtue. He had all the qualities to make a triumph of his rule, yet we remember only the violence. Henry famously broke with the Pope, founding the Church of England and launching a religious revolution that divided his kingdom. He beheaded two of his wives and cast aside two others.

Thirty-one years after workers first broke ground, the magnificent Hotel Neversink in the Catskills finally opens to the public. Then a young boy disappears. This mysterious vanishing - and the ones that follow - will brand the lives of three generations. At the root of it all is Asher Sikorsky, the ambitious and ruthless patriarch whose purchase of the hotel in 1931 set a haunting legacy into motion.

Keeping watch over the young Arthur Pendragon, the prince and prophet Merlin Ambrosius is haunted by dreams of the magical sword Caliburn, which has been hidden for centuries. When Uther Pendragon is killed in battle, the time of destiny is at hand, and Arthur must claim the fabled sword to become the true High King of Britain.

Against the immense backdrop of the American West, Larry McMurtry tracks the Berrybender's as they make their way up the great river, surviving attacks, discomfort, savage weather, and natural disaster. Sin Killer is an adventure story as big as the West itself, full of incident, and suspense, as well as a charming love story between a headstrong and aristocratic young Englishwoman and the stubborn, shy, and very American Jim Snow.

In this extraordinary third and final work in the Second DemonWars Saga, R. A. Salvatore weaves a diverse tapestry of characters and events from all the novels of the DemonWars Saga into an epic, unforgettable conclusion. Casting his inimitable spell of the human and supernatural, love and war, faith and faithlessness, Salvatore's crowning work is centered on a dark young king driven by a quest to remake humankind.

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the castle's women's dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.

It’s 1863, nearly twenty years since Ida Lange came to New Zealand to change her life and realize a dream. With her best friend, Cat, she established a thriving sheep farm on the continental plains where their combined families settled - and succeeded. But the idyll of Rata Station could be reaching an end. The fires of change are coming again, and this time it’s Ida’s and Cat’s daughters - Mara, Carol, and Linda - who will get swept up in the ensuing chaos.

A mountain girl in the early 1900’s copes with a marriage arranged by her dad. Her story is titled from an old saying “I own my land, heaven-high and hell-deep.” “Your pa gave his consent for us to marry,” he said the words as though it was a simple matter. It wasn’t a romantic proposal of love and devotion. It wasn’t a proposal at all. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I tried again. “I don’t know your name,” I managed to say as I felt my chest constrict. There was a pain in me that started at my toes and went to the roots of my hair. Dad had come up with a ...

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

Elbryan and Pony - soul mates from childhood who grew even closer over time - fervently hope that the tide of darkness is at last receding from the land of Corona. Yet if evil is on the retreat, why are hordes of goblins and bloody-capped powries slashing their way ever deeper into civilized lands? A sinister threat now looms over Corona, for the power of the demon dactyl was not entirely vanquished by the sacrifice of the monk, Avelyn Desbris.

Raised his entire life for the sole purpose of defending his clan, Khalvir serves the chief who saved him from certain death. A death at the hands of the hated elves; a people who see him only as an abomination to be destroyed. Now a captive in his enemy’s clutches, Khalvir must find a way to escape the mysterious elf witch who holds him. An elf whose motives remain shrouded but whose very presence calls to his soul, threatening to turn every truth he has ever known into a lie.

1740s France and England - the age of hedonism and enlightenment. Renard, Duke of Roxton, is wealthy beyond measure. Arrogant and self assured, his heart remains his own. Optimistic and headstrong, Antonia Moran is determined to flee the Court of Versailles with the Duke's unwitting assistance. Roxton is an unlikely savior - arrogant, promiscuous, and sinister. Antonia's unquestioning belief in him may just be his salvation, and her undoing.

Ninth-century Saxon England crumbles under the onslaught of a relentless foe - the Danish Vikings. Ceridwen, a young woman with divided loyalties, watches as the peace and plenty she enjoys at the Saxon stronghold of Kilton gives way to wary watchfulness. Her dearest friend, Ælfwyn, sold in marriage to a Dane in a desperate bid for peace, travels to Kilton and recounts the events that befell the fortress of Four Stones in captured Lindisse.

The year is AD 95, and John, the one whom Jesus called "beloved", is the last of the 12 apostles still alive. Now nearing 90, John is still committed to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. When a renegade begins misleading the masses with dangerous, heretical teachings, John is called by God to write a gospel to show that Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God.

Selene Ravenwood, once the heir to House Ravenwood, is now an exile. On the run and free of her family's destiny, Selene hopes to find the real reason her family was given the gift of dreamwalking. But first she must adapt to her new life as wife to Lord Damien Maris, the man she was originally assigned to kill. While adjusting to her marriage and her home in the north, her power over dreams begins to grow. As the strongest dreamwalker to exist in ages, her expanding power attracts not only nightmares but the attention of the Dark Lady herself.

The long struggle is over at last. The demon dactyl is no more, its dark sorceries shattered by the gemstone magic wielded by the woman known as Pony. But victory did not come easily. Many lives were lost, including Pony's lover, the elf-trained ranger Elbryan Wynden. Despite the dactyl's demise, the kingdom still seethes in the same cauldron of plots and machinations. But when a deadly sickness suddenly appears among the people of Corona, Pony must undertake a pilgrimage that will test her powers.

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats - leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as 16 were suddenly faced with life-and-death decisions.

In 1918, after four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia to take a job as the lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes only four times a year and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Three years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel is tending the grave of her newly lost infant when she hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up on shore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of people with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes listeners into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history.