Historical Sagas

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Ray Midge is waiting for his credit card bill to arrive. His wife, Norma, has run off with her ex-husband, taking Ray’s cards, shotgun, and car. But from the receipts, Ray can track where they’ve gone. He takes off after them, as does an irritatingly tenacious bail bondsman, both following the romantic couple’s spending as far as Mexico.

Told in a smart, assured, and compelling voice, this is the story of Caroline, the young wife and childhood sweetheart of Jacob, who together live on a farm raising their daughter, Rachel, just outside of Gettysburg. When Jacob joins the Northern army to do his duty and help save the Union, no one anticipates he will not return. Caroline gets news that he is wounded and has been taken to Washington, DC, with his regiment, and so she must find her way there and navigate the thousands of other wounded soldiers to find him.

After the Franco-Prussian War and the siege of 1870-71, the St Clair family return to Paris, seeking refuge and security, only to be swept up into the terrible cruelties and violence of the Commune. Here their young daughter, Hélène, falls ill and, in an unlucky twist of fate, becomes separated from her family. Alone and frightened, she has to fend for herself on the war-torn streets. Meanwhile, her two brothers face each other as mortal enemies across the barricades.

Though Peak Plantation has been in her family for generations, Leslie Nichols can't wait to rid herself of the farm left to her by her estranged grandmother Maggie. But Leslie isn't the only one with a claim to Peak. Jay Davenport, Peak's reclusive caretaker, has his own reasons for holding onto the land bequeathed to him by Leslie's grandmother. Before she died, Maggie hinted at a terrible secret surrounding Adele Laveau, a lady's maid who came to Peak during the 1930s and died under mysterious circumstances.

October 1944: In the long, narrow undressing rooms in Auschwitz-Birkenau, prisoner Jakub Bak toils under the scrutiny of SS guards. Like other members of the Sonderkommando, Jakub was selected on arrival for an unthinkable job: sorting through the clothes of the dead and moving their bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoriums. Jakub clings to the promise he made to his murdered father - to live, at any cost - and to the moments he is able to spend in the company of Anna, imprisoned in the women's camp.

Indomitable and bold in an era of royalty and rogues, Skye O'Malley is a woman who embraces her unbridled sensuality as valiantly as she fights for her children, her lovers, her empire. A woman of justice and honor, she will match wits with and challenge the most dangerous and powerful woman of her time: Queen Elizabeth I.

Lauren Francis-Sharma's 'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in a seaside village in the north of Trinidad where young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman, the risks and rewards in Marcia's life amplify forever.

On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.

A national best seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first book of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.

Sandra Dallas, best-selling author of The Persian Pickle Club, weaves an intricate and sophisticated tale in New Mercies. Nora Bondurant is divorced— unfathomable for a woman in 1933—and has inherited a house from a dead aunt she never even knew existed. But when she travels to Mississippi to claim her inheritance, she finds her eccentric neighbors would rather help her acquire a new husband than reveal the secrets surrounding her aunt’s death.

Trudy, a college history professor, is collecting oral histories from World War II survivors (both German and Jewish). Her mother, Anna, refuses to talk to her, but Anna's story is revealed in flashback. She conducted an affair with a Jewish baker who was summarily killed. Afterward, Anna caught the eye of a high-ranking Nazi officer.

Daniel and Lori love each other, yet to live as one in 1856, they must escape from the unyielding society that imprisons them. Lori was born a slave in North Carolina, yet by chance was raised alongside Daniel in a wealthy abolitionist household. The sudden death of Daniel's mother catapults Lori back into bondage. Relegated to chattel on a rice plantation, Lori lives in constant fear under the tormenting scrutiny of Daniel's wretched aunt.

It is 1898, and groups of starving Puerto Ricans, los hambrientos, roam the parched countryside and dusty towns begging for food. Under the yoke of Spanish oppression, the Caribbean island is forced to prepare to wage war with the United States. Up in the mountainous coffee region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their small farm from the creditors. When the Spanish-American War and the great San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 bring devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured, along with thousands of others, to the sugar plantations of Hawaii.

Driven ashore on the coast of Ireland, their longships nearly wrecked by the gods who seem unwilling to let them leave, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his band of Northmen once again face a fight for their survival. Helpless without their ships, they must find some refuge in that hostile country and begin the laborious work of making the vessels seaworthy again. But for all the shipbuilding skills that Thorgrim and the others possess, there is one thing they cannot do - weave cloth to replace the sails shredded in the gale that drove them ashore.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, lead a cattle drive from the small town of Lonesome Dove to the unsettled Montana territories. On their grueling journey, they are joined by Joshua Deets, a Black scout and former Ranger, Jake Spoon, a fugitive, and Newt Dobbs, a 17-year-old boy who may have family ties to Call. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh and weep, dream and remember.

For centuries, the Vikings have swept out of the Norse countries and fallen on whatever lands they could reach aboard their longships, and few could resist the power of their violent onslaught. They came at first to plunder and then to settle, an encroachment fiercely resisted wherever they went. Such was the case in the southern lands of Ireland. En route to the Viking longphort there, known as Dubh-linn, Thorgrim Night Wolf and Ornolf the Restless stumble across an Irish ship.

Critically acclaimed author Silas House’s A Parchment of Leaves was named Kentucky Novel of the Year and won a special achievement award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1917 rural Kentucky, Saul Sullivan marries a beautiful Cherokee woman named Vine. They weather the storm of prejudice, but when Saul temporarily moves away to work a better job, his younger brother makes advances on Vine that are not welcome and ultimately lead to tragedy.

After the War of the Gods, the demons were cast out and fell to the world. Mankind was nearly eradicated by the seemingly unstoppable beasts until the gods sent the great hero, Ramrowan, to save them. He united the tribes, gave them magic, and drove the demons into the sea. Ever since, the land has belonged to man, and the oceans have remained an uncrossable hell, leaving the continent of Lok isolated.

The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future—the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her. While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war.