664 results for "Historical Fiction"

The king without a kingdom

Druon, Maurice
"'This was the original GAME OF THRONES' George R.R. Martin. Available for the first time in English, THE KING WITHOUT A KINGDOM is the seventh and final volume of The Accursed Kings series. The reign of the Capetian kings has ended and John II, 'The Good', takes the throne. Under the leadership of this vain, cruel, incompetent monarch The Hundred Years War escalates and England and France begin to tear each other apart. Warring factions plunder the land, famine threatens the people and the Black Death spreads far and wide. France is bleeding to death around the new king..."--förlagstext
Harper 2015 346 pages

Pilgrims

Kneale, Matthew
The Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year 'An enthralling and wonderfully vivid novel from a master storyteller' Joseph O'Connor 'Kneale's medieval world is animated with a refreshing lightness of touch' Sunday Telegraph 1289. A rich farmer fears he'll go to hell for cheating his neighbors. His wife wants pilgrim badges to sew into her hat and show off at church. A poor, ragged villager is convinced his beloved cat is suffering in the fires of purgatory and must be rescued. A mother believes her son's dangerous illness is punishment for her own adultery and seeks forgiveness so he may be cured. A landlord is in trouble with the church after he punched an abbot on the nose. A sexually driven noblewoman seeks a divorce so she can marry her new young beau. These are among a ragtag band of pilgrims that sets off on the tough and dangerous journey from England to Rome, where they hope all their troubles and their prayers will be answered. Some in the group, however, have their own secret reasons for going. Others, while they might aspire to piety, succumb all too often to the sins of the flesh. A riveting, sweeping novel of medieval society and historic Englishness, Pilgrims illuminates the fallibility of humans, the absurdities and consolations of belief, and the very real violence at the heart of religious fervor.
Atlantic Books 2021 343 pages

Gwen: a novel

Goldbloom, Goldie
In 1903, the artist Gwendolen Mary John travels from London to France with her companion Dorelia. Surviving on their wits and Gwen's raw talent, the young women walk from Calais to Paris. In the new century, the world is full of promise: it is time for Gwen to step out from the shadow of her overbearing brother Augustus and seek out the great painter and sculptor Auguste Rodin. It is time to be brave and visible, to love and be loved and time perhaps to become a hero as the stain of anti-Semitism spreads across Europe.
Fremantle Press 2017-01-30 391 pages

Hotel Cuba: a novel

Hamburger, Aaron
Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws bar their entry, and the young women are turned back at Ellis Island. With few options, Pearl and Frieda head for Havana, Cuba, convinced they will find a way to overcome this setback. At first, life in big-city Prohibition-era Havana is overwhelming, like nothing Pearl and Frieda have ever experienced--or could have ever imagined in the rural shtetl where they grew up. As the sisters begin to adjust, their plans for going to America together become complicated. Frieda falls for the not-so-dreamy man of her dreams while Pearl's life opens up unexpectedly, offering her a taste of freedom and heady romance, and an opportunity to build a future on her own terms. Though to do so, she must confront her past and the shame she has long carried. A heartbreaking, epic family story, Hotel Cuba explores the profound courage of two women displaced from their home who strive to create a new future in an enticing and dangerous world far different from anything they have ever known.
Harper Perennial 2023-05-02 400 pages

Anything but yes: a novel of Anna del Monte, Jewish citizen of Rome, 1749

Davidow, Joie
"This beautiful work of historical fiction was inspired by the diary of an actual 18th-century Roman Jewish girl, imprisoned by the Catholic Church because someone with a grudge offered her to the Church. Anything But Yes is the true story of a young woman's struggle to defend her identity in the face of relentless attempts to destroy it. In 1749, 18-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in Rome's Jewish ghetto and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Convertiti, the house of converts. With no access to the outside world, she withstood isolation, sleep deprivation, endless lectures, and threats and promises. If Anna were to utter the simple word "yes," she would risk forced baptism, which meant never returning to her home and losing contact with any Jew-including her own family-for the rest of her life. Even in Italy today, few people know the full story of Rome's Jewish ghetto, the abduction of Jews, or the popes who were intent on forcibly converting every non-Catholic living in the long shadow of the Vatican. Young girls and small children were the primary targets of these forced conversions, for they were most vulnerable. But Anna del Monte was different. She was strong, brilliant, and educated, and wrote a diary of her experiences. Her diary became lost for more than 200 years but was rediscovered in Israel in 1989. Anything But Yes is based on Anna's diary and Joie Davidow's extensive research on life in the 18th-century Roman Jewish ghetto and its personalities, traditions, foods, and dialect"--
Monkfish Book Publishing Company 2023 233 pages

Roast Beef, Medium

Edna. Ferber
Meet Emma McChesney, the dynamic saleswoman who's taking the early 20th century by storm! "Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney" by Edna Ferber serves up a delightful collection of short stories brimming with humor and heartwarming adventure. Step into a world where business acumen meets wit and charm. Follow Emma as she navigates the challenges and triumphs of a woman in the business world, offering a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era. These stories, filled with uniquely American characters and situations, showcase Ferber's gift for storytelling and her keen observations of human nature. Experience the enduring appeal of this classic work, meticulously prepared for print republication. Perfect for anyone who enjoys humorous fiction with a touch of historical flavor, "Roast Beef, Medium" is a timeless treasure that will leave you smiling. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2025-03-28 112 pages

The Portrait of an Eye

Kathy Acker
"Scarified sensibility, subversive intellect, and predatory wit make her a writer like no other I know." -New York Times Book Review The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula , Kathy Acker's debut and the first in this three-novel collection, began as an episodic handmade pamphlet that Acker mailed out to influential writers and artists whose addresses she managed to get her hands on. In the novel, Acker steps into the biography of a Mississippi murderess who falls in love with a famous lawyer, and mixes in fragments from porn, historical romance, pulp fictions, and The Story of O . Collect with her second novel, the dreamy exploration of desire I Dreamt I was a Nymphomaniac , and her third, The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec , Portrait of an Eye is dive into the frenzy of sexual wanting, the search for identity, and the invention of a new literary language. Now with an introduction by Kate Zambreno contextualizing the resurrection of these three early Acker novels, this new edition of Portrait of an Eye reminds us of all there is still to learn from Kathy Acker, a writer and artist whose work "remains radical and uncanny, entirely inimitable, a smash and grab on the history of literature" ( Guardian ).
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated 2020-07-21 334 pages

Wherever There Is Light

Peter Golden
From the author of "Comeback Love," a sweeping, panoramic tale of twentieth-century America, chronicling the decades-long love affair between a Jewish immigrant and the granddaughter of a slave. Julian Rose is only fifteen when he leaves his family and Germany for a new life in 1920s America. Lonely at first, he eventually finds his way first by joining up with Longy Zwillman and becoming one of the preeminent bootleggers on the East Coast, and later by amassing a fortune in real estate. Kendall Wakefield is a free-spirited college senior who longs to become a painter. Her mother, the daughter of a slave and founder of an African-American college in South Florida, is determined to find a suitable match for her only daughter. One evening in 1938, Mrs. Wakefield hosts a dinner that reunites Julian with his parents who have been rescued from Hitler s Germany by the college and brings him together with Kendall for the first time. From that encounter begins a thirty-year affair that will take the lovers from the beaches of Miami to the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to postwar life in Paris, where they will mingle with Sartre, Picasso, and a host of other artists and intellectuals. Through his years serving in American intelligence and as an interrogator at the Nuremberg trials, what Julian wants most is to marry and find the joy that eluded his parents. Kendall craves her freedom, and after trading her oil paints for a Leica camera, becomes a celebrated photographer, among the first American journalists to photograph the survivors of a liberated concentration camp. Yet despite distance, their competing desires, and the rapidly changing world, their longing for each other remains a constant in the ceaseless sweep of time. Captivating and infused with historical detail, this is the epic tale of three generations, two different but intertwined families, and one unforgettable love story."
Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning 2016 648 pages

The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers

Erskine Childers
The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television.About Childers: Robert Erskine Childers DSC (25 June 1870 - 24 November 1922), universally known as Erskine Childers, was the author of the influential novel Riddle of the Sands and an Irish nationalist, who was executed by the authorities of the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. He was the son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers; the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton; and the father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers
Independently Published 2019-08-18 263 pages

The Last Summer

Boris Pasternak
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Hassell Street Press 2021-09-09 152 pages

The President's Plane Is Missing

Robert J. Serling
A crisis unlike any other... Like his many of his forbearers, President Jeremy Haines is weighed down by the solemn duties of his post.The threat of both the Soviet Union and China is a precarious situation and one mistake could lead the U.S into another long war.It seems the strain is too much, and unusual for Haines, he decides to take a week long vacation to Palm Springs, California for some R&R.But even more uncharacteristically, Haines declines to bring any reporter with him; the norm for him, while in office.Gunther Damon, news superintendent of the Washington Bureau of International Press is definitely suspicious.While not much a writer himself, Damon knows how to run a well-oiled team of reporters.And his gut instinct has never been wrong.In the early hours of the morning, President Haines' plane goes missing.As the search for bodies goes on, the crew is slowly but surely accounted for; but no sign of President Haines.And then as one of Damon's reporters find out, a body of unknown man is found amongst the wreckage.But it's not President Haines' body.In fact, the body is not of anyone who should've been on that plane. The corpse's identity is a complete mystery.Which raises another mystery - where is the President of the United States?Set in the middle of the cold war, The President's Plane is Missing is a thrilling and suspenseful mystery. Praise for Robert J Serling 'High level of suspense and excitement.' - De Moines Sunday Register 'Serling has spun another winner' - Publisher's Weekly '...keeps you guessing til the end' - Arizona Daily Star 'Aviation buffs will revel in this thoroughgoing chronicle' - Kirkus Robert J Serling was born in 1918 in Cortland, New York and was a novelist and aviation writer. He is the author of a number of airline histories and several novels, including The President's Plane Is Missing, which was adapted in 1973 as a made-for-TV film, and Air Force One Is Haunted.
Independently Published 2017-03-15 279 pages

Rivington Street

Meredith Tax
For nearly a century, Juilliard has trained the artists who compose the elite corps of the performing arts community in the United States. This comprehensive history, in paperback for the first time, takes us behind the scenes of one of the most famous music schools in the world.Detailing Juilliard's colorful history and penetrating the mystique of its rarefied, ultracompetitive conservatory atmosphere, Andrea Olmstead tells a fascinating story of vision and temperament, of talent and backstabbing politics, and of artistry and determination. Through its various incarnations the institution has been shaped by the strong personalities of its administrators, the artistic sensibilities of its faculty, and the prodigious gifts of its students.Drawing on interviews, ephemeral materials, and previously neglected archival records, Olmstead traces the school's ups and downs and documents the accomplishments and foibles of its leaders. She also probes the controversies that have littered the school's history, from Augustus Juilliard's $12.5 million bequest in 1919 to the expensive move to Lincoln Center.
Jove Publications 1983 400 pages

Long Remember

MacKinlay Kantor
Long Remember is the first realistic novel about the Civil War. Originally published in the 1930s, and out of print sincer the 50s, this book received rave reviews from the NY Times Book Review, and was a main selection of the Literary Guild. It is the account of the Battle of Gettysburg, as viewed by a pacifist who comes to accept the nasty necessity of combat, and lives an intense and skewed romance along the way.
Macmillan 2000-08-07 416 pages

Triangle

Katharine Weber
Esther Gottesfeld is the last living survivor of the notorious 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire and has told her story countless times in the span of her lifetime. Even so, her death at the age of 106 leaves unanswered many questions about what happened that fateful day. How did she manage to survive the fire when at least 146 workers, most of them women, her sister and fiance among them, burned or jumped to their deaths from the sweatshop inferno? Are the discrepancies in her various accounts over the years just ordinary human fallacy, or is there a hidden story in Esther's recollections of that terrible day? Esther's granddaughter Rebecca Gottesfeld, with her partner George Botkin, an ingenious composer, seek to unravel the facts of the matter while Ruth Zion, a zealous feminist historian of the fire, bores in on them with her own mole-like agenda. A brilliant, haunting novel about one of the most terrible tragedies in early-twentieth-century America, "Triangle "forces us to consider how we tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from unverifiable truths.
Thorndike Press 2006 381 pages

Seven dead

Farjeon, J. Jefferson
"Ted Lyte, amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies. Detective Inspector Kendall takes on the case with the help of passing yachtisman Thomas Hazeldean. The search for the house's absent owners brings Hazeldean across the Channel to Boulogne, where he finds more than one motive to stay and investigate"--Page [4] of cover.
Poisoned Pen Press 2018 233 pages

Household Gods

Judith Tarr,Harry Turtledove
Nicole Gunther-Perrin is a modern young professional, proud of her legal skills but weary of the daily grind, of childcare, and of sexist coworkers and her deadbeat ex-husband. Then after one exceptionally awful day, she awakens to find herself in a different life, that of a widowed tavernkeeper on the Roman frontier around A.D. 170. Delighted at first, she quickly begins to realize that her new world is as complicated as her old one. Violence, dirt, adn pain are everywhere; slavery is commonplace, gladiators kill for sport, and drunkenness is taken for granted. Yet, somehow, people manage to face life everyday with humor and goodwill. No quitter, Nicole manages to adapt, despite endless worry about the fate of her children "back" in the twentieth century. Then plague sweeps through Carnuntum, followed by brutal war. Amidst pain and loss on a level she had never imagined, Nicole must find reserved of the sort of strength she had never known.
Macmillan 2000-07-15 672 pages

Fort Pillow A Novel of the Civil War

Harry Turtledove
In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow was comprised of almost six hundred troops, about half of them black. The Confederacy, incensed by what it saw as a crime against nature, sent its fiercest cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to attack the fort with about 1,500 men. The Confederates overran the fort and drove the Federals into a deadly crossfire. Only sixty-two of the U.S. colored troops survived the fight unwounded. Many accused the Confederates of massacring the black troops after the fort fell and fighting should have ceased. The "Fort Pillow Massacre" became a Union rallying cry and cemented resolve to see the war through to its conclusion. Harry Turtledove has written a dramatic recreation of an astounding battle, telling a bloody story of courage and hope, freedom and hatred. With brilliant characterization of all the main figures, this is a novel that reminds us that Fort Pillow was more than a battle---it was a clash of ideas between men fighting to define what being an American ought to mean.
Macmillan 2007-05 336 pages