664 results for "Historical Fiction"

The Old Man's Place

John Sanford
"Sanford is a supreme master at squeezing the last drop of terror and excitement out of a sordid, savage situation. The story sweeps along with an ugly force that will send sensitive souls in search of smelling salts." Pittsburgh Post-GazetteA trio of vicious World War One veterans descend on the farm in the Adirondack mountains where one of them grew up and his father now lives alone. They embark on happily wreaking drunken havoc at the old man's place and in the nearby town. But when a naive, mail-order bride arrives, she ignites a tinderbox of resentment, lust, and betrayal among the men that explodes in brutal depravity, bloody violence and shocking death.This hard-boiled, literary masterpiece, back in print for the first time in sixty years, includes a new introduction by Jack Mearns, author of John Sanford: An Annotated BibliographyPreviously published as The Hard Guys and filmed as the 1971 motion picture My Old Man's Place."Sanford, not to be confused with contemporary thriller writer John Sandford, was a writer of hard edged noirs that bristle with tension and the threat of violence, when that is unleashed it's brutal and shocking. A stark portrait of humanity at its lowest ebb and a menacing atmosphere pervades the novel. This is ice cold, easily as brutal as the best passages of Cain or Hemingway." Crimetime UK"Sanford's The Old Man's Place is a carefully designed character study bursting with tension and intrigue. I found myself so emotionally invested in these characters and their raw, primal instincts. Nothing short of extraordinary. It's darkly wonderful and honest, well ahead of its time considering the 1935 publication date. Sanford possesses a rare skillset that rivals some of the best noir authors of all-time." Paperback Warrior
Brash Books 2021-04-02 174 pages

A Want of Kindness

Joanne Limburg
Unfolding in the heady world of the glittering Restoration court, A Want of Kindness follows an expendable princess on her unlikely progress to becoming queen, through the religion, politics, disease, deceit, and treachery of the time. The wicked, bawdy Restoration court is no place for a child princess. Ten-year-old Anne cuts an odd figure: a sickly child, she is drawn towards improper pursuits. Cards, sweetmeats, scandal, and gossip with her Ladies of the Bedchamber figure large in her life. But as King Charles' niece, Anne is also a political pawn, who will be forced to play her part in the troubled Stuart dynasty. Transformed from overlooked princess to the heiress of England, she will be forced to overcome grief for her lost children, the political maneuverings of her sister and her closest friends, and her own betrayal of her father, before the fullness of her destiny is revealed. In A Want of Kindness, Limburg has created a richly realized time and world, and in Anne, a complex and all-too-human protagonist.
Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning 2017 710 pages

To Die in Babylon

Harold Livingston
Lieutenant Colonel Nick Harmon, USAF fighter pilot, is a warrior with no war to fight; a consummate professional whose single-word credo, WIN, has left his personal life in shambles, and now threatens to destroy what he values most, his military career. Desert Storm/Desert Shield may offer him a last glistening chance at resurrecting not only his career, but more importantly, himself as a man. For the beautiful Christine Campbell, too, the war is a golden chance. Already a celebrated television journalist, her planned exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein will propel her to the very peak of her profession. And she is determined to allow nothing, not love, not even the possibility of betraying one of her own countrymen, to stand in the way of her success. To Adnan Dulaimi, the Iraqi army officer who already knows the tragedy and futility of war, this new war is a nightmare come true - more so when he finds himself enmeshed in a plot to overthrow Saddam, thereby forcing him to make a choice no soldier should be faced with: allowing ruin to fall upon his beloved country - or dishonoring his oath of loyalty to the leader of that country, the man responsible for bringing ruin to his people and his land. And for the reservist recalled to active duty, U.S. Army helicopter pilot Major Elaine Nelson, the war represents both personal achievement and personal failure. She, who has struggled so hard to overcome the prejudices of a male-dominated military hierarchy, may find that her success in securing a slot in the regular army may very well be at the cost of her fine marriage to her civilian husband. The profound effect of the Persian Gulf War on the lives of these four is played out in thedeath-filled skies over Baghdad, in the byzantine intrigues of the White House and the Palace at Riyadh, in the paranoia of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, and in the bloody streets of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait City.
St. Martin's Press 1995-05-15 578 pages

The New Book of Days

Eleanor 1881-1965 Farjeon
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.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2021-09-09 408 pages

The Turkish Gambit

Boris Akunin
Erast Fandorin, our erstwhile gentleman sleuth and hero has gone off to serve in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) so as to forget his personal sorrows. Captured by the Turks, Fandorin wins his freedom by beating his captor at backgammon. He then encounters a naive, young "progressive" Russian woman trying to join her "husband" at the Russian headquarters. It's here where the action really takes off. Fandorin is requested to investigate certain devious goings-on, and he eventually exposes a well-known French journalist as a Turkish agent (who was one of the children raised by Lady Astair's establishments in The Winter Queen). The new Fandorin thriller is another compelling page-turner from Boris Akunin.
Random House Large Print 2005 356 pages

Evil of the Age

Allan Levine
Murder and corruption in nineteenth century New York... In the sizzling summer of 1871, New York journalist Charles St. Clair is tracking down the story of Lucy Maloney, a 'kept woman' found murdered and stuffed in a trunk at the Hudson Railway depot. His search takes him from the mansions of Fifth Avenue to the brothels of SoHo and the seedy and dangerous saloons on Water Street. St. Clair soon uncovers Lucy's connection to a ring of abortionists and to Madame Philippe, a wealthy woman who is known as Madame Killer. St. Clair confronts Madame Philippe at the Tombs Prison, where she awaits the hangman's noose for Lucy's murder. St. Clair believes her to be innocent and sets out to prove it, discovering deceit at the highest levels of political power and a shocking secret. Time is running out for Madame Philippe and for St. Clair as he hurries to reveal the trunk mystery before it's too late...
Cool Well Press 2012-01-17 496 pages

The Reckoning

Elman, Richard M.
In The 28th Day of Elul and Lilo's Diary Richard Elman achieved something rare in novels today: a probing self-revelation of character combined with a powerful recreation of historical truth. His achievement greatly increases with The Reckoning, in which he explores the world of pre-war Eastern European Jewry, on the edge of the Nazi holocaust. The central figure is Newman Yagodah, a man of substance living in Hungary in 1944. He is a complex man-intelligent, duplicitous, concerned with his family and his position in the town of Clig, and finding human closeness only with his mistress. Above all, he is searchingly, painfully honest with himself, and that is what gives the novel its extraordinary quality. Newman Yagodah speaks of his political and financial theories; he looks back on his life, to the young wife he married for money and yet with love; and he movingly recounts his affair with his mistress Ileana. While his days move toward disaster, he reveals himself in this reckoning of accounts, his maneuvers and deceptions and his suffering. The result is a character wholly realized and exposed, who fascinates the reader because he is altogether human. Newman Yagodah lived in Clig, Hungary, in 1944; but he lives everywhere.
Charles Scribner's Sons 1969

Jews queers Germans

Duberman, Martin B.
"A breathtaking historical novel that recreates the intimate milieu around Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm from 1907 through the 1930s, a period of great human suffering and destruction and also of enormous freedom and creativity, a time when the remnants and artifices of the old word still mattered, and yet when art and the social sciences were pirouetting with successive revolutions in thought and style. Set in a time when many men in the upper classes in Europe were gay, but could not be so publicly, Jews Queers Germans revolves around three men: Prince Philipp von Eulenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II's closest friend, who becomes the subject of a notorious 1907 trial for homosexuality; Magnus Hirschfeld, a famed, Jewish sexologist who gives testimony at the trial; and Count Harry Kessler, a leading proponent of modernism, and the keeper of a famous set of diaries which lay out in intimate detail the major social, artistic and political events of the day and allude as well to his own homosexuality. The central theme here is the gay life of a very upper crust intellectual milieu that had a real impact on the major political upheavals that would shape the modern world forever after"--
Seven Stories Press 2017-03-07 352 pages

Far to go

Pick, Alison
Winner of the Helen and Stan Vine Jewish Book Award and finalist for the Man Booker Prize In Far to Go, one of our most accomplished young writers takes us inside the world of an affluent Jewish family in Prague during the lead-up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer are secular Jews whose lives are turned upside down by the arrival of Hitler. They are unable to leave the country in time to avoid deportation, but they do manage to get their six-year-old son Pepik a place on a Kindertransport. Meanwhile, a fascinating and compelling present-day strand in the story slowly reveals the unexpected fates of each of the Bauers. Through a series of surprising twists, Pick leads us to ask: What does it mean to cling to identity in the face of persecution? And what are the consequences if you attempt to change your identity? Inspired by the harrowing five-year journey Alison Pick's own grandparents embarked upon from their native Czechoslovakia to Canada during the Second World War, Far to Gois an epic historical novel that traces one family's journey through these tumultuous and traumatic events. A layered, beautifully written, moving, and suspenseful story by one of our rising literary stars.
House of Anansi Press 2010-01-01 314 pages

The desert: or, The life and adventures of Jubair Wali al-Mammi

Memmi, Albert
Hailed as a masterpiece when it was first published in France in 1977, The Desert tells the story of al-Mammi, a young exiled prince of a now-destroyed Jewish kingdom in southern Morocco in the late fourteenth century. Fighting battles in the service of kings and narrowly escaping imprisonment, the prince travels the Islamic world absorbing lessons, often painfully, on how to govern himself, as well as a country. At that same time, al-Mammi engages upon a spiritual journey to obtain inner wisdom rather than material riches. Memmi chronicles the prince’s fortunes as they rise and fall, drawing upon the traditions of Maghrebian storytelling and Arabian tales to offer a highly imaginative and allegorical novel that provocatively blends history with fiction.
Syracuse University Press 2015-10-08 153 pages

Melusine or Devil Take Her

Haldane, Charlotte
This work is a romantic novel revolving around the legend of Melusine. Raymond de Forests travels to visit his father at the estate of Emory, Earl of Poitou. Emory immediately likes the boy and Raymond becomes a fosterling. Raymond becomes one of the family, but on his 21st birthday, the ominous counselor and magician to Emory, Owain arranges for Raymond to accidentally murder Emory. In a state of intense bereavement, Raymond rides away, discovering a grotto where Melusine has been secreted to seduce him. Raymond and Melusine build a grand castle on some land granted to them by Emory's eldest son, Bertrand, calling it Lusignan. Bertrand later dies of poisoning and Raymond inherits his land. The Lusignans are prosperous, and one of the younger sons, Geffray, is meant to inherit. However, after Geffray murders another brother who was to be a monk, Raymond condemns his wife as a witch and she throws herself out the window. Raymond gives his titles to his son and retires to Montserrat to spend the rest of his life in meditation.
Kessinger Pub Co 2003 324 pages

Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo A Spanish Ballad

Lion Feuchtwanger
"The King became passionately enamored with a Jewess who was called by the name of Fermosa, meaning The Beautiful, and he forgot his wife. And he shut himself up with the Jewess for almost seven full years, forgetful of himself, and of his realm also, and paying no heed to any other thing." - Alfonso el Sabio, "Cronica General," c. 1270. This is a haunting love story of Alfonso VIII, the Christian King of Castile, and Raquel, the beautiful Jewess of Toledo, two lovers trapped by the bitterness and conflict of their times in a tragic alliance. Raquel was the daughter of Yehuda, a wealthy, proud aristocrat, who had come from Seville with his family to serve as Alfonso's Minister of Finance. His mission was to replenish the country's depleted treasury, but he saw in this assignment an opportunity to prevent war between the Christian North and the Moslem South and in the process to save his own people, the Jews, from being crushed between these two ruthless forces. But when the impetuous Alfonso fell in love with Raquel and demanded her as his mistress, Yehuda had to choose between his daughter's future and the fate of his people. In this epic romance of the lovers and their bitter destinies, Lion Feuchtwanger, one of the world's great historical novelists, has brilliantly recreated the drama and pageantry of the Middle Ages, rent with love and hate, cruelty and compassion, profanity and piety, bloodshed and ritual.
MaKoM Publications 2013-10-10 444 pages

The Acrobats

Mordecai Richler
Living in a rat-infested hotel in Franco’s post-war Spain, André Bennett, a Canadian painter, loves Toni, his girl friend, who wants him to return home. Roger Kraus, a Nazi on the run, shadows the young artist day and night. They meet on a bridge during the last night of the fiesta, and as the sky is shredded by exploding fireworks, the story draws to its violent climax. Originally published in 1954, The Acrobats marks Mordecai Richler’s stunning debut as a novelist.
McClelland & Stewart 2016-10-11 224 pages

No Saints Or Angels

Ivan Klíma
Ivan Klima has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as "a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West" and a "Czech master at the top of his game." In No Saints or Angels, a Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Klima takes us into the heart of contemporary Prague, where the Communist People's Militia of the Stalinist era marches headlong into the drug culture of the present. Kristyna is in her forties, the divorced mother of a rebellious fifteen-year-old daughter, Jana. She is beginning to love a man fifteen years her junior, but her joy is clouded by worry -- Jana has been cutting school, and perhaps using heroin. Meanwhile Kristyna's mother has forced on her a huge box of personal papers left by her dead father, a tyrant whose Stalinist ideals she despised. No Saints or Angels is a powerful book in which "Mr. Klima's keen sense of history, his deep compassion for the ordinary people caught up in its toils, and his abiding awareness of the fragility and resilience of human life shine through.... Like Anton Chekhov, Mr. Klima is a writer able to show us what's extraordinary about ordinary life." (The Washington Times). "Ultimately, it's Prague, with its centuries of glory and misery, that gives No Saints or Angels its humane power." -- Melvin Jules Bukiet, The Washington Post Book World" A compassionate realist, [Klima] unflinchingly presents the problems facing modern Prague and civilization in general ... [and] fills it with mercy." -- Jennie Yabroff, San Francisco Chronicle "Stirring and valuable." -- Jules Verdone, The Hartford Courant
Grove Press 2002-09-19 272 pages

Love's Shadow

Ada Leverson
Love's Shadow (1908) is a novel by Ada Leverson. Having established herself as a journalist and short story writer, Leverson published her debut novel in 1907 to moderate acclaim. Entertaining and effortlessly witty, Leverson's prose paints a stunning portrait of the Edwardian era, a time when hope and relative peace proved prosperous for many. Often compared to her close friend Oscar Wilde, Leverson, a pioneering Jewish woman, remains a unique and refreshing voice in English literature. Love's Shadow is the first installment in her Little Ottleys trilogy, a series of novels exploring the romantic lives of a hilariously diverse group of friends. Edith and Bruce Ottley seem to have it all--a charming flat, a healthy child, and a group of entertaining friends. Although they are far from perfect--Bruce can be jealous and quite the hypochondriac at times--their marriage remains strong and their home remains a place of refuge to their frequently lovelorn comrades. Among a dizzying array of faces and names, Hyacinth Verney, Mrs. Eugenia Raymond, Cecil Reeve, and Lord Selsey stand out. Although Hyacinth loves Cecil, a match favored by his uncle Lord Selsey, the young man seems inexplicably smitten with the widow Eugenia, who has no interest in marrying again. Edith and Bruce do their best to make themselves hospitable while defending their home against the hostilities of love, but the hearts and minds of their eclectic guests prove difficult to assuage. Love's Shadow is a humorous tale of romance and desire from Ada Leverson, an underappreciated novelist of the Edwardian era. This edition of Ada Leverson's Love's Shadow is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
West Margin Press 2021-05 174 pages