Showing titles in Historical

We're all something else inside.... 1952. Standing in a cold Suffolk field with her family, six-year-old Mary Ward has a revelation: I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I'm a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender. Moving from the claustrophobic rural community of the 1950s to London in the swinging '60s and beyond to the glitter of America in the '70s, Sacred Country is the story of a journey to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world.

Set in and around the women's prison at Milbank in the 1870's, Affinity is an eerie and utterly compelling ghost story, a complex and intriguing literary mystery, and a poignant love story with an unexpected twist in the tale. Following the death of her father, Margaret Prior has decided to pursue some 'good work' with the lady criminals of one of London's most notorious gaols. Surrounded by prisoners, murderers, and common thieves, Margaret feels herself drawn to one of the prison's more unlikely inmates.

“Luke” Hamilton has been living as a husband and father for the past 17 years. No one but her wife, Nora, knows she is not the man she appears to be. They have raised their daughters to become honest and hard-working young women, but even with their loving foundation, Amy and Nattie are hiding their own secrets. Just as Luke sets out on a dangerous trip to Fort Boise, a newcomer arrives on the ranch - Rika Aaldenberg, who traveled to Oregon as a mail-order bride, hiding that she’s not the woman in the letters.

After Sappho is Selby Wynn Schwartz's joyous reimagining of the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late 19th and early 20th century as they battle for control over their lives; for liberation and for justice. Sarah Bernhard—Colette—Eleanora Duse—Lina Poletti—Josephine Baker—Virginia Woolf... these are just a few of the women (some famous, others hitherto unsung) sharing the minutes of a novel as fierce as it is luminous—lush and poetic; furious and funny.

Published in 1928, Orlando is a fictional biography that spans several centuries and follows the protagonist, Orlando, an Elizabethan nobleman who undergoes a mysterious gender transformation. The novel explores themes of gender identity, fluidity and the constraints imposed by societal norms. It challenges traditional notions of gender roles and raises questions about the nature of identity and the passage of time.

After the success of The Northern Clemency, which was short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher brings us the peaceful civility and spiralling paranoia of the small English town of Handsmouth. Usually a quiet and undisturbed place, Handsmouth becomes the centre of national attention when an eight-year-old girl vanishes. The town fills with journalists and television crews, who latch onto the public's fearful suspicions that the missing girl was abducted.

Jack Turner grew up in the darkness of London's slums, born into a life of crime and willing to do anything to keep his belly full and his siblings safe. Now he uses the tricks and schemes of the underworld to help those who need the kind of assistance only a scoundrel can provide. His distrust of the nobility runs deep, and his services do not extend to the gorgeous high-born soldier who personifies everything Jack will never be.

In the shadowy world of 1940s New York City, a sultry spy falls for the one woman she shouldn't. When reporter Jenny Ryan’s father is murdered, her burning need for justice drives her to take on a ruthless tycoon. But her plan goes awry when she falls for the criminal’s alluring mistress, OSS agent Kathryn Hammond. Kathryn is more than just a popular nightclub singer with a glamorous façade. She’s an undercover spy, trapped stateside in a dead-end assignment while the war rages on in Europe.

In West Berlin in 1989, 18-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the other side of the Berlin Wall. But an unsettling discovery about his family and a meeting with the mysterious Oz shatters everything Ralf thought he knew about love and loyalty.

“Luke” Hamilton has always been sure she’d never marry. She accepted that she would spend her life alone when she chose to live her life disguised as a man. After working in a brothel for three years, Nora Macauley has lost all illusions about love. She no longer hopes for a man who will sweep her off her feet and take her away to begin a new, respectable life. But now, they find themselves married and on the way to Oregon in a covered wagon, with 2,000 miles ahead of them.

Hanne is nearly 15, and the domestic world of womanhood is quickly closing in on her. A child of nature, she yearns instead for the rush of the river, the wind dancing around her. Hanne finds little comfort in the local girls, and friendship doesn't come easily, until she meets Thea and she finds in her a kindred spirit and finally, acceptance. Hanne's family are Old Lutherans, and in her small village hushed worship is done secretly—this is a community under threat.

Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The audiobook's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality.

In a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic, is eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair.

On the trail of an aristocrat's secret son, enquiry agent Mark Braglewicz finds his quarry in a music hall, performing as a trapeze artist with his twin sister. Graceful, beautiful, elusive, and strong, Pen Starling is like nobody Mark's ever met - and everything he's ever wanted. But the long-haired acrobat has an earldom and a fortune to claim.

Strangers might remember a trip to see a girl hang, but who would spare a thought for the who’s and how’s and whys? 'At thirteen, Mary, the daughter of a poor seamstress, longs for fine clothes as her neighbours hunger for food and warmth. For the love of a gorgeous red ribbon she finds herself seduced into a life on the cold, dangerous streets of late 1700s London. Her saviour is Doll, a gaudy young woman who takes her under her wing.

Poland, 1980. Anxious, disillusioned Ludwik Glowacki, soon to graduate university, has been sent along with the rest of his class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together, they spend a dreamlike summer swimming in secluded lakes, reading forbidden books - and falling in love. But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw, and to the harsh realities of life under the Party. Exiled from paradise, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.

In the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings his Cambridge friend Cecil Valance, a charismatic young poet, to visit his family home. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for everyone, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact. As the decades pass, Daphne and those around her endure startling changes in fortune and circumstance, and as reputations rise and fall, the events of that long-ago summer become part of a legendary story.

1816. Mary, 18 years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities, haunted by the loss of her baby daughter. Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary. Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits.

After an unconventional upbringing, Ben Sedgwick is perfectly content with the quiet, predictable life of a country vicar, free of strife or turmoil. When he’s asked to look after an absent naval captain’s three wild children, he reluctantly agrees, but instantly falls for the hellions. And when their stern but gloriously handsome father arrives, Ben is tempted in ways that make him doubt everything.

Best-selling author Nevada Barr delights contemporary mystery fans with novels like Deep South and Blood Lure. In Bittersweet, she departs the mystery genre for a touching story of hardship, perseverance, and love in the old West.