Showing results by publisher "Bloomsbury Publishing Plc" in Historical Fiction

Life is never straightforward when you’re a full-time priest and part-time detective. So when a walk in a bluebell wood takes an unexpected turn, Archdeacon Sidney Chambers finds himself plunged into another murder investigation: who would want to kill a harmless old hippy - and why was the man foraging for poisonous plants? Sidney’s findings soon lead him into sunny Granchester’s dark underworld, where love is free and motives are shady.

In 1887, young Nellie Bly sets out for New York and a career in journalism, determined to make her way as a serious reporter, whatever that may take. But life in the city is tougher than she imagined. Down to her last dime and desperate to prove her worth, she comes up with a dangerous plan: to fake insanity and have herself committed to the asylum that looms on Blackwell's Island. There, she will work undercover to document—and expose—the wretched conditions faced by the patients.

The novel opens on a battlefield: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who'll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf. Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, who became the greatest dancer of the century, who redefined dance, rewrote his own life and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers—black, white, Irish and Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.

Poverty and depravity wreak havoc on Hassan Omar’s family. Amid great hardship he decides to escape. The arrival of independence brings new upheavals as well as the betrayal of the promise of freedom. The new government, fearful of an exodus of its most able men, discourages young people from travelling abroad and refuses to release examination results. Deprived of a scholarship, Hassan travels to Nairobi to stay with a wealthy uncle, in the hope that he will release his mother’s rightful share of the family inheritance.

Manchester, the summer of 1890. A city humming with industry and gleaming with affluence. But for Charles, cloistered in his middle-class parents' suburban villa on holiday from university, the city's vibrancy holds no charms. Bored and a little listless, he spends the summer in pursuit of his little sisters' governess, Hettie. Before the summer's end, both must face the consequences of their affair - consequences they will live with for the rest of their lives.

Ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough.

Colum McCann's first novel goes back to the years before the Spanish Civil War, following the adventures of a peripatetic Irish photographer from the war-strewn shores of Europe to the exotic plains of Mexico. The story is told in the words of the photographer's only son, a wanderer himself, who uses his father's unreliable memories and the fading remnants of his art to piece together his family history and explain the mystery surrounding his mother—a Mexican beauty brought back by his father to Ireland.

Alexandria, 47BC. Cleopatra – seventh of her name, avatar of the goddess Isis, ruler of the Kingdom of Egypt – watches over her city. The war is over, but Alexandria has suffered in its wake. Caesar has returned to Rome, and the queen must restore her city and her kingdom to their former greatness. But now a body has been found floating upright at the bottom of the sea, anchored by a weight around its feet. It's the second corpse to be found this way, and with a city to rebuild and a kingdom to keep in line, Cleopatra cannot allow any more murders to interfere.

The life of Zoli Novotna begins on the leafy backroads of Slovakia, when she and her grandfather come upon a quiet lake where their family has been drowned by fascist guards. Zoli and her grandfather flee to join up with another clan of travelling harpists. So begins an epic tale of song, intimacy and betrayal. Based loosely on the true story of the Gypsy poet Papusza, and set against the backdrop of the Second World War, Zoli is a love story, a tale of loss and a parable of modern-day Europe.

When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron Hood with Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Feron, who has narrowly escaped from a dark past, instantly takes to Merry and her composed personality. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls - and their friendship - begin to thrive.

1964. Ceylon is on the brink of change. But Kairo is at a loose end. School is closed, the government is in disarray, the press is under threat and the religious right are flexing their muscles. Kairo’s hard-working mother blows off steam at her cha-cha-cha classes; his Trotskyite father grumbles over the state of the nation between his secret flutters on horseraces in faraway England. All Kairo wants to do is hide in his room and flick over second-hand Westerns and superhero comics, or escape on his bicycle and daydream.

Nice, France, 1911: After three years of marriage, Marcella Navratil has finally had enough. Her husband, Michael, an ambitious tailor, may have charmed her during their courtship, but their few years of marriage have revealed a cruel and controlling streak. The 21-year-old mother of two is determined to get a divorce. But while awaiting the Judges’ decision on the custody of their children, Michael receives news that changes everything. Meanwhile, fun-loving New York socialite Margaret Hays is touring Europe with some friends.

Maya grows up in Germany knowing that her parents are different: from one another, and from the rest of the world. Her reserved, studious father is distant; and her beautiful, volatile mother is a whirlwind, with a penchant for lavish shopping sprees and a mesmerising power for spinning stories of the family’s former glory - of what was had, and what was lost.

In the wake of China’s invasion of Tibet throughout the 1950s, Lhamo and her younger sister, Tenkyi, arrive at a refugee camp in Nepal. They survived the dangerous journey across the Himalayas, but their parents did not. As Lhamo—haunted by the loss of her homeland and her mother, a village oracle—tries to rebuild a life amid a shattered community, hope arrives in the form of a young man named Samphel and his uncle, who brings with him the ancient statue of the Nameless Saint—a relic known to vanish and reappear in times of need.

From the palaces of Alexandria reigns Cleopatra – seventh of her name, avatar of the goddess Isis, ruler of the Kingdom of Egypt – surrounded by riches untold. Through the streets of her great city bustle scholars and sailors, politicians and priests. For those with the means, it is a comfortable life. But not all are invited to share in the wealth of Egypt's first city. When Herminia, one of Alexandria's most beloved actresses, disappears on the eve of a great performance, Cleopatra sets Tetisheri, her Eye, to investigate.

The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie” Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert’s, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings—and the freedom to travel with Gerald.

1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.

The day of her wedding, 17-year-old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women.

In 1963, in a Siberian prison, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won’t go insane. But one day, all that changes: Valery’s university mentor steps in and sweeps him from the frozen camp to a mysterious unnamed city. It houses a set of nuclear reactors, and surrounding it is a forest so damaged it looks like the trees have rusted from within.