Collection: Historical Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize - Shortlisted for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award​ - "Even by his high standards, his magnificent new novel The Unseen is Jacobsen's finest to date, as blunt as it is subtle and is easily among the best books I have ever read."―Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

Born on the Norwegian island that bears her name, Ingrid Barr y's world is circumscribed by storm-scoured rocks and the moods of the sea by which her family lives and dies. But her father dreams of building a quay that will end their isolation, and her mother longs for the island of her youth, and the country faces its own sea change: the advent of a modern world, and all its unpredictability and violence. Brilliantly translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, The Unseen is the first book in the Barr y Chronicles and a moving exploration of family, resilience, and fate.

Hazel and Daisy find themselves embroiled in a mystery while in Hong Kong--and one of them winds up on the suspect list--in this gripping sixth novel of the Murder Most Unladylike Mystery series.

When Hazel Wong's beloved grandfather passes away, Daisy Wells accompanies her best friend (and Detective Society vice president) to Hazel's family estate in beautiful, bustling Hong Kong. But when they arrive, they discover something they didn't expect: a new baby brother for Hazel!

Hazel and Daisy think a surprise sibling is enough to be getting on with, but where they go, mystery always follows. And when tragedy strikes very close to home, this time Hazel isn't just the detective on the case... She's been framed for murder!

Now the girls must work together to confront dangerous gangs, mysterious suspects, and sinister private detectives to solve the murder and clear Hazel's name before it's too late.

In the new novel in the iconic Max Liebermann mystery series, master storyteller Frank Tallis delivers his latest suspenseful and spellbinding tale set in the smoky atmospheric world of fin de siecle Vienna.

Vienna, 1904.

The body of a man-still sitting in a chair-is discovered in an abandoned piano factory on the outskirts of the city. He has been shot dead but his face has been horribly disfigured with acid, making identification impossible. In front of the body are three chairs positioned conspicuously in a straight line. Who were the former occupants? Had they sat in judgement and pronounced a sentence of death?

Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt calls on his good friend Doctor Max Liebermann-psychiatrist and disciple of Sigmund Freud-to assist in an investigation that draws them both into the shadowy and sexually unconventional world of fringe political activism. It is a world populated by Bohemians, Utopian idealists, and anarchists, many of whom endorse acts of terror to achieve their revolutionary aims.

When bomb-making equipment is found in a suburban basement, the sinister Imperial intelligence bureau (who have been secretly monitoring Rheinhardt's investigation) make themselves known. A legendary anarchist known only by his code name-Mephistopheles-is abroad in Vienna. An appalling act of terror has been planned and time is running out. Rheinhardt must hope that Liebermann, with his profound knowledge of psychology and science, will be able to prevent the coming catastrophe.

The latest novel in the iconic Max Liebermann mystery series, Mephisto Waltz is a tale of murder, romance, intrigue, and espionage set in the atmospheric world of fin de siecle Vienna.

"Combining history, the occult, human greed, and a touch of feminism, this is a fine addition to the gothic genre." --ALA's Booklist on The Last Heir to Blackwood Library

Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and lacking options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon's Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her near-magical ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers...and suspicion. For behind Cornelia's vast knowledge of the natural world is a secret she keeps hidden--the flowers speak to her through a mysterious connection she has felt since childhood. One that her mother taught her to heed, before she disappeared.

Then, as Napoleon's army descends on Waterloo, the flowers sing to her of a startling revelation: a girl who bears a striking resemblance to Cornelia. A girl she almost remembers--her sister, lost long ago, who seems to share the same gifts. Determined to reunite with Lijsbeth despite being on opposite sides of the war, Cornelia is drawn into a whirlwind of betrayal, secrets, and lies. Brought together by fate and magic at the peak of the war, the sisters try to uncover the key to the source of the power that connects them as accusations of witchcraft swirl and threaten to destroy the very lives they've fought for.

Look for these other gothic mysteries from Hester Fox:

• The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
• The Witch of Willow Hall
• The Orphan of Cemetery Hill
• The Widow of Pale Harbor
• A Lullaby for Witches

Winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, this is one of the defining books of the 1970s, an experimental novel about a young journalist trying to navigate life in America.

When Speedboat burst on the scene in the late '70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before. It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice, ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it.

A touchstone over the years for writers as different as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Hardwick, Speedboat returns to enthrall a new generation of readers.

Donald Crews, the Caldecott Honor artist and award-winning creator of Freight Train, Truck, and many other classic picture books for young children, writes of his own childhood experiences visiting his grandparents in Florida. Share this book at home or in the classroom. Everyone will enjoy the memories of a perfect day in the country, exploring and playing, and the connections among family members across generations.

Four children travel with their mother, and when the train arrives in Cottondale, Florida, the summer at Bigmama's house begins! Donald Crews brilliantly evokes the sights, sounds, and emotions of a memorable childhood experience.

Beautifully and richly illustrated, this is a wonderful choice for family reading and classroom sharing. "A very special book by a superb artist and storyteller."--The Horn Book

A fun read-aloud, it also helps children ages 3 to 6 learn about how to share details of place in storytelling. Celebrate the bonds of family over generations with Donald Crews's evocative picture books Bigmama's and its companion, Shortcut.

Hannibal meets Mistborn in Marina Lostetter's THE HELM OF MIDNIGHT, the dark and stunning first novel in a new trilogy that combines the intricate worldbuilding and rigorous magic system of the best of epic fantasy with a dark and chilling thriller.

In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power--the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city.

Now Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question.

It is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left in his wake.

The slightly true narrative of how a brave pioneer father brought apples, pears, plums, grapes, and cherries (and children) across the plains.

Apples, ho!

When Papa decides to pull up roots and move from Iowa to Oregon, he can't bear to leave his precious apple trees behind. Or his peaches, plums, grapes, cherries, and pears. Oh, and he takes his family along too.

But the trail is cruel. First there's a river to cross that's wider than Texas, then there are hailstones as big as plums, and then there's even a drought, sure to crisp the cherries.

Luckily Delicious (the nonedible apple of Daddy's eye) won't let anything stop her father's darling saps from tasting the sweet Oregon soil. A hilarious tall tale from the team that brought you Fannie in the Kitchen that's loosely based on the life of a real fruiting pioneer.

Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.

In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel--one where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its fullness. Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.

An ancient Aztec vampire roams the modern world in search of vengeance and love in this seductive dark fantasy from the author of The Haunting of Alejandra.

Hundreds of years ago, she was known as La Malinche: a Nahua woman who translated for the conquistador Cortés. In the centuries since, her name has gone down in infamy as a traitor. But no one ever found out what happened to La Malinche after Cortés destroyed her people.

In the ashes of the empire, she was reborn as Malinalli, an immortal vampire. And she has become an avenger of conquered peoples, traveling the world to reclaim their stolen artifacts and return them to their homelands.

But she has also been in search of something more, for this ancient vampire still has deeply human longings for pleasure and for love.

When she arrives in Dublin in search of a pair of Aztec skulls--artifacts intimately connected to her own dark history--she finds something else: two men who satisfy her cravings in very different ways.

For the first time she meets a mortal man--a horror novelist--who is not repelled by her strange condition but attracted by it. But there is also another man, an immortal like herself, who shares the darkness in her heart.

Now Malinalli is on the most perilous adventure of all: a journey into her own desires.

New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

They call him the Duke of Ruin.

To an undaunted wallflower, he's just the beast next door.

Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society--and now he wants to get even.

Loyal and passionate, Lady Penelope Campion never met a lost or wounded creature she wouldn't take into her home and her heart.

When her imposing--and attractive--new neighbor demands she clear out the rescued animals, Penny sets him a challenge. She will part with her precious charges, if he can find them loving homes.

Done, Gabriel says. How hard can it be to find homes for a few kittens?

And a two-legged dog.

And a foul-mouthed parrot.

And a goat, an otter, a hedgehog . . .

Easier said than done, for a cold-blooded bastard who wouldn't know a loving home from a workhouse. Soon he's covered in cat hair, knee-deep in adorable, and bewitched by a shyly pretty spinster who defies his every attempt to resist. Now she's set her mind and heart on saving him.

Not if he ruins her first.

Beloved heroine Maisie Dobbs, "one of the great fictional heroines" (Parade), investigates the mysterious murder of an American war correspondent in London during the Blitz in a page-turning tale of love and war, terror and survival.

When Catherine Saxon, an American correspondent reporting on the war in Europe, is found murdered in her London digs, news of her death is concealed by British authorities. Serving as a linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service, Robert MacFarlane pays a visit to Maisie Dobbs, seeking her help. He is accompanied by an agent from the US Department of Justice--Mark Scott, the American who helped Maisie escape Hitler's Munich in 1938. MacFarlane asks Maisie to work with Scott to uncover the truth about Saxon's death.

As the Germans unleash the full terror of their blitzkrieg upon the British Isles, raining death and destruction from the skies, Maisie must balance the demands of solving this dangerous case with her need to protect Anna, the young evacuee she has grown to love and wants to adopt. Entangled in an investigation linked to the power of wartime propaganda and American political intrigue being played out in Britain, Maisie will face losing her dearest friend--and the possibility that she might be falling in love again.

A boy and his family must decide whether to remain in Cuba under a repressive government or risk everything for the chance of a new beginning in this gripping story from the award-winning author of The Red Umbrella.

There are two versions of Héctor: the public and the private. It's the only way to survive in communist Cuba--especially when your father was exiled to the U.S. and labeled an enemy of the people. Héctor must always be seen as a fierce supporter of the regime, even if that means loudly rejecting the father he still loves.

But in the summer of 1980, those two versions are hard to keep separate. No longer able to suppress a public uprising, the Cuban government says it will open the port of Mariel to all who wish to leave the country--if they can find a boat. But choosing to leave comes with a price. Those who want to flee are denounced as traitors by family and friends. There are violent acts of repudiation, and no one knows if they will truly be allowed to leave the country or not.

So when Héctor's mother announces that she wants the family to risk everything to go to the United States, he is torn. He misses his father, but Cuba is the only home he has ever known. All his dreams and plans require him to stay. Can he leave everything behind for an unknown future?

In a summer of heat and upheaval, danger and deadly consequences, Héctor's two worlds are on a collision course. Will the impact destroy him and everything he loves?

Christina Diaz Gonzalez's great-grandmother, great-uncle, and extended family came to the U.S. through the Mariel boatlift. She vividly remembers meeting them all for the first time in the summer of 1980 and is proud to share this part of her family's history.

In this gothic bestseller, two young women, living centuries apart, both accused of madness, communicate across time to fight a common enemy...their doctors.

"It was the dog who found me."

Such is the stark confession launching the harrowing scene that begins The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls as Emilie, a young musician on the verge of a bright career, attempts suicide by overdosing on the antipsychotics prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder. Upon being discovered, Emilie is revived and immediately incarcerated in a maximum-security psych ward, despite her protestations that she is not crazy, and can provide valid reasons for her actions if someone would only listen.

Treated as a criminal, heavily medicated, and stripped of all freedoms, Emilie is denied communication with the outside world, and falls prey to the unwelcome attentions of Dr. Sharp, head of the hospital's psychiatry department. As Dr. Sharp grows more predatory by the day, Emilie begins a secret diary to document her terrifying experience, and to maintain her sanity in this environment that could surely drive anyone mad. But when Emilie opens her notebook to find a desperate letter from a young woman imprisoned within an insane asylum in Victorian England, and, stranger still, bearing her own name and description, a portal to another world is blasted wide open.

As these letters from the past continue to appear, Emilie escapes further into this mysterious alternate reality where sisterhoods are formed, romance between female inmates blossoms, striped wallpaper writhes with ghosts, and highly intellectual rats speak the Queen's English.

But is it real? Or is Emilie truly as mad as she is constantly told she is?

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls blurs harsh reality and magical historical fantasy whilst issuing a scathing critique of society's treatment of women and the mental health care industry's treatment of its patients, showing in the process that little has changed throughout the ages.

Welcome to the Asylum.

Are you committed?

PLEASE NOTE: Only the eBook version of this book contains the real-word treasure hunt, "The Quest for the Spoon of the Royals." This paperback version contains illustrations but does not contain the puzzle, as the puzzle requires an internet connection. Please purchase the eBook to get in on the game!

Please visit the Emilie Autumn author page to find blank journals, coloring books, yearly planners, music manuscript composition books, short stories, novels, and more!

From the Author of the National Book Award Finalist News of the World

Good Morning America Book Club Pick

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women's prison.

But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

Now an escaped "enemy woman," Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise . . . seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

The international bestselling author of The Secret River and
A Room Made of Leaves returns with a fictionalised account of her grandmother's
life, commemorating a strong female character making the best out of the times
and society she was born in.Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century,
when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined
women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly
spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do
not deter her from searching for love and independence.

Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a
pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who
is able - despite the cost - to make a life she could call her own.