Fiction > Historic Fiction

Leonardo da Vinci, twelve years old and a bastard, leaves the Tuscan countryside to join his father in Florence with dreams of becoming a painter. Francesco Salviati, also a bastard and scorned for his too-dark skin, dedicates himself to the Catholic Church with grand...

Scoundrel, lustful libertine, infamous and irresistible anti-hero. When the most decorated coward of the Victorian era accepts Tom Brown's innocent invitation to participate in a cricket match, he has no idea that he will end up caught in a chain of misadventures that will...

Young Berlin woman Elisabeth Weber falls in love at a May Day demonstration with Erwin Dobbien, a member of the SA who, like her, is blinded by National Socialism. In their enthusiasm, they both turn a blind eye to the terror of the regime....

During a visit to the Prado Museum, Vega, a university professor, is mesmerized by a suggestive 18th-century portrait. The face of the man painted there shakes her to the core: she has seen it before... although she cannot remember where. An uncontrollable attraction leads...

The story of two strangers destined to understand each other, a little gem of British literature. Ivar, the only inhabitant of a remote Scottish island, has lived for decades in peaceful isolation accompanied by a few animals. Until one day in 1843, he finds...

It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not...

This is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of Bulgaria. Suspenseful and beautiful, the novel explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that...

For decades, England has sold the defeat of our Invincible Armada, in the English Channel, as a great success for the Anglo-Saxons. In reality the combat ended in a draw (the English had more casualties), in the context of a war that lasted 16...

In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around...

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything—everything except books, that is. Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter. Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last...

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come...

In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer...

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo...

In 1946, in a London where the scars of war are still visible, Maurice Bendrix meets diplomat Henry Miles by chance, whom he hasn't seen for a long time. Henry is married to Sarah, with whom Maurice had an affair during the war. When...

In Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, Syracusans imprison defeated Athenians in a quarry. Lampo and Gelon, two idle potters who love poetry and drink, decide to feed the Athenians if they recite lines from Euripides. They then plan to stage a production of Medea....

The Great Salt Lake is a key work in U.S. eco-literature. The story depicts the struggle of birds to survive in a habitat threatened by human intervention and the devastating effects of nearby nuclear testing. As Terry cares for her cancer-stricken mother, she investigates...

In January 1536, a dying Catherine of Aragon, stripped of her title and imprisoned in Kimbolton Castle, is denied all visitors—even her daughter. But her loyal friend Mary of Salinas defies Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell to be by her side in her final...

Fernando VII, the most hated monarch in Spanish history, a traitor to his people, servile to Napoleon and stubbornly committed to absolutism, became the obsession of many. What if the only way to prevent his return was to eliminate him? In the midst of...

What happened in the days after Jesus' resurrection? Where was he during those forty days? Who really saw him? How was it possible for him to appear in different places at the same time? Why do the canonical Gospels say so little about this...

In 1803, Domingo Badía Leblich, a brilliant Catalan posing as Muslim prince Ali Bey el Abbassi, is sent on a secret mission by the Spanish Crown to explore the Islamic world and gather intelligence. Welcomed as a noble in Morocco and later traveling through...