Historical fiction

Showing 17–32 of 172 resultsSorted by latest

  • A Parish Chronicle

    £9.99

    An intimate, magical novel about one enduring church in a rural Icelandic valley – an ode to a quiet way of life now lost to time forever. The resting place of legendary Viking warrior Egil Skallagrímsson’s skull, Mosfell Church is a lonely, country church, fated to be destroyed. But as the plans to destroy it take shape, stories, myth and folklore abound in one magical last attempt to leave Mosfell standing.

  • The Treasures

    £9.99

    Every family’s story starts somewhere. Alice and Tom’s begins here. On the eve of her 16th birthday, Alice Jansen collects her treasures – the keepsakes, figurines and mementoes that help her make sense of her fragile family. But the next day her heart is broken, and the final treasure, a gift from her father, is lost. Two years later, Alice answers a phone call from a stranger and runs away to New York, and tries to forget her last golden summer at the orchard on the banks of the Hudson. Tom Raven can’t understand why he keeps losing so many of the things and people that really matter to him, but he knows for certain that something important is missing from his life. One day, he remembers a forgotten letter and makes a phone call, then leaves Sevenstones, the only place that feels like home, for a strange city.

  • Distant Star

    £9.99

    Alberto Ruiz-Tagle was once the quiet, unknowable, unpromising member of Chile’s young poetry scene. But the military coup of 1973 sees Alberto reborn as Chile’s leading celebrity poet, Carlos Wieder. Known for his daring sky poems, penned in smoke high above the cities, Weider’s dazzling trajectory is a cause for astonishment and speculation amongst his old poetry friends. Where did this talent suddenly spring from? And, how is it connected to the disappearance of the beautiful Garmendia twins? Told from across the years in exile in Europe, the narrator’s attempts to trace the fate of his old circle will lead him to one last confrontation with the brutality of their generation.

  • The Phoenix Pencil Company

    £9.99

    ‘Absorbing’GUARDIAN

    ‘Magical’GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

    ‘Suspenseful’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

    ‘Wildly inventive’ LIZ MOORE

    A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK

    In this dazzling debut novel, a young reclusive coder unearths the story of a lost Shanghai pencil company and a legacy of magic, espionage and family secrets that will alter the path of her life forever.

  • No. 1 St James’s Park

    £20.00

    At the height of the First World War, Emily Grey finds herself far away from the action, collating Swiss rubber imports in a hut in the middle of St James’ Park. Summoned to MI6’s Whitehall headquarters, Emily learns that her talent for languages is needed elsewhere and she is despatched to Bern to debrief Fritz the Ritz, an agent reporting on the wartime activities of German industry. However, when she discovers that Fritz the Ritz may not be all he claims to be, she is led to the door of an import-export dealership in Lausanne and the unassuming couple who run it. Could they really be at the heart of a network that threatens the lives of millions of Allied soldiers? And, if they are, can Emily, and her ever-eager partner Nigel Nisbet, stop them before they go too far?

  • Icarus 17

    £20.00

    FROM SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR CHARLES CUMMING, THIS IS THE ENTHRALLING NEW ESPIONAGE THRILLER FOLLOWING CAREER SPY, LACHLAN KITE

    'Nobody writes more enjoyable spy thrillers’ ANTHONY HOROWITZ

    ‘Charles Cumming has breathed new life into the spy novel’ BEN MACINTYRE

    'The rightful inheritor of John le Carré's crown' OBSERVER

  • The Scandalous Ladies Football Club

    £18.99

    Meet Minnie Newton – spinster, troublemaker and founder of the first ever women's football club – in a story inspired by real-life Victorian trailblazers, who showed the world that women can do anything they put their minds to, even if they are ridiculed for it at first…

  • Rooms for Vanishing

    £9.99

    A heart-stopping epic of grief and hope, and one family blown apart – across the globe, across time, across parallel possibilities – by war.

  • A Thread of Light

    £9.99

    The lives of Ruby, a ballsy ARP warden, and Kitty, an industrious lawyer fighting for Indian independence, collide during the Blitz.

  • I’ll Be Right Here

    £9.99

    Emigrating alone from Paris to New York after World War II, a young girl, Gazala, befriends two spirited sisters, Anne and Alma. When Gazala’s beloved brother Samir joins her in Manhattan, this inseparable foursome becomes the beating heart of an untraditional, multigenerational family. The decades are marked by erupting passions within everyday life. Gazala and Samir make a home together, Alma loses a baby, Anne leaves her husband for his sister and her restless daughter grows up to raise a child on her own. The four friends stand by one another through it all, steadfastly unapologetic about their authentic desires and the unorthodox family they have created.

  • No Friend to This House

    £9.99

    A defiantly feminist retelling of the myth of Medea from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stone Blind.

  • Daughters of the Sun and Moon

    £18.99

    Beloved New York Times bestselling author Lisa See draws on the vibrancy and turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles to tell the story of three Chinese women who managed to survive and, eventually, thrive, despite all odds.

  • Mrs Dickens

    £20.00

    London, 1836. Nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth falls in love with the young journalist Charles Dickens. In the early days of their marriage, Charles is infatuated with his new bride and Kate delights in her new life, the balm to her husband’s irrepressible spirit. But as he finds fame as a novelist and the family rise through the ranks of Victorian society, Kate becomes increasingly aware of his frustration that real people cannot be manipulated as easily as his characters. Meanwhile, in the East End slums, a young orphan named Anne Brown has lost everything, but is determined to make her way in the world. A chance encounter with the Dickens family transports her to the heart of the household, opening up a world of privilege, travel and remarkable company. But her new-found freedom has come at a cost she cannot always ignore. As the years go by and the family expands, the cracks in the Dickens’ marriage deepen.

  • Rules of the Heart

    £9.99

    Inspired by an eighteenth-century love affair, Rules of the Heart is the story of a woman who thinks she understands the rules of the game – but ends by breaking them all.

  • The Silver Book

    £9.99

    It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs. He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittá, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism. But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.

  • The Chateau

    £10.99

    It is 1948 and a young American couple arrive in France for a holiday, full of anticipation and enthusiasm. But the countryside and people are war-battered, and their reception at the Chateau Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.