Best of
Historical-Fiction

1936

Gone with the Wind


Margaret Mitchell - 1936
    Scarlett O'Hara, the beautiful, spoiled daughter of a well-to-do Georgia plantation owner, must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea.

The Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy


Charles Bernard Nordhoff - 1936
    The storytelling genius of the authors finds here a canvas filled with color, action and adventure. Readers will realize, as did the authors, that so large a drama could not be confined to the compass of an ordinary book. Nordoff and Hall chose to tell the story of the Bounty in three acts: Mutiny on the Bounty Men Against the Sea Pitcairn's Island In The Mutiny on the Bounty Trilogy these three books have been united in a single volume to form the complete work that the authors had in mind.

A City of Bells


Elizabeth Goudge - 1936
    He heads for the cathedral town or Torminster, where he recovers his love of life in the invigorating company of his cousin, Hugh Anthony, his grandfather, the Canon and Henrietta.When Jocelyn moved into the little house where Ferranti once had lived, a dark Byronic spirit haunted its rooms. Was Ferranti alive or dead? Until they knew, Jocelyn and Felicity must reach out to him. Until Ferranti no longer needed them, they must yield slowly to the madness of love. So the ghost of Gabriel Ferranti guided their lives in surprising ways, and more than one bewildered heart was restored to the wonder and magic of living.

The Talisman Ring


Georgette Heyer - 1936
    Yet it is Lord Lavenham's dying wish. For there is no one else to provide for the old man's granddaughter while Ludovic, his heir, remains a fugitive from justice.

The General


C.S. Forester - 1936
    He knew little then; he learned nothing since. But the army, desperate for officers in the opening months of WW I, hands Curzon, a new division to train. A few months later his formations dissolve at the Somme, hosed down by German machine guns. Uninstructed, Curzon still thinks himself a leader. When a German offensive threatens his remaining troops, he gallops suicidally into the fighting. He prefers death to self-knowledge. "THE GENERAL is a superb novel. It blends Forester's preference for military subjects and solid unreflective characters, his irony, his grasp of history and his gift for lean, hypnotic narrative." (The New York Times)

Drums Along the Mohawk


Walter D. Edmonds - 1936
    Here Gilbert Martin and his young wife struggled and lived and hoped. Combating hardships almost too great to endure, they helped give to America a legend that still stirs the heart. In the midst of love and hate, life and death, danger and disaster, they stuck to the acres that were theirs and fought a war without ever quite understanding it. Drums along the Mohawk has been an American classic since its original publication in 1936. This Syracuse University Press edition reproduces the book in its entirety.

And No Quarter


Maurice Walsh - 1936
    The narrator, Martin Somers (an Englishman) is the Adjutant of Women in O'Cahan's Irish regiment that fought with James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose for the King in what is now called the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and of the adventures (misadventures) in those turbulent times.

The Old Man's Birthday


Richmal Crompton - 1936
    The Old Man's Birthday is both a nostalgic treat for fans of the gentler brand of interwar fiction, and a dry satire of British village life. Matthew Rowston is turning ninety-five. A lovable rogue approaching his dotage, he has very little time for the high moral standards and rigid ideas of propriety espoused by his spinster daughter. Things get interesting when he invites his estranged son, the bright and lively Stephen, and his beautiful partner to his celebratory dinner. Over the course of the day, Matthew walks around the village, introducing the pair to his large and varied clan, from the aging Jolly-hockey sticks granddaughter who is considering a torrid affair of her own, to his elderly bookish bachelor son and the lovely great-granddaughter struggling to find her place in the world, doomed to work as a clerk in her dull and dismal father's firm. Teeming beneath the calm surface of village and family life, lies a whole world of secrets and desires, hopes and dreams. Mrs Dalloway with a dash of dry humour, Mapp and Lucia with a slightly melancholy tone, this is the perfect heritage read for fans of 1930s fiction at its best.