At a remote English public school in Devon the debilitated veteran, himself barely out of his teens, decides temporarily to try his hand at teaching while striving to awaken from the nightmare of World War I -- the national catastrophe that sweeps England out of the comfortable certainties of the Victorian Age into the moral perplexities and harsh economic realities of more modern times.

    Surrounded by men who are jockeying for power–Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony–young Octavius must work against the powerful Roman political machinations to claim his destiny as first Roman emperor. Sprung from meticulous research and the pen of a true poet, Augustus tells the story of one man’s dream to liberate a corrupt Rome from the fancy of the capriciously crooked and the wildly wealthy.

    It was the early 1850's and he was a penniless immigrant, an orphan cast on a hostile shore to make a home for himself and his younger brother and infant sister. Some seventy years later, from his deathbed, Joseph Armagh last glimpsed his adopted land from the gleaming windows of a palatial estate. A multi-millionaire, one of the most powerful and feared men, Joseph Armagh had indeed found a home. CAPTAINS AND KINGS is the story of the price that was paid for it in the consuming, single-minded determination of a man clawing his way to the top; in the bitter-sweet bliss of the love of a beautiful woman; in the almost too-late enjoyment of extraordinary children; and in the curse which used the hand of fate to strike in the very face of success itself.Once again, Taylor Caldwell has looked into America's roistering past as a setting for a drama of the consequences of savage ambition - and its meaning then and now.

    S. Benbencula was already old. Yet even she was needed to protect the vital Atlantic sea lanes. Commander Lindsay, her new captain, had to work desperately to mould the ship's company — raw recruits and old timers — into a fighting force. And better than anyone, Lindsay knew this could be his last command, his last chance.

    And if you're clumsy and your older brothers and sisters all call you "Awkward Anna" as well, it's even worse. In award-winning writer Jean Little's poignant novel, From Anna, readers are sure to be touched by Anna Soldens's struggles with her new home in Canada, the unfamiliar language of English, and the realization that, in fact, there is a reason for her being such an awkward child. When it's discovered that Anna needs glasses and that her clumsiness is actually the result of being visually impaired, Anna's life changes completely. Suddenly her brothers and sisters see Anna in a new light and try to make amends for being unkind. From Anna is one of Jean Little's most popular novels, and it's little wonder. Readers will also want to check out the sequel, Listen for the Singing. (Ages 10 to 14) --Jeffrey Canton

    Here are Mary and Joseph--a teenage girl and a young carpenter--alone, frightened, in love, faced with family conflict, a hostile world and an awesome responsibility. It is a story for young and old alike; for everyone who finds the Christmas tale a source of timeless beauty and wonder, a compassionate, emotional novel of divine love.

    It is the story of the big, poor-but-proud Highlander who marries her, gives her seven children, and challenges her with an unyielding spirit of his own.

    "May the Lord bless thee and awaken thee, Margaret Fell."His eyes went on searching hers. They were blue like a sailor's and of an odd shape and rather slanted.It was at this moment Margaret Fell's life took a strange and dramatic turn. For her encounter with George Fox, a virile, lust-provoking, itinerant preacher, made her feel as though a whole new life were ahead. For the first time her passion was aroused. George awakened in her a capacity for love she had never known. But was this love directed at George the man of God...or George the man?This novel is the story of the passionate, flesh-and-blood men and women who began the Quaker movement in England in the 17th century and of those who settled in Philadelphia 100 years later.

    Ben Kazin is a brilliant archeologist. Louren Sturvesant is rich, impulsive, and physically imposing, everything Ben is not. Now, the two men--friends, competitors and partners--are searching for the legendary lost city of Opet, built by who escaped the fall of Carthage two thousand years ago.For Ben, the expedition is a chance to prove a controversial thesis. For Louren, it is a chance to spend millions--and make it all back in gold and glory. But what awaits them is an astounding discovery, a siege of terror, and an act of betrayal that will tear the two men apart and bind them together forever...Hidden beneath water, jungle, and blood-red cliffs is a lost world where two men and a beautiful woman were caught in a furious battle of passions two thousands years ago, but which has begun once again....

    It’s the tale of Hannali Innominee, a ’Mingo’ or natural lord of the 19th-century Choctaw Indian [and] a capacious, indomitable giant of the ilk of Paul Bunyan....Lafferty tells it straight: how the Choctaw nation, once removed, reconstituted itself and thrived in Indian territory...., how there came a schism between the rich, part-white, slave-owning, moneylending Choctaws and the ’feudal, compassionate, chauvinistic’ full-blooded freeholders like Hannali; and how, during the Civil War, the Indians were manipulated divide-and-conquer fashion in helping destroy each other."–Kirkus Reviews.

    The war doesn't seem real to Rosemarie until the Germans suddenly invade her country of Holland, and she finds herself hauled off to a Nazi concentration camp.

    Left in charge of her brother and sister in occupied Philadelphia in 1777, fourteen-year-old Rebecca's life is complicated further when two British soldiers are billeted in her house.

    Mary Walton was the apple of her da's eye.  For long now he had been out of work, and Mary was his only comfort during those dark years of the Depression, when unemployment and a nagging, ambitious wife gnawed away at his self-respect.  Once he was a man who had held his head high with Geordie pride; now his only hope was that Mary would escape from the grinding poverty of the Tyneside slums that had held him a prisoner for so many years.But then something happened to Mary that shattered all his dreams of her future--an event that was to split a family and influence its members for generations to follow...

    The first novel in the Montrose saga begins the story of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, one of the noblest figures in Scottish history, who risked everything during the darkest days of the Civil War to save King Charles I.

    A Greek slave, his dancing bear, and an old holy man journey from Byzantium to rescue the slave's young mistress from the Huns.

    Richard Marsdon marries a young American woman named Celia, brings her to live at his English estate, and all seems to be going well. But now Richard has become withdrawn, and Celia is constantly haunted by a vague dread. When she suffers a breakdown and wavers between life and death, a wise doctor realizes that only by forcing Celia to relive her past can he enable her to escape her illness. Celia travels back 400 years in time to her past life as a beautiful but doomed servant. Through her eyes, we see the England of the Tudors, torn by religious strife, and experience all the pageantry, lustiness, and cruelty of the age. As in other historical romance titles by this author, the past comes alive in this flamboyant classic novel.

    But Nessan, the chief's daughter, pleaded for his life. The Mother took angry revenge, so again the Clan offered him as victim. And again Nessan interfered--heedless now of all costs.A CIRCLET OF OAK LEAVES (1965)Aracos still remembered the battle long past, yet he never joined the cavalrymen in recounting its events. One day the men thought they knew his secret: Had he won the Circlet of Oak Leaves, the highest award for bravery? Why was he silent?A CROWN OF WILD OLIVE (1971)(aka THE TRUCE OF THE GAMES)New ton the great Games of the Olympiad, Amyntas and Leon were rivals and members of warring states. But they became close friends, even knowing that when the Games ended, they would never be able to meet again.

    Unhappy living with the people who had taken him from a Dublin orphanage, a young boy runs away and joins a group of gypsies.

    Her African village was destroyed and she first lived in the bush then was sold as a slave, given a name and a home and then -- horrifyingly -- sold once more into the hands of pirates. A rich, exciting stroy about a fascinating and thoroughly believeable character.

    Translated in Kannada by: Ravi BelagereOne of the best pieces of historical fiction. A very existential novel about the revolt of 1857 in British India.

    'Chivalry, treachery, conflict of loyalties... The clash of wills is as stirring as the clash of steel' Observer It is 1399. Henry Bolingbroke, unjustly banished and deprived of his inheritance by Richard II, returns to claim his rights and deposes the king to become Henry IV of England. He is aided by the powerful lords of Northumberland, especially by his friend, Harry Percy, nicknamed Hotspur.But the triumph of his accession quickly turns sour in the face of ever-growing crises in his new kingdom, and Wales is the most pressing and troublesome of these. For although Henry's son and heir, Prince Hal, is the nominal Prince of Wales, the Welsh have a prince of their own blood in Owen Glendower, and they are swift to rally to his rebellious call to arms.The three Henries all wish to see the House of Lancaster succeed, but their partnership contains the seeds of its own destruction. The memory of past crimes and growing doubts and divisions cause a dangerous rift. The king also has powerful enemies who are all too willing to take advantage of this and tension mounts as the three men are drawn inexplicably to a bloody collision some two miles from Shrewsbury...

    In early nineteenth-century England the fate of four orphans changes markedly when a fourteen-year-old stranger comes into their lives and remains to take care of them.

    

    They join him. Shortly there after a fourth boy Harold Fairhair who is being stoned to death joins them. They travel over Ireland and this strange father seems able to do things which border on magic or mystical. His bag of food never runs out. He starts fires with his bare hands. And he has a strange way with people. In fact all four wanderers touch all they meet with theior gentle wisdom - and no one is quite the same as before. They find a world of wonder at Father Ambrosius' hands.

    Moira dreams of the day she will marry Liam - the man she has loved since childhood. When their potatoes begin to rot in the fields, Moira's dream is swept away. Hunger stalks the land and death becomes a constant companion.Moira, with an indomitable will to survive, sustains her family through the unspeakable horrors of the famine and, when all else is gone, her love for Liam remains. She clings tenaciously to the belief that a better day awaits them all....

    A highwayman robs him and fellow passengers - but Mr Pepys' documents seem to interest them more than watches and jewellery.