Best of
Historical-Fiction

1992

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine


Bebe Moore Campbell - 1992
    For speaking a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, Armstrong is killed. And the precariously balanced world and its determined people--white and black--are changed, then and forever, by the horror of poverty, the legacy of justice, and the singular gift of love's power to heal.

Child of the Phoenix


Barbara Erskine - 1992
    She is taught to worship the old gods and to "scry" into the future and the past. Eleyne's second sight, however, involves her in the destinies of England, Scotland and Wales.

In My Father's House


Bodie Thoene - 1992
    Yet with all the racial, social, and cultural intolerance that marked the day—seemingly immovable mountains in the lives of these characters—God works through the tragedy, the laughter, the pain, the joy, the dramatic, and the ordinary to create a yearning in their hearts for a faith that moves mountains.

Fortune is a Woman


Elizabeth Adler - 1992
    Against all odds they made their dreams come true, building one of the world's largest trading companies and most luxurious hotels... They had only each other--and bloody secrets to bury even as they rose to dizzying heights, wary of love yet vulnerable to passion in its most dangerous forms... The Mandarin would pass his multi-billion-dollar empire only to the women in the Lai Tsin dynasty--along with one last devastating truth....Sweeping from the turn of the century through the 1960's, from the Orient to San Francisco and New York, Elizabeth Adler has written a magnificent novel of new wealth and old privilege, family passions and secret shame, of women surviving, triumphant, in the riveting saga of romantic intrigue.

Queen


Alex Haley - 1992
    Multigenerational saga of Alex Haley's father's family through his grandmother, Queen, the proud daughter born of a slave and a white slave owner.

The Skystone


Jack Whyte - 1992
    Publius Varrus is the last legionnaire in Britain, and The Skystone is in many ways his story. He is a common man with aristocratic friends, and successful both as a soldier and an ironsmith. As the Roman world slowly crumbles around them, and Publius becomes involved in a political and personal vendetta, he and his friends seek to establish a refuge, a valley where the old Roman virtues will be kept alive and the empire's many faults be avoided. A finely crafted historical novel, The Skystone pays close attention to the details of everyday life in fourth-century Britain. As the first book in Whyte's Camulod Chronicles, it makes few allusions to the usual details of the Arthurian legends until Publius comes into contact with a sword, a stone, a lake, and a Celtic tribe who name themselves Pendragon. Greg L. Johnson

Outcast


Josephine Cox - 1992
    Set in Lancashire in the 1860s, this is the story of Emma Grady, who lives with her uncle, a tough mill owner who tries to trick her out of her inheritance.

The Power of One & Tandia (Omnibus)


Bryce Courtenay - 1992
    It has been translated into 18 languages, has sold more than 8 million copies and has been made into a Hollywood film. It is the wonderful story of a boy growing up South Africa. Tandia is the sequel to The Power of One and continues the story of the main character, Peekay. This gem of story is beloved by millions around the world!

Encounter


Jane Yolen - 1992
    Told from a young Taino boy’s point of view, this is a story of how the boy tried to warn his people against welcoming the strangers, who seemed more interested in golden ornaments than friendship. Years later the boy, now an old man, looks back at the destruction of his people and their culture by the colonizers.

Sacred Hunger


Barry Unsworth - 1992
    Filled with the "sacred hunger" to expand its empire and its profits, England entered full into the slave trade and spread the trade throughout its colonies. In this Booker Prize-winning work, Barry Unsworth follows the failing fortunes of William Kemp, a merchant pinning his last chance to a slave ship; his son who needs a fortune because he is in love with an upper-class woman; and his nephew who sails on the ship as its doctor because he has lost all he has loved. The voyage meets its demise when disease spreads among the slaves and the captain's drastic response provokes a mutiny. Joining together, the sailors and the slaves set up a secret, utopian society in the wilderness of Florida, only to await the vengeance of the single-minded, young Kemp.

Song of the Wolf


Rosanne Bittner - 1992
    A Cheyenne woman's extraordinary healing powers and unique sensitivity lead her on an unforgettable odyssey into a primeval world of wilderness and mystery.AS THE WINDS OF CHANGE SWEPT ACROSS THE VAST WESTERN PLAINS, HER NAME WAS A CRY OF HOPE, FREEDOM - AND DESIREThey called her Medicine Wolf, and she was born at a time when buffalo herds stretched farther than the sharpest eye could see-a time when a people called the Cheyenne were a proud and free nation. In the sixth summer of her life the events that shaped the destiny of this proud, beautiful, and exotic woman began: a brutal kidnapping, a miraculous vision, and a daring rescue by a great white wolf and a fiercely courageous boy. Her unforgettable odyssey would take her into a primeval world of wildness and mystery where an ancient way of life was ending and another younger, vital, but more violent one was struggling to be born.Across the windswept plains, the white men were coming to seize the land and break a piople's spirits-and their hearts. But fate would bring Medicine Wolf a love so deep and unyielding that nothing on earth could stop it...a passion she would traverse the land to find-and follow the haunting, heartbreaking path of the wolf to keep.

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky


Faith Ringgold - 1992
    in full color. Cassie, who flew above New York in Tar Beach, soars into the sky once more. This time, she and her brother Be Be meet a train full of people, and Be Be joins them. But the train departs before Cassie can climb aboard. With Harriet Tubman as her guide, Cassie retraces the steps escaping slaves took on the real Underground Railroad and is finally reunited with her brother at the story's end.

Kurt Seyt & Shura


Nermin Bezmen - 1992
    Bezmen tells the story of two star-crossed lovers fleeing the wave of devastation wreaked by the Bolshevik Revolution-- and does so with great sensitivity: one half of this couple who sought refuge in the capital of the dying Ottoman Empire was her grandfather.Translated into 12 languages, Kurt Seyt & Shura inspired a sumptuous T.V. series that continues to enchant millions of viewers across the world.With the publication of this novel in the United States, English-speaking fans will now be able to read the true story of this great love affair, which triumphed over so much adversity yet failed to overcome human fallibility.Kurt Seyt: The son of a wealthy Crimean nobleman, is a dashing first lieutenant in the Imperial Life Guard. Injured on the Carpathian front and later sought by the Bolsheviks, he makes a daring escape across the Black Sea. Too proud to accept payment for the boatful of arms he hands over to the Nationalists, he faces years of struggle to make a new life in the Turkish Republic rising from the embers of the dying Ottoman Empire. All he has is his dignity and love.Shura: An innocent sixteen-year-old beauty enchanted by Tchaikovsky's music and Moscow's glittering lights, falls in love with Seyt. A potential victim of the Bolsheviks due to her family's wealth and social standing, she is determined to follow her heart and accompanies Seyt on his perilous flight over the Black Sea. Their love is the only solace to their crushing homesickness for a land and family they will never see again, two lovers among hundreds of thousands of White Russian émigrés trying to eke out a living in occupied Istanbul.

The Black Madonna


Stella Riley - 1992
    During her father's forced absence she vows to hold their home against marauding forces from both camps.More threatening to her peace of mind than the actions of either the Parliamentarians or the Royalists is her growing attraction to the diabolically clever and irresistibly magnetic goldsmith and usurer, Luciano del Santi.Hampered by the battling English, Luciano is fighting a fierce campaign close to his own heart - to avenge his father's execution at the hands of false accusers and to repay the loan which has financed the venture. Failure will result in ruin, perhaps even death; but success will allow him to reclaim the Black Madonna - the carved obsidian symbol of his heritage and his vendetta...

The Unquiet Earth


Denise Giardina - 1992
    In this coal-smudged place, Dillon, Rachel, and Jackie hopelessly intertwined in love and politics live in the shadow of the dying mines and the doomed union movement. Set against the devastation of the Depression, the fearful pulse of a world at war, the dawning hope of the War on Poverty, and, ultimately, the untamable force of nature herself, THE UNQUIET EARTH is a bold and bittersweet story of unforgettable men and women, and the times that made them great.

Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles


Margaret George - 1992
    Life among the warring factions in Scotland was dangerous for the infant Queen, however, and at age five Mary was sent to France to be raised alongside her betrothed, the Dauphin Francois. Surrounded by all the sensual comforts of the French court, Mary's youth was peaceful, charmed, and when she became Queen of France at the age of sixteen, she seemed to have all she could wish for. But by her eighteenth birthday, Mary was a widow who had lost one throne and had been named by the Pope for another. And her extraordinary adventure had only begun. Defying her powerful cousin Elizabeth I, Mary set sail in 1561 to take her place as the Catholic Queen of a newly Protestant Scotland. A virtual stranger in her volatile native land, Mary would be hailed as a saint, denounced as a whore, and ultimately accused of murdering her second husband, Lord Darnley, in order to marry her lover, the Earl of Bothwell. She was but twenty-five years old when she fled Scotland for the imagined sanctuary of Elizabeth's England, where she would be embroiled in intrigue until she was beheaded "like a criminal" in 1587. In her stunning first novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Margaret George established herself as one of the finest historical novelists of our time. Now she brings us a new, mesmerizing blend of history and storytelling as she turns the astonishing facts of the life of Mary Queen of Scots into magnificent fiction that sweeps us from the glittering French court where Mary spent her youth, to the bloodstained Scotland where she reigned as Queen, to the cold English castles where she ended her days. Never before have we been offered such arich and moving portrayal of the Scots Queen, whose beauty inspired poetry, whose spirit brought forth both devotion and hatred, and whose birthright generated glorious dreams, hideous treachery, and murdered men at her feet.

The Testament of Marcellus


Marius Gabriel - 1992
    Through the often grim and bloody events of fifty years which changed the world, his life is a triumph of the human spirit.

Raptor


Gary Jennings - 1992
    From his unorthodox sexual awakening in a monastery and a convent to his exciting journey across Europe in search of his people, he would learn a warrior's skills and the cunning of a survivor. And amidst it all a stunning secret would mark him forever as an outsider who knew too deeply and too well all the hidden desires of men's ... and women's ... hearts. In the great cities of a dying empire, on the battlefields of Roman legions, and in the opulent palaces of potentates and kings, Thorn would witness human beings at their most brutal and their most noble. His incomparable adventures bring to electrifying life a vanished age never again matched for its doers of great deeds...and of chilling revenge. (Set in the fifth century A.D. and framed by Theodoric the Great's conquest of Rome.)

The Benediction of Brother Cadfael


Ellis Peters - 1992
    17,500 first printing.

Doomsday Book


Connie Willis - 1992
    For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin--barely of age herself--finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering, and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

Cast the First Stone: A stunning wartime story


Angela Arney - 1992
    It was done at last. They were married. The wedding took place in Naples, a city of burning rubble and poverty – for the time was 1944 and the Germans were in retreat. Thousands of Italians were starving and prepared to do anything to survive. Liana was more determined than most, not only to survive, but to get out of the hell-hole that Naples had become. She had lied, cheated, played provocative games, and now stood in a crumbling church before an emaciated priest. Beside her stood Nicholas Hamilton-Howard, Earl of Wessex, a young English officer who was totally bewitched by the exquisite Italian girl. Even during the service she was terrified – terrified that someone would reveal the truth about her, but when the final blessing was given she knew she was safe and she vowed to devote her life to making Nicholas happy, even though she did not love him – even though their life together was to be built on lies and deception… Angela Arney was born in Hampshire, where she still lives with her husband. She has been a teacher, a hospital administrator and a cabaret singer. The author of a number of romances, Cast the First Stone is her first full-length novel.

Daughters Of The Moon


Susan Sallis - 1992
    Their unorthodox childhood, first as evacuee babies in Cornwall, then at boarding school, then living with their Aunt Maggie, made them grow up uniquely self-sufficient. They didn't need anyone else. They had each other. Miranda was the vibrant, flamboyant one, determined to be an actress, determined never to conform or be dull and conventional. Meg was quieter, more self-effacing. But it was Meg who always knew when anything bad was happening to Miranda. As they grew up, the bond between them held - until Meg went back to Cornwall to buy a house, to paint, to fall in love. And for the first time events conspired to drive a rift through their special relationship. Their lives shifted - for Miranda found herself trapped into domesticity, and Meg - feeling herself betrayed - had to seek a new path that ultimately took her to unexpected success. But the link was still there, in spite of all that was to happen, in spite of violence and tragedy, and finally it led to happiness that came when they had ceased to expect it.

Felicity: An American Girl (The American Girls Collection)


Valerie Tripp - 1992
    Felicity's stories tell of the adventures of this spirited girl, who grows impatient doing the "sitting down kinds of things" that colonial girls are expected to do. Felicity much prefers to be outdoors, especially riding horses In her stories, Felicity learns about responsibility and loyalty -- to her family, her friends, and her new country -- and what it means to be truly free.The perfect way to learn about Felicity is with a complete set of her six books in an attractive slipcase.

I, Elizabeth


Rosalind Miles - 1992
     Publicly declared a bastard at the age of three, daughter of a disgraced and executed mother, last in the line of succession to the throne of England, Elizabeth I inherited an England ravaged by bloody religious conflict, at war with Spain and France, and badly in debt. When she died in 1603, after a forty-five year reign, her empire spanned two continents and was united under one church, victorious in war, and blessed with an overflowing treasury. What's more, her favorites--William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh--had made the Elizabethan era a cultural Golden Age still remembered today. But for Elizabeth the woman, tragedy went hand in hand with triumph. Politics and scandal forced the passionate queen to reject her true love, Robert Dudley, and to execute his stepson, her much-adored Lord Essex. Now in this spellbinding novel, Rosalind Miles brings to life the woman behind the myth. By turns imperious, brilliant, calculating, vain, and witty, this is the Elizabeth the world never knew. From the days of her brutal father, Henry VIII, to her final dying moments, Elizabeth tells her story in her own words.

Roses Have Thorns


Beverley A. Hughesdon - 1992
    But it is there she is given a chance: for a brief, magical interlude in her otherwise harsh existence Amy finds joy in her new position as a lady’s maid. It seems as though her future might finally be assured. But Amy's introduction to the glittering Warminster family comes with its price: it's not long before Amy loses her innocence, and in the most cruel way imaginable. Subsequently caught in a horrid feud between a father and son, she is trapped between the pull of love and duty.Betrayed and alone, Amy is left facing a heartbreaking choice… A poignant and passionate love story from the author of Song of Songs, this is perfect for fans of Diney Costeloe and Margaret Dickinson. Praise for Roses Have Thorns “Good, long, satisfying… full of detail and good characterisation” Bella

K Company (K Company 1)


Robert Broomall - 1992
    He is assigned to K Company, on the western edge of the Kansas frontier. What he finds there is brutal discipline combined with bad food, monotonous drill, and make-work details. Even worse, he makes an enemy of Link Hayward, toughest soldier in the company, who’s been broken in rank more times than he can count. Link thinks Harry is a coward and urges him to desert. Taunted by Link, not accepted by K Company’s veterans, Harry begins to doubt himself.Then the company is ordered into the field, and in a battle with the Cheyenne, Harry learns what he’s really made of.

River of the Sun


Patricia Shaw - 1992
    The story of the Australian Gold Rush unfolds through the eyes of the beautiful housemaid Perfection Middleton, whose husband dies and leaves her in control of a vast estate in the outback.

Random Passage


Bernice Morgan - 1992
    To seventeen-year-old Lavinia, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land. It is a saga of families and of individuals; of acquisitive Mary Bundle; of charming Ned Andrews, whose thievery has turned his family into exiles; of mad Ida; of Thomas Hutchings, who might be an aristocrat, a holy man, or a murderer; and of Lavinia - who wrote down the truth and lies about them all. Random Passage has been adapted into a CBC miniseries and is now a national bestseller.

The Third Cadfael Omnibus


Ellis Peters - 1992
    Cadfael senses the young man's innocence and sets out to solve yet another tangle of human passions where love plays its inevitable part.The Devil's Novice: The Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury finds its new novice Meriet Aspley a disturbing presence. Meek and bidable by day, his sleep is rent with nightmares so violent as to earn him the nickname of Devil's Novice. Can Meriet be involved in the nearby disappearance of a superior prelate? As events take a sinister turn, it falls to Brother Cadfael to detect the truth behind the young man's predicament.Dead Man's Ransom: In the battle of Lincoln, the sherrif of Shropshire is captured and the King himself taken prisoner by his enemies. Nothing more natural than that an exchange of prisoners should take place. But before this can be completed, one captive is murdered. And to Brother Cadfael, who notices the evidence of unnatural death, falls the task of gathering enough clues to prove it.

This Royal Breed


Judith Saxton - 1992
    After the death of Rochelle Dubois's parents, she is adopted by their employer, Charles Laurient, and together she and Charles work to rear his treasured rare orchids. But when war breaks out, Rochelle is left to do her best for herself and her precious seedlings, for Charles is taken away by the Germans. The arrival of his son Laurie from America could be her salvation.

The Leaving of Liverpool


Lyn Andrews - 1992
    As a maid in 1919 Liverpool, she dreamt of a much grander future, but found all her dreams were threatened by the notoriously drunken Jake Malone.

Cry of the Hawk


Terry C. Johnston - 1992
    Forced to serve as a Yankee after his capture at Pea Ridge, Confederate soldier Jonah Hook returns from the war to find his Missouri farm in shambles.

Florian's Gate


T. Davis Bunn - 1992
    But for Alexander Kantor, now a successful antiques dealer in London, the place holds only one memory. It was here that he was arrested by the Nazis as a young man. There he passed from freedom to imprisonment; there began a lifetime of challenges to his heritage, his well-being, his relationships and his faith.Through dramatic events spanning fifty years, Florian's Gate follows members of a war-torn Polish family as they come to terms with their circumstances and the choices that divided them. Set in the luxurious trappings of today's London and the turbulent economies of Eastern Europe, the mysterious disappearance of an antiques dealer causes Alexander to travel back to his homeland. He did not suspect that the trail would ultimately lead to Florian's Gate and the discovery of a treasure of infinite value.A fascinating story blending a family epic with mystery and romance.

Holy Warrior, Reluctant Bridegroom, Last Confederate, Dixie Widow, Wounded Yankee


Gilbert Morris - 1992
    Includes The Holy Warrior, The Reluctant Bridegroom, The Last Confederate, The Dixie Widow, and The Wounded Yankee.

World of Silence


Don Coldsmith - 1992
    Years later, the Forest People attack his encampment and kill his family, and the old man and his surviving young granddaughter follow a path of destiny, boldly carrying the seeds of their ancient heritage into an uncertain future.

Rhinegold


Stephan Grundy - 1992
    Set in the sensuous & exuberant world of North European myth & saga, this epic of heroism & betrayal, incest & tragedy breathes life into an age of unequaled grandeur, bringing intimacy & poignancy to the tumult of legend.

A Summer Without Dawn


Agop J. Hacikyan - 1992
    Engrossing and powerfully told, this unforgettable novel is set against the Armenian massacres that occurred in the Ottoman Empire and during the First World War. This novel of Armenian tragedy is an international bestseller. It was first published in French, and then quickly translated into German, Spanish and Rumanian. It has sold over a quarter of a million copies, received rave reviews, and generated comparisons with historical novels such as Dr. Zhivago. In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders the deportation of the Armenians, journalist Vartan Balian, an Armenian, is imprisoned by politicians hoping to silence him. Soon, after a daring escape, he embarks on an odyssey across the vast empire in desperate search of his wife, Maro, and their young son Tomas, whose own stories we gradually learn. In the ensuing years the Balians will each confront the calamities of war as well as the secrets of the human heart. With settings ranging from the exotic opulence of a Turkish harem to the cosmopolitan streets of Constantinople and the blistering desolation of the Syrian desert, A Summer without Dawn, is a compelling story about a family swept up in one of historys darkest moments, and a moving portrait of a peoples unbreakable will to survive.

The Blue Dress Girl


E.V. Thompson - 1992
    She-she, a peasant girl, never wanted to be a concubine. But She-she has caught the eye of Li Hung, the most powerful man in Canton.Torn away from her family, she must serve as a blue dress girl, welcoming men to Hung’s decadent household and into her bed. Her first encounter is with lecherous Trader Courtice.But the night goes horrifically awry, bringing scandal down on She-she’s head. She flees by boat.THEN DISASTER STRIKES AGAIN.British forces open fire on She-she’s ship, leaving her injured. Among her attackers is Second Lieutenant Kernow Keats, a sensitive young Marine who promises to take her to safety.He is unlike any man She-she has ever known. But dare the couple dream of a future together?CAN THEIR LOVE SURVIVE THE VICIOUS WAR RAGING ALL AROUND THEM?Discover a beautifully told saga, majestically woven around the lives of two people, discovering unexpected feelings in unfamiliar territory.PERFECT FOR FANS OF ARTHUR GOLDEN, AMY TAN, LISA SEE, ANCHEE MIN, OR PEARL S. BUCK.

The Adopted Princess


Marcus Lehmann - 1992
    

Evie


Lynda Page - 1992
    But then Evie stumbles upon sinister goings-on in the accounts department and, to her surprise and confusion, she realises her spiteful sister Florrie could be involved...Despite her career success, romance has always eluded Evie, and it is not until she meets Edward Bradshaw that she falls deeply in love. But why are their families so opposed to the union? And what is Evie's mother trying to conceal about the past?

Fire Weed


Terry Montague - 1992
    Living with her father, sister, and brother in a cramped apartment in Berlin, the small family shares what seems to be an unbreakable spirit of love and security. However, with the rise of the Nazi party and approaching dark clouds of war, any kind of future grows increasingly uncertain. Knowing little of hate and destruction, Lisel is ill prepared as the storms of battle erupt in full fury and loved ones are taken from her as her beautiful city is reduced to rubble. With fear and despair rising within, it is through her quiet, compassionate father that Lisel discovers faith and hope. Now, in a desperate journey to find her sister, Lisel and her neighbor flee Berlin and the advancing Russians for Frankfurt, a city under the protection of the Allies. But their flight to safety is filled with pain, hunger, and terror. However, with spiritual lessons and blessings from her father, the support of departed loved ones, and her tried but undying faith in a loving Heavenly Father, perhaps Lisel can emerge like the fireweed—rising strong and beautiful from scorched ground—transforming bitterness and despair into a charity that never faileth.

Westward!


Dana Fuller Ross - 1992
    Escaping a brutal blood feud in the fertile Ohio Valley, brothers Clay and Jefferson Holt strike out for new territories, unaware that a shadowy killer is following their every move.

The Maltese Angel


Catherine Cookson - 1992
    But then, in a single week, his whole world had been turned upside down by a dancer, Stephanie McQueen, who seemed to float across the stage of the Empire Music Hall where she was appearing as The Maltese Angel. To his amazement, the attraction was mutual, and after a whirlwind courtship she agreed to marry him.But a scorpion had already begun to emerge from beneath the stone of the local community, who considered that Ward had betrayed their expectations, and had led on and cruelly deserted Daisy. There followed a series of reprisals on his family, one of them serious enough to cause him to exact a terrible revenge; and these events would twist and turn the course of many lives through Ward's own and succeeding generations.

After the War


Richard Marius - 1992
    Gradually, he is drawn into the life of the town and, as a long-enduring conflict precipitates new and accelerating violence, is woven so tightly into the town's fabric that he will never leave.

The Primrose Way


Jackie French Koller - 1992
    “Issues about separation of church and state, the scandalous idea of thinking for oneself, etc., are thoughtfully raised here and would provide provocative discussions in the social studies classroom.”--School Library Journal

Flee My Father's House


Kay D. Rizzo - 1992
    Her stomach lurched at the thought of marrying a man thirty years her senior. Yet when Pa laid down the law, it was final.Chloe wanted to run away. To escape the struggles of growing up in a controlling world. But how could a sixteen-year-old make it on her own? Flee My Father's House , book one in the Chloe Mae Chronicles, by Kay Rizzo, is set during the late 1890s in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. It tells the story of a young woman's fight for independence and her dream to help the dying women and children in China.This sweeping drama begins with an agonizing choice that will set Chloe Mae's feet on a path of pain and discovery. Escaping from certain unhappiness, she runs head-long into a world of sadness, love, and heart-wrenching decisions.

A Place of Greater Safety


Hilary Mantel - 1992
    Capturing the violence, tragedy, history, and drama of the French Revolution, this novel focuses on the families and loves of three men who led the Revolution--Danton, the charismatic leader and orator; Robespierre, the cold rationalist; and Desmoulins, the rabble-rouser.

Malkeh and Her Children


Marjorie Edelson - 1992
    At the family's center stands the indomitable Malkeh, an intelligent and beautiful woman, who marries Yoysef, an itinerant tailor. Together, the young couple embrace the simple joys and traditions of Jewish life in a tightly knit Russian city.But soon their safe world is shattered with the dawn of the tsar's reign of terror. As famines and cholera epidemics sweep the nation, the Jews swiftly become scapegoats, with the Russian peasants taking their revenge in violent pogroms. Against this land torn by revolution and bloodshed, Malkeh and Yoysef's children must grow up and pursue their own destinies.In a novel that sweeps from provincial life in a Jewish ghetto, to the streets of Lenin's St. Petersburg, rife with revolt, to Moscow in the chaos after the civil war, author Marjorie Edelson has woven a timeless tapestry of the old country with both its torments and its joys. Malkeh and Her Children is a loving evocation of powerful family values and traditions -- an imaginative work of love and hope that transports us into the life of a proud woman, whose courage and love will leave no one unmoved.

The White Rhino Hotel


Bartle Bull - 1992
    The Great War has ended, tragically for many, but for some, Africa holds the prospect of vast estates, fabulous wealth, and limitless opportunity in this powerful, wonderfully crafted novel of the natural and human perils that await pioneers in a promised land. In colonial Kenya the paths of these new settlers cross at Lord Penfold's White Rhino Hotel. Here they meet the cunning dwarf Olivio Alevado, a man whose lustful desires and vengeful schemes make him a formidable adversary to his enemies and a subtle ally to his friends. Here the destinies of the gypsy adventurer Anton Rider and courageous, war-hardened Gwen Llewelyn intersect. Here hope is corrupted by greed, love by revenge, and loyalty by betrayal as the future is trampled into history. "A wing-ding adventure story.... The kind of book that creates one of the elemental delights of fiction - a complete other world where, unlike our own, all the parts add up to something." - Boston Globe; "A genuine epic centered in Africa, by a writer who knows how to write, who knows his terrain intimately, who knows how to paint his characters convincingly, and who knows how to spin a good yarn." - Forbes Magazine.

Cafe Berlin


Harold Nebenzal - 1992
    Utterly accurate in its depiction of historical and military events and astoundingly rich in detail, Cafe Berlin is vivid and compelling.

Out of the Depths


Marcus Lehmann - 1992
    

Slaughter


Elmer Kelton - 1992
    The great Civil War has ended, but on the wild Staked Plains of Texas, another ancient struggle continues as white buffalo hunters slaughter herds of bison and the Commanche nation fights back with strength and guile.

Crazy Horse


Bill Dugan - 1992
    Desperate, the Sioux turn to Crazy Horse, the one man who might save their nation.Washington has sent its best military leaders west, but only one man seems to embody all the contradictions that the merciless warfare on the Great Plains could evoke--George Armstrong Custer.The fate of an entire people rests on the outcome of a bloody confrontation between these two determined warriors. Though Crazy Horse will win the battle, he ultimately loses the war; when he is murdered a year after Little Big Horn, the future of the Sioux Nation is lost forever.Impeccably researched, rich with real-life characters and period detail, this powerful historical novel vividly recounts the fury of the Sioux Wars and their most awe-inspiring leader, Crazy Horse, from his first battle to his final, tragic betrayal and death.

In Fullness of Time


Lorna J. Shaw - 1992
    Little is known of her remarkable life. Nevertheless, her story is intricately woven into the fabric of the New Testament through the life of her son. In light of this, the author has written a historical novel portraying Mary as a woman, wife and mother whose expectations for happiness were no less relevant than the hopes and dreams of the twentieth century woman.(from Amazon.com)

Pearl S. Buck: Good Earth Mother


Warren Sherk - 1992
    

Kathryn: Days of Struggle and Triumph


Donna Fletcher Crow - 1992
    Nothing but brown dirt and scraggly sagebrush as far as the eye could see. Then the flying ants swarmed at midday. And the coyotes howled at night. And yet Kathryn was determined to survive. Kathryn has come to Kuna, Idaho, with her papa who dreams of starting a church for the handful of hardy pioneers struggling desperately to hold on until irrigation comes to the desert. But does God even know this place exists? And what dark secret does the disturbing Scotsman Merrick carry beneath his jaunty exterior? Can Kathryn find the courage to triumph over the challenges of such a harsh environment and those who would betray and even murder?

Dauntless: Novel of Midway and Guadalcanal


Barrett Tillman - 1992
    Yorktown, battling the Japanese in the conflicts at Midway and Guadalcanal.

The Well of Dreams


Alexandra Connor - 1992
    But in reality they were perfectly imperfect and living a lie of false love. When Isabel was born, David poured all his love on her and she looked set to inherit, not only wealth and comfort, but their talent as well. When an appalling tragedy happens, Isabel’s life is shattered and her future threatened as she finds herself the reluctant inheritor of her parents’ complex and bitter past. As she slowly unravels the truth and seek the love so cruelly denied her, her ambitions and dreams are foiled time and time again as she is drawn inexorably in her parents’ footsteps. An enthralling saga of determination and hope, The Well of Dreams is the story of one woman’s fight to inherit her dreams.

Samson


Ellen Gunderson Traylor - 1992
    Marissa only wanted to love him, Josef used his friendship to betray him, and Delilah's passion was the tool of her ambition. Their lives revolved around one man, chosen by God, captive to his passions. One woman can make him weak. One God can make him strong.

Butter In The Well: A Scandinavian Woman's Tale Of Life On The Prairie


Linda K. Hubalek - 1992
    br/br/This historical fiction is based on the actual Swedish woman who homesteaded the author's childhood home and is the first of the four book Butter in the Well series.br/br/#x201c;Go back to a time when there are no streets, roads or cars. Imagine there are no buildings, homes, hospitals or grocery stores around the corner. All of our family#x2019;s belongings fit in a small wooden wagon. The year is 1868. There is nothing but tall, green waving grass as far as the eye can see. The scent of warm spring air after a morning rain surrounds you. Spring blows gently in your face. The snort of the horse and an occasional meadowlark, whistling its call, are the only sounds. You are along on the virgin land of the vast prairie.#x201d;- opening paragraph of Butter in the Well.

Mother's Blessing


Penina Keen Spinka - 1992
    Four Cries, in her search for her spirit guide makes many allies, ultimately uniting three enemy villages and helping her own people avoid starvation--and fulfilling the prophecy!

Mountain Windsong: A Novel of the Trail of Tears


Robert J. Conley - 1992
    It is the moving tale of Waguli (Whippoorwill") and Oconeechee, a young Cherokee man and woman separated by the Trail of Tears. Just as they are about to be married, Waguli is captured be federal soldiers and, along with thousands of other Cherokees, taken west, on foot and then by steamboat, to what is now eastern Oklahoma. Though many die along the way, Waguli survives, drowning his shame and sorrow in alcohol. Oconeechee, among the few Cherokees who remain behind, hidden in the mountains, embarks on a courageous search for Waguli.Robert J. Conley makes use of song, legend, and historical documents to weave the rich texture of the story, which is told through several, sometimes contradictory, voices. The traditional narrative of the Trail of Tears is told to a young contemporary Cherokee boy by his grandfather, presented in bits and pieces as they go about their everyday chores in rural North Carolina. The telling is neiter bitter nor hostile; it is sympathetic by unsentimental. An ironic third point of view, detached and often adversarial, is provided by the historical documents interspersed through the novel, from the text of the removal treaty to Ralph Waldo Emerson's letter to the president of the United States in protest of the removal. In this layering of contradictory elements, Conley implies questions about the relationships between history and legend, storytelling and myth-making.Inspired by the lyrics of Don Grooms's song "Whippoorwill," which open many chapters in the text, Conley has written a novel both meticulously accurate and deeply moving.

Brothers


Michael Bar-Zohar - 1992
    Alexander is raised Jewish and becomes a distinguished scholar of Russian studies. Dimitri grows up in a Soviet orphanage, where, trained to be the perfect communist, he strives to become a high-level KGB operative. It is only a matter of time before he draws the brother he never knew, the brother he hates more than anyone on earth, into the dangerous game of espionage.Through the height of the cold war, Dimitri and Alex fight on opposite sides. Their hatred for each other explodes into acts of terrorism, assassination, and betrayal. From Afghanistan to Rome, in Moscow, Paris, Washington, and New York, with boundless will and ruthless determination, the two brothers battle to destroy each other, until a shocking revelation changes their lives forever....