Book picks similar to
The Turning of the Tide by Liz Shakespeare
historical-fiction
historical
drama
first-reads
My Name Is Resolute
Nancy E. Turner - 2014
Now Turner has written the novel she was born to write, this exciting and heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution.The story begins in 1729, when Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family's plantation in Jamaica, and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister become indentured servants and are taught the trade of spinning and weaving. Betrayed by her first love, Resolute falls back on her skill with a loom to survive. Then she meets a young woodsman who is living a double life and is wanted in England. When British rule begins to crush the Colonials, Resolute begins to work in secret, hiding her craft and smuggling goods to keep Patriot soldiers clothed. Ultimately she becomes a friend of Margaret Gage, the very real wife of the commanding general of the British Army in America. On the night of April 18, 1775, Resolute carries a message to the Reveres' silver shop, changing the course of American history.Heart-wrenching, brilliantly written, and historically authentic, My Name is Resolute is destined to become an instant classic.
Darkest Before Dawn
Katie Flynn - 2005
Harry gets a job as warehouse manager and his wife, Martha, works in a grocer's shop, whilst Seraphina trains as a teacher, Angela works in Bunney's Department Store and young Evie starts at regular school.Then circumstances change and Seraphina takes a job as a nippy in Lyon's Corner House. Customers vie for her favours, including an old friend, Toby.When war is declared the older girls join up, leaving Evie and Martha to cope with rationing, shortages, and the terrible raids on Liverpool which devastate the city. Meanwhile, Toby is a Japanese POW, working on the infamous Burma railway and dreaming of Seraphina...Darkest Before Dawn is a warm passionate story that makes it easy to see why Katie Flynn is one of Britain's most popular saga writers.
Interrogating Ellie
Julian Gray - 2015
When her marriage breaks down and she finds herself alone in an enemy land, her passionate, restless nature drives her in a struggle for survival against the odds. Who can she trust? And ultimately, who can she love? Interrogating Ellie is based on a true story.Visit www.interrogating-ellie.comto find out more
The Illusionists
Rosie Thomas - 2014
But for a beautiful young woman of limited means, Eliza’s choices appear to lie between the stifling domesticity of marriage or a downwards spiral to the streets – no matter how determined she is to forge her own path.One night at a run-down theatre, she meets the charismatic Devil Wix – showman, master of illusion, fickle friend. Drawn into his circle, Eliza becomes the catalyst of change for his colleagues – a dwarf, an eccentric engineer, and an artist – as well as Devil himself. And as Eliza embarks on a dangerous adventure, she must decide which path to choose, and how far she should go when she holds all their lives in her hands.
Funny Girl
Nick Hornby - 2014
. .Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh.So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.
Rosette: A Novel of Pioneer Michigan
Cindy Rinaman Marsch - 2016
Her real-life journal recounts two years of homesteading, history hints at the next six decades, and the novel explores the truth. We meet Rosette in 1888 as she revises the wedding-day page of her journal. In lush detail, in the voices of Rosette and others, the novel traces how we both choose and suffer our destiny, how hopes come to naught and sometimes rise from the wreckage. In a style reminiscent of Willa Cather, in a family saga that recalls the work of Marilynne Robinson, this novel brings us enduring themes of human life as Rosette and her friends and family make the most of the American pioneer life first detailed for most of us by Laura Ingalls Wilder. One reviewer says this story "makes an anonymous woman equal to the most celebrated hero of legend." Note that the Kindle version includes only the text of the novel. The paperback version includes 24 charcoal illustrations and highlights in a font created from Rosette's own handwriting. Now available: a companion short story - "Blizzard: A Story of Dakota Territory."
The Midwife of Venice
Roberta Rich - 2011
The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. Shapeless matter, perhaps animal, floats to the surface of Rio di San Girolamo and hovers on its greasy waters. Through the mist rising from the canal the cries and grunts of foraging pigs echo. Seeping refuse on the streets renders the pavement slick and the walking treacherous. It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah.—Hannah Levi is known throughout sixteenth-century Venice for her skill in midwifery. When a Christian count appears at Hannah's door in the Jewish ghetto imploring her to attend his labouring wife, who is nearing death, Hannah is forced to make a dangerous decision. Not only is it illegal for Jews to render medical treatment to Christians, it's also punishable by torture and death. Moreover, as her Rabbi angrily points out, if the mother or child should die, the entire ghetto population will be in peril. But Hannah’s compassion for another woman’s misery overrides her concern for self-preservation. The Rabbi once forced her to withhold care from her shunned sister, Jessica, with terrible consequences. Hannah cannot turn away from a labouring woman again. Moreover, she cannot turn down the enormous fee offered by the Conte. Despite the Rabbi’s protests, she knows that this money can release her husband, Isaac, a merchant who was recently taken captive on Malta as a slave. There is nothing Hannah wants more than to see the handsome face of the loving man who married her despite her lack of dowry, and who continues to love her despite her barrenness. She must save Isaac.Meanwhile, far away in Malta, Isaac is worried about Hannah’s safety, having heard tales of the terrifying plague ravaging Venice. But his own life is in terrible danger. He is auctioned as a slave to the head of the local convent, Sister Assunta, who is bent on converting him to Christianity. When he won’t give up his faith, he’s traded to the brutish lout Joseph, who is renowned for working his slaves to death. Isaac soon learns that Joseph is heartsick over a local beauty who won’t give him the time of day. Isaac uses his gifts of literacy and a poetic imagination—not to mention long-pent-up desire—to earn his day-to-day survival by penning love letters on behalf of his captor and a paying illiterate public. Back in Venice, Hannah packs her “"birthing spoons”—secret rudimentary forceps she invented to help with difficult births—and sets off with the Conte and his treacherous brother. Can she save the mother? Can she save the baby, on whose tiny shoulders the Conte’s legacy rests? And can she also save herself, and Isaac, and their own hopes for a future, without endangering the lives of everyone in the ghetto?The Midwife of Venice is a gripping historical page-turner, enthralling readers with its suspenseful action and vivid depiction of life in sixteenth-century Venice. Roberta Rich has created a wonderful heroine in Hannah Levi, a lioness who will fight for the survival of the man she loves, and the women and babies she is duty-bound to protect, carrying with her the best of humanity’s compassion and courage.
Truths I Never Told You
Kelly Rimmer - 2020
She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.
Twelve Miles From Rome: A Lucius Marius Nola Mystery
Steven J. Kears - 2015
Lucius Marius Nola, a retired veteran of the Roman Army, inherits a farm in the Alban Hills on the outskirts of Rome. Nola is looking forward to a new life in the countryside, living off the land, and more importantly, escaping his violent and disturbingly troubled past. However, no sooner has Nola begun to enjoy life once again when, against his will, a strange turn of events draws him into a web of murder and intrigue. 'Twelve Miles From Rome' is the first of a thrilling series of ancient world mysteries featuring Lucius Marius Nola.
The Sky Buries All Sorrow
Roger DeBlanck - 2013
After she instructs him to “grow up first,” he joins the Army Air Corps. Stationed at Hickam Field, the air base adjacent to Pearl Harbor, John survives the devastation of December 7. The aftermath of the attack only begins his odyssey through the South Pacific, four years that burden him with guilt and shame. Returning home a wearied man, John seeks to start a family with Nora, but the young couple confronts hardships intensified by the harrowing memories both carry from their pasts. Amid the unrest of the Cold War and John’s worries about the arms race, he and Nora find solace in raising their daughter, Cassie. But it is not until the impact of September 11 leaves John’s grandson, Johnny DeRosa, overrun with anguish and despair that John fully comprehends how the sacrifices of his generation will have a profound influence on the decisions his grandson makes.The Sky Buries All Sorrow is a riveting, momentous novel that bridges Pearl Harbor with 9/11 and examines how those two tragic events changed the world and shaped the lives of one family over three generations. From the pivotal battles in the Pacific to the homesteads outside of Pittsburgh, and from the beaches of Southern California to the desert terrain of the Nevada Test Site, it is an unforgettable family saga and an intimate story of personal struggle and the challenges of enduring love. In the same vivid fashion as his first novel, The Ramos Brothers Trust Castro and Kennedy, Roger DeBlanck’s second epic novel explores the lives of an array of fascinating characters. The narrative also brings back Juan and Alberto Ramos, as the brothers and their father, Florencio, make appearances in The Sky Buries All Sorrow.
The Telephone Girls of George Street
Jenny Holmes - 2017
George Street in Bradford houses a gleaming, brand-new telephone exchange where fifteen girls work the complicated electrical switchboards. Among them are Cynthia, Norma and Millicent, who relish the busy, efficient atmosphere and the independence and friendship their jobs have given them.But when Millicent connects a telephone call for an old friend, and listens in to the conversation - breaking one of the telephonists' main rules - she, and then Norma and Cynthia too, become caught up in a story of scandal, corruption and murder.Soon, the jobs of all three girls are on the line.Norma’s romance is in ruins. And Millicent has entered a world of vice . . . A wonderful story of camaraderie, friendship and triumph over adversity that fans of Katie Flynn, Donna Douglas and Call the Midwife will adore.
This Magnificent Dappled Sea
David Biro - 2020
His only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant. After an exhaustive search, a match turns up three thousand miles away in the form of a most unlikely donor: Joseph Neiman, a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, who is suffering from a debilitating crisis of faith. As Luca’s young nurse, Nina Vocelli, risks her career and races against time to help save the spirited redheaded boy, she uncovers terrible secrets from World War II—secrets that reveal how a Catholic child could have Jewish genes.Can inheritance be transcended by accidents of love? That is the question at the heart of This Magnificent Dappled Sea, a novel that challenges the idea of identity and celebrates the ties that bind us together.
Carnegie's Maid
Marie Benedict - 2018
She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.If she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future -- and her family's.With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist..
Necessary Lies
Diane Chamberlain - 2013
Bestselling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a breakout book about a small southern town fifty years ago, and the darkest—and most hopeful—places in the human heartAfter losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed. She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband. But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy. Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?
The King's Mother
M.J. Porter
The widowed Lady Elfrida has achieved the impossible. She’s ensured her twelve-year-old son has become king, despite the gruesome murder of his predecessor and half-brother. While many blame the king’s mother, she looks to two rival noblemen as the real perpetrators. Even with the reappearance of an unwelcome enemy on England’s shores, Viking warriors, who attack and threaten the safety and security of England, and specifically, the young king, the two noblemen are far from resigned to Lady Elfrida’s power. As her son takes the final steps to become king in actions as well as name, she’s increasingly isolated by the deaths of allies and the scheming ways of others, including the king. Resentful of her continuing influence, Lady Elfrida faces banishment from Court with both fierce determination and acquiescence. The King's Mother is the first part in a new trilogy. Suggested reading order: The Mercian Brexit (short story and prequel) The First Queen of England The First Queen of England Part 2 The First Queen of England Part 3 The King's Mother