Book picks similar to
Rush of Shadows by Catherine Bell


historical-fiction
arcs
fiction
western

Nobody's Girl


Tania Crosse - 2017
    Perfect for the fans of Jo Cox and Rosie Goodwin. The boom years immediately after the Great War bring nothing but happiness for wealthy industrialist Wigmore Stratfield-Whyte and his wife Clarissa – until tragedy robs them of their greatest treasure. Many years later, an horrific fatal accident brings young Meg Chandler, a spirited farmer's daughter, into their lives. Meg wants nothing to do with them, but Clarissa is drawn irresistibly towards the bereaved girl and will move heaven and earth to help her. Will Meg allow Clarissa into her own shattered life, and can the two share a future happiness together? And will Meg's new acquaintances bring her the contentment she craves – or seek to destroy her? Set in the Kent countryside in the years leading up to the Second World War, this compelling saga tingles with drama, tension and an overwhelming sense of love.

The Nightingale Girls


Donna Douglas - 2012
    Dora is a tough East Ender, driven by ambition, but also desperate to escape her squalid, overcrowded home and her abusive stepfather. Helen is the quiet one, a mystery to her fellow nurses, avoiding fun, gossip and the limelight. In fact she is in the formidable shadow of her overbearing mother, who dominates every aspect of her life. Can a nursing career free Helen at last? The third of our heroines is naughty, rebellious Millie -- aka Lady Camilla -- an aristocrat on the run from her conventional upper class life. She is doomed to clash over and over again with terrifying Sister Hyde and to get into scrape after scrape especially where men are concerned. This utterly delightful novel brings a London pre-war hospital vividly to life.

The Royal Nanny


Karen Harper - 2016
    She is excited, exhausted—and about to meet royalty. . . .So begins the unforgettable story of Charlotte Bill, who would care for a generation of royals as their parents never could. Neither Charlotte—LaLa, as her charges dub her—nor anyone else can predict that eldest sons David and Bertie will each one day be king. LaLa knows only that these children, and the four who swiftly follow, need her steadfast loyalty and unconditional affection.But the greatest impact on Charlotte’s life is made by a mere bud on the family tree: a misunderstood soul who will one day be known as the Lost Prince. Young Prince John needs all of Lala’s love—the kind of love his parents won’t…or can’t…show him.From Britain’s old wealth to the glittering excesses of Tsarist Russia; from country cottages to royal yachts, and from nursery to ballroom, Charlotte Bill witnesses history. The Royal Nanny is a seamless blend of fact and fiction—an intensely intimate, yet epic tale spanning decades, continents, and divides that only love can cross.

Storms Gather Between Us


Clare Flynn - 2019
    Since escaping his family’s notoriety in Australia Will Kidd has spent a decade sailing the seas, never looking back. Content to live the life of a wanderer, everything changes in a single moment when he comes face to face with a ghost from his past on a cloudy beach in Liverpool.The daughter of an abusive zealot, every step of Hannah Dawson's life has been laid out for her... until she meets Will by chance and is set on a new path. Their love is forbidden and forces on all sides divide them, but their bond is undeniable. Now, they will have to fight against all the odds to escape the chains of their histories and find their way back to one another. A compelling tale of family secrets and love against the odds, perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy and Gill Paul. Praise for Storms Gather Between Us 'Another great book by Clare Flynn’ Reader Review‘A really gripping and moving pre WWII story’ Reader Review‘I would recommend this book without hesitation’ Reader Review‘Very descriptive, immersive and well written. This book is guaranteed to make you turn each and every page.’ Reader Review‘I was totally gripped from the first page’ Reader Review

The Visionist


Rachel Urquhart - 2013
    She and her young brother find shelter in a Massachusetts Shaker community called The City of Hope. It is the Era of Manifestations, when young girls in Shaker enclaves all across the Northeast are experiencing extraordinary mystical visions, earning them the honorific of "Visionist" and bringing renown to their settlements. The City of Hope has not yet been blessed with a Visionist, but that changes when Polly arrives and is unexpectedly exalted. As she struggles to keep her dark secrets concealed in the face of increasing scrutiny, Polly finds herself in a life-changing friendship with a young Shaker sister named Charity, a girl who will stake everything--including her faith--on Polly's honesty and purity.

Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor


Rebecca Rosenberg - 2019
    Little did she expect that she’d be abandoned and pregnant and left to manage the gold mine alone. But that didn’t stop her! She moved to Leadville and fell in love with a married prospector, twice her age. Horace Tabor struck the biggest silver vein in history, divorced his wife and married Baby Doe. Though his new wife was known for her beauty, her fashion, and even her philanthropy, she was never welcomed in polite society. Discover how the Tabors navigated the worlds of wealth, power, politics, and scandal in the wild days of western mining.

The Paris Architech


Charles Balfoure
    

Cathar


Christopher Bland - 2016
    Francois de Beaufort will lose the castle which is his inheritance, be horribly maimed in battle, see the woman he loves imprisoned and tortured for her faith. But he vows to fight back, to survive - and to rescue her.

Somerset


Leila Meacham - 2013
    "From birth, Jessica had eschewed the role to which she'd been born. Was it because she sensed that her father's indulgence was compensation for his disappointment in her? Jessica thought too much, questioned, challenged, rebelled. Sometimes Eunice thought her daughter should have been born a male." Born into the wealthiest and most influential family in 1830s South Carolina, Jessica Wyndham was expected to look appealing, act with decorum, and marry a suitably prominent and respectable man. However, her outspoken opinions and unflagging sense of justice make her a difficult-and dangerous-firebrand, especially for slavery-dependent Carson Wyndham. Jessica's testing of her powerful father's love is only the beginning of the pain, passion, and triumph she will experience on a journey with the indomitable, land-obsessed Silas Toliver and headstrong Jeremy Warwick to a wild new land called Texas. PRAISE FOR LEILA MEACHAM "Discovering Leila Meacham and her spectacular talent is akin to discovering gold. With this novel she has become a national treasure." -- Huffington Post "Rich with American history and pitch-perfect storytelling, fans and new readers alike will find themselves absorbed in the family saga that Meacham has proven-once again-talented in telling." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The Romanov Empress: A Novel of Tsarina Maria Feodorovna


C.W. Gortner - 2018
    Narrated by the mother of Russia's last tsar, this novel brings to life the courageous story of Maria Feodorovna, one of Imperial Russia's most compelling women, who witnessed the splendor and tragic downfall of the Romanovs as she fought to save her dynasty in its final years.

The Princess and the Wolf


Karen Kay - 2001
    Little does he know that, many years later, he will once again cross paths with Princess Sierra when she journeys to America in search of the truth behind her missing, and presumed dead, husband. Although distrustful, their attraction to each other is undeniable - and Princess Sierra is torn. All her life, she has been convinced that affairs of state take precedence over matters of the heart.But as she and High Wolf enter dangerous Crow territory, Princess Sierra finds herself willing to risk all for the chance to regain High Wolf′s love and trust.

That First Montana Year


Donna L. Scofield - 2015
    But she's a minister’s daughter and pregnant. To save embarrassment for the families, and hoping a fresh start will help them become the sweethearts they were before, B’Anne agrees to leave everyone and everything she knows and go with Will to the Montana Territory. They hope Will's uncle Hiram, whom he has never met, will guide them in their homesteading. Uncle Hiram welcomes Will, but treats B’Anne coolly until he realizes she isn’t a “frills and furbelows” girl. Although Will seems to care for B’Anne, she loses her confidence when she discovers a letter from Will's former sweetheart. Will's secrecy threatens to build a wall between them. Spring arrives, and with it the promise of renewal. But is B’Anne's hope for a fresh start enough to sustain the young couple through the years of hard living under that big Montana sky?

William Rising


Hilary Rhodes - 2014
    Extensively researched and compellingly told, it introduces us to the passionate drama and violent upheaval of eleventh-century Europe. The world as we know it, and the English language, would have been vastly different were it not for the driving ambition of one man: William the Conqueror. But conquerors are made, not born, and William was made in fire and blood. How does a boy become a man, surviving a tumultuous and terrifying childhood? And how does that man become a legend? William Rising plunges us into this world of danger and betrayal, of choosing sides and dying for absolutes. It follows the creation of a conqueror, as he grows up abandoned, learns to fight at an early age for anything he hopes to keep, and is sculpted into a remorseless, far-sighted, ruthlessly efficient soldier and statesman. From his origins as an orphaned, penniless bastard boy, to his personal and political trials by fire, to the climactic battle with his rebellious barons where he finally comes of age, the young duke increasingly establishes himself as a force to be reckoned with. But as the shadowy intrigues of English politics, and the all-consuming question of an heir for a childless king, begin to draw him into their web, it may just be that William of Normandy has a destiny far greater than even he has ever dreamed.

The Color of Secrets


Lindsay Ashford - 2015
    Neither wife nor widow, she lives in a numb state of limbo until, in the heat of an English summer, she meets Bill, a black American GI. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, neither can deny the love that overcomes them in the frantic weeks that follow, when every day could be their last.After Eva discovers she’s pregnant, Bill is shipped off to join the D-day fight, leaving her alone in a bigoted world. As her mixed-race daughter, Louisa, grows up, how far will Eva go to keep her safe and bury the past? And how far will Louisa go to uncover the truth?

The Fortunes


Peter Ho Davies - 2016
    Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family experience.Inhabiting four lives—a railroad baron’s valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption—this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive—as much through love as blood.Building fact into fiction, spinning fiction around fact, Davies uses each of these stories—three inspired by real historical characters—to examine the process of becoming not only Chinese American, but American.