Book picks similar to
Lillie by David Butler
historical-fiction
19th-century
recommended
old-pb-not-read
Glimpses of Truth
Jack Cavanaugh - 1999
English peasants struggle to preserve the last remaining transcript of Wycliffe's pioneering translation of the New Testament into English in this first book of the Book of Books series.
A House of Mirrors (Mrs Hudson & Sherlock Holmes, #1)
Liz Hedgecock - 2016
Placed under protection by Inspector Lestrade, Nell is ripped from her old life and her own secret police work. Instead she must live as a widow, Mrs Hudson, in a safe house: 221B Baker Street. Two years on, with the case still unsolved, Nell vows to defy Lestrade and use her skills to discover what happened. She takes a lodger to cover her tracks; a young man called Sherlock Holmes. Before long, he is working on her case - and Nell is assisting him.But as Nell delves into her past she raises ghosts whom one person would rather keep buried. Will she face danger, and risk her new life in the process? 'It's always been fun before - but now the police are the enemy...’A House of Mirrors is the first book in the Mrs Hudson & Sherlock Holmes series, which documents life at 221B Baker Street from Nell Hudson’s point of view.
The Two Farms
Mary E. Pearce - 1986
Set in mid-nineteenth century Gloucestershire, a saga focusing on two farms and families who own them.
No Good Like It Is
McKendree R. Long III - 2010
2d Lieutenant Dobey Walls meets and bonds with veteran Corporal Jimmy Melton. As the Civil War begins, they leave to join the 8th Texas Cavalry in Houston, then take part in the first and the final charges of the Army of Tennessee. Between those events, they ride with Nathan Bedford Forrest, play an honorable role in the Fort Pillow Massacre, harass Sherman with Shannon's Raiders, and visit the second best brothel in Atlanta. As surrender looms, they're released to search for Dobey's long-missing family in the Texas Panhandle. Their efforts are hampered by destitute farmers, lonely widows, dangerous militia, freed slaves, and runaways, who increase their numbers and excitement. In the process, they save a quadroon and her daughter from Yankee deserters who have stolen a Union payroll. This act of mercy brings them romance but puts Pinkerton detectives and a renegade lawman on their trail.
A Girl Called Foote
A.E. Walnofer - 2015
As he matures, however, he comes to despise the vanity and conceit surrounding him. Misfortune requires Lydia Smythe, an exceptionally clever farmer’s daughter, to seek employment at Whitehall. As a parlor maid, she feels stifled and harried by those over her. Still, she refuses to relinquish her independent mind and spirit. From the moment Jonathan catches Lydia reading the books she is supposed to be dusting, he is intrigued by this unusual servant. Thus begins a clandestine relationship that is simultaneously amusing, confusing and enlightening. Just as it is evolving into something neither of them expected, an unforeseen truth comes to light, and the two wonder if their unconventional bond will be forever lost. Set in England in the mid-eighteen hundreds, A Girl Called Foote is the coming-of-age story of two similarly impressive people leading very different lives.
The Quiet Wards
Lucilla Andrews - 1956
But who took it? Twenty-one-year-old Nurse Gillian Snow finds her career in jeopardy when a dangerous drug disappears from the drug cupboard under her care. The situation also affects her romance with dashing house-surgeon Peter Kier. Moved from her ward to do other duties, Gillian experiences the happiness and heartache that comes from nursing both children and accident victims. As she struggles to understand who took the drug, and why, Gillian finds support and truth from some unexpected quarters. The Quiet Wards is the third novel by the bestselling hospital fiction author Lucilla Andrews. For the first time, Lucilla's novels are now available as ebooks (with new print editions available from 2018). More at www.lucillaandrews.com Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and her Nightingales series, Jean Fullerton, Maggie Hope and Nadine Dorries.
No Room for Regret
Janeen Ann O'Connell
He could be sailing anywhere, anytime, but he’s not, he’s going to the other side of the world. He could be anyone, but he’s not, he’s the son of a respectable London businessman. His crime? An error of judgement.In England, in 1812, there is no forgiveness. As the ship sails, eighteen-year-old James Tedder’s seven-year sentence to Van Diemen’s Land begins.Rescuing her eldest son from slave traders in Rio de Janeiro is the most difficult thing Sarah Blay has done in the last two years. Leaving England, her life, her mother, to follow her convict husband James to the other side of the world not knowing if he lives, pales in comparison. Will lives rebuild? Will love survive?
The Wild Hunt/The Running Vixen
Elizabeth Chadwick - 1990
As the marriage begins, Guyon is angry and Judith is terrified. He is experienced in both love and war, and is hostile about marrying this child and surrounding himself with such a nest of political vipers. Judith, having watched her father abuse her mother, expects her own marriage to include rape, beatings, and humiliation. What gradually develops between them is a trust and respect that eventually blooms into a passionate love. Their story is tightly interwoven with a tenuous political situation as brothers battle for the kingdom and the barons divide themselves between the factions.The Running VixenUpon his return home to Wales in 1126, Adam de Lacey rediscovers his love for Heulwen, his stepsister, but she has agreed to marry Adam's foe, Warrin de Mortimer, a man involved in a plot against the king. By the author of The Wild Hunt.
The Granville Sisters
Una-Mary Parker - 2005
When war is declared, the love lives of the Granville girls suffer. Rosie's husband is killed during the Blitz. Then Lousie falls in love with Jack, a sixteen-year-old evacuee from the slums of London. When she falls pregnant, she is sent to Wales in disgrace. The girls? mother, Liza, can only pin her hopes on Charlotte now . . .
Now and Forever
Margaret Scutt - 2021
But if she thinks she’s safe at home, she is wrong.Her scheming brother wants to marry her off to a fortune-hunter, and he won’t take no for an answer. Out on a lonely walk, Catherine is attacked and left for dead.Could this be her brother’s doing?Catherine won’t wait to find out. Her childhood friend, Martin Lacey, lives in the manor house across the woods, and there was a time when he would have done anything for her.But in the turmoil of Restoration England, nothing lasts forever. Will turning up at Martin’s door be the saving of her — or the end?
Lady's Maid
Margaret Forster - 1990
Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’s gaiety and sharp intelligence, the power of her poetry, and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years.It is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy Wimpole Street house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning in an empty church, and flees with them to threadbare lodgings and the heat, light, and colors of Italy. As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion, and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis – birth, bereavement, travel, literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given.
God Is an Englishman
R.F. Delderfield - 1970
His struggle to succeed and his conquest of Henrietta, the spirited daughter of a rich manufacturer, drive a richly woven tale that takes the reader from the dusty plains of India to the teeming slums of nineteenth-century London, from the chaos of the great industrial cities to the age of the peaceful certainties of the English countryside. Filled with epic scenes and memorable characters, God is an Englishman triumphs in its portrayal of human strength and weakness, and in its revelations of the power of love.
Never Victorious, Never Defeated
Taylor Caldwell - 1954
Her theme is one welling from the heart-springs of American life - the story of the Interstate, a railroad founded in the latter days of Jackson's presidency, which grew through one hundred stormy, changeful years of our history into a vast enterprise; and the story of the extraordinary family with whom its fortunes were intertwined, the deWitts. It is 1866. In the small Pennsylvania city of Portersville, headquarters of the Interstate, old Aaron deWitt watches enigmatically as his two sons struggle for control of the railroad he founded.
Foxden Acres
Madalyn Morgan - 2013
Bess and James played together as equals when they were children, but now James is engaged to the more socially acceptable Annabel Hadleigh.Bess takes up a teaching post in London but when war breaks out and London schoolchildren are evacuated she returns to Foxden to organise a troop of Land Girls. Traditional barriers come crashing down when Flying Officer James Foxden falls in love with Bess. But by this time Bess has come to know and respect Annabel. Can she be with James if it means breaking her best friend’s heart?And besides, Bess has a shameful secret that she has vowed to keep from James at any cost…
The Age of Desire
Jennie Fields - 2012
Behind Edith Wharton, there was Anna Bahlmann—her governess turned literary secretary, and her mothering, nurturing friend.
When at the age of forty-five, Edith falls passionately in love with a dashing younger journalist, Morton Fullerton, and is at last opened to the world of the sensual, it threatens everything certain in her life but especially her abiding friendship with Anna. As Edith’s marriage crumbles and Anna’s disapproval threatens to shatter their lifelong bond, the women must face the fragility at the heart of all friendships.
Told through the points of view of both women, The Age of Desire takes us on a vivid journey through Wharton’s early Gilded Age world: Paris with its glamorous literary salons and dark secret cafés, the Whartons’ elegant house in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Henry James’s manse in Rye, England.
Edith’s real letters and intimate diary entries are woven throughout the book. The Age of Desire brings to life one of literature’s most beloved writers, whose own story was as complex and nuanced as that of any of the heroines she created.