Book picks similar to
The Poseidon Network by Kathryn Gauci
historical-fiction
ww-ll
secular-fiction
aussie-authors
Last Man To Die
Michael Dobbs - 1991
Now reissued in a new cover style. Spring 1945. The final weeks of the war. One man holds the secret that will decide the fate of post-war Europe: Peter Hencke, an unlikely hero, a German prisoner-of-war on the run.Refusing to wait for peace and the freedom it will finally bring, Hencke is fired by a personal mission that drives him to risk everything in his lonely, treacherous journey across wartime Britain, back through the battle-torn remnants of the Third Reich – to the very heart of encircled Berlin.One man faced by the mightiest armies ever assembled, pursued by the most powerful and ruthless men in Europe – and helped and loved by two of the most extraordinary women. The secret of Peter Hencke will be hidden until the very last moments of the war.
All the Walls of Belfast
Sarah Carlson - 2019
Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood.After chance brings Fiona and Danny together, their love of the band Fading Stars, big dreams, and desire to run away from their families unites them. Danny and Fiona must help one another overcome the burden of their parents’ pasts. But one ugly truth might shatter what they have…
The Last Word
Samantha Hastings - 2019
Miss Lucinda Leavitt is shocked when she learns the author of her favorite serialized novel has died before completing the story. Determined to learn how it ends, Lucinda reluctantly enlists the help of her father’s young business partner, Mr. David Randall, to track down the reclusive author’s former whereabouts.David is a successful young businessman, but is overwhelmed by his workload. He wants to prove himself to his late father, as well as to himself. He doesn’t have the time, nor the interest, for this endeavor, but Lucinda is not the type to take no for an answer.Their search for the elusive Mrs. Smith and the rightful ending to her novel leads Lucinda and David around the country, but the truths they discover about themselves—and each other—are anything but fictional.
The Priory
Dorothy Whipple - 1939
We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt; then, as soon as their lives have been described, the Major proposes marriage to a woman much younger than himself - and many changes begin.
The Cemetery Keeper's Wife
Maryann McFadden - 2018
Though she's known him only twelve weeks, his tender love seems like a miracle of fate after her years alone.On her first walk through the lush and silent grounds of her new home, Rachel discovers a stunning monument to Tillie Smith, who died in 1886. Reading the words carved into the stone, "She Died in Defence of Her Honor," Rachel is overcome by a powerful memory buried deep in her past.A series of uncanny coincidences linked to Tillie Smith follows, setting Rachel on a journey that grows into an obsession: Why did the murder of a poor kitchen maid at the local seminary become a national sensation? Why were people in town trying to keep her from finding the truth? But most disturbing of all, why was Tillie reawakening a past Rachel chose to bury long ago. A past that could threaten her marriage.The Cemetery Keeper's Wife poignantly blends fact and fiction as two women scarred by shame, and separated by more than a century, reach across time to rewrite history.
The Opium Lord's Daughter
Robert Wang - 2019
Honoring the tradition of noted historical fiction writers such as Ken Follett, Philippa Gregory, and James Clavell, The Opium Lord's Daughter artfully weaves true events and characters into the narrative, offering the reader a selective glimpse into a world populated with rogue drug traders, imperialist government officials, religious zealots, scrappy survivors. Su-Mei, the eponymous protagonist, is a young woman unbounded by convention. From the moment we meet little Su-Mei, she valiantly resists her wealthy and powerful father—one of the largest opium traders in mid-19th century China—who attempts to force her into the barbaric practice of foot binding. Through her, readers look with fresh eyes upon antiquated and harmful traditions, and understand how time and experiences truly shape a person during their life's journey. Her defiance sets in motion a series of events, forever altering her fate, as well as the fates of those she holds dear. Su-Mei is forced to rapidly come-of-age and muster her heroic spirit to survive her crumbling world. Taboo romances, tumultuous adventures, and heart-wrenching tragedies befall Su-Mei and her loved ones throughout the course of the story. The Opium Lord's Daughter is an expedition through the destruction of a culture, underscoring the hold and havoc drug empires continue to exert in society, even to this day. A must read for fans of Shogun, Downtown Abbey, Outlander and other sweeping tales rooted in history!
White Feathers
Susan Lanigan - 2014
But she must choose only one.In 1913, young Irish emigrant Eva Downey is trapped in London with a remote father and hostile stepmother. When she is awarded a legacy from an old suffragette to attend a finishing school in Kent, she jumps at the chance. At the school, she finds kinship and later falls in love with her teacher Christopher Shandlin, her intellectual equal. But when war breaks out and the man she loves refuses to fight, Eva's fanatical stepsister Grace pushes her to make a choice. She must present him with a white feather of cowardice, or no money will be given for her sister Imelda's life-saving treatment in Switzerland. Caught in a dilemma, Eva must choose - and her decision will have irrevocable consequences for her and Christopher and haunt her for the rest of her life.
The Last Blue
Isla Morley - 2020
Two government-sponsored documentarians from Cincinnati, Ohio—a writer and photographer—are dispatched to penetrate this wilderness and record what they find for President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration.For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to reboot his flagging career. So when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of a headline story.What they see will haunt Clay into his old age: Jubilee Buford, a woman whose skin is a shocking and unmistakable shade of blue. From this happenstance meeting between a woman isolated from society and persecuted her whole life, and a man accustomed to keeping himself at lens distance from others, comes a mesmerizing story in which the dark shades of betrayal, prejudice, fear, and guilt, are refracted along with the incandescent hues of passion and courage.Panning across the rich rural aesthetic of eastern Kentucky, The Last Blue is a captivating love story and an intimate portrait of what it is like to be truly one of a kind.
Alligator and Other Stories
Dima Alzayat - 2020
There is the intern in pre-#MeToo Hollywood of “Only Those Who Struggle Succeed,” the New York City children on the lookout for a place to play on the heels of Etan Patz’s kidnapping in “Disappearance,” and the “dangerous” women of “Daughters of Manāt” who struggle to assert their independence.The title story, “Alligator,” is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and intergenerational trauma, told in an epistolary format through social media posts, newspaper clippings, and testimonials, that starts with the true story of the lynching of a Syrian immigrant couple by law officers in small-town Florida. Placed in a wider context of U.S. racial violence, the extrajudicial deaths, and what happens to the couple’s children and their children’s children in the years after, challenges the demands of American assimilation and its limits.Alligator and Other Stories is haunting, spellbinding, and unforgettable, while marking Dima Alzayat’s arrival as a tremendously gifted new talent.
In Spite of All Terror
V.M. Knox - 2019
Britain stands alone facing an imminent Nazi invasion. Handpicked groups of men form the covert Auxiliary Units; ordinary by day, they will be saboteurs and assassins by night. With a life expectancy of two weeks, their identities are a closely guarded secret from all but the local senior policeman but once activated, that policeman will be the cell's first victim. Clement Wisdom, a humble vicar and leader of the East Sussex Auxiliaries, receives the invasion alert and assembles his team. Burdened with the tension between his faith and his patriotic duty, he sets out to eliminate the Police Inspector, only to find him dead already. While assisting Lewes Police to find the Inspector's killer, events take an ominous turn as one by one, members of Clement’s team are found callously murdered. Priorities shift and every aspect of life is called into question when Clement becomes embroiled in the murky world of espionage, where nothing is what it seems. In Spite of All Terror is the first in a series of crime thrillers that mix historical fact, crime fiction and superb characterisations. They will keep you hungry for the next piece of this wartime puzzle.
The Island Villa
Lily Graham - 2018
If you loved The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah or The Island by Victoria Hislop, you’ll devour this dramatic book-club read set in a beautiful Spanish villa where the walls whisper with secrets. When Charlotte’s husband James tragically dies, he leaves her an unexpected gift – her grandmother’s beautiful villa, Marisal, on the Spanish island of Formentera. As she begins to explore her new home, and heal her broken heart in the warm golden sunshine, Charlotte discovers that her grandmother Alba has been keeping secrets about her life on the island. Intrigued by her family’s hidden history, Charlotte uncovers a devastating love affair that put many lives at risk and two sisters torn apart by loss. Can the heartbreaking truth of the island’s dark history finally be laid to rest? Or will the secrets of the past shake the new life and love that Charlotte is close to finding?
Through the Barricades
Denise Deegan - 2016
They form a legacy that she carries in her heart, years later when, at the age of fifteen, she tries to better the lives of Dublin's largely forgotten poor. 'Don't go getting distracted, now, ' is what Daniel Healy's father says to him after seeing him talking to the same Maggie Gilligan. Daniel is more than distracted. He is intrigued. Never has he met anyone as dismissive, argumentative . . . as downright infuriating. A dare from Maggie is all it takes. Daniel volunteers at a food kitchen. There, his eyes are opened to the plight of the poor. It is 1913 and Dublin's striking workers have been locked out of their jobs. Their families are going hungry. Daniel and Maggie do what they can. Soon, however, Maggie realises that the only way to make a difference is to take up arms. The story of Maggie and Daniel is one of friendship, love, war and revolution, of two people prepared to sacrifice their lives: Maggie for her country, Daniel for Maggie. Their mutual sacrifices put them on opposite sides of a revolution. Can their love survive?
The Beauty of St. Kilda
Nicola Italia - 2016
Having lost her mother in childbirth and her father right before her marriage, she has no choice but to seek a position as a governess. She reaches out to her husband’s family solicitor, Quinn Westbourne, hoping that he may be able to help her. Quinn takes one look at the young and beautiful Emily and decides that a job as a governess will not do. He writes instead to the father-in-law she's never met, and when Leopold Clairmont offers her a place in his home, Quinn agrees to escort Emily to his isolated refuge in St. Kilda. But he did not anticipate how challenging it would be to keep his distance from the grieving widow when all he wants to do is take her in his arms and console her. The two forge a friendship on their journey, and Emily begins to wonder if she could find solace and a live a comfortable life as a widow in her new home. The tiny island of Hirta in the remote cluster of islands known as St. Kilda off the Scottish coast is wild and beautiful, her father-in-law is warm and welcoming, and her sister-in-law offers her much-needed female companionship, but the island is also full of secrets. When Emily learns things about her husband that he never revealed, she wonders if she ever really knew him at all. Torn between her devotion to her departed husband and her growing feelings for Quinn, Emily must decide whether her heart belongs to the living or the dead and find the courage to act before it's too late.
Weapons of Peace
Peter D. Johnston - 2019
When she proves to be an exceptional student of his laws of influence, he urges her to help him complete his mission: Hitler has an atom bomb, and his scientists must be persuaded to undermine their own creation.A Novel Inspired by Two True Stories Peter D. Johnston, bestselling author and international negotiator, has crafted a thought-provoking thriller that immerses us in one of history’s most pivotal moments. In this novel inspired by two true stories from the Second World War, a young British nurse and a seasoned American negotiator, both plagued by remorse, try to change the course of history—and their own lives.Weapons of Peace races from an ancient English castle and a bizarre killing in Washington, D.C., to a scorched atomic test site in Germany and hidden passages forged under Berlin by resisters plotting to murder Hitler. Johnston’s expert hand blends real-world historical material with heart-pounding action, unforgettable characters, and precious insights into influence and how the Nazis negotiated their way to power and kept it.
Middlesex
Michael Robbins - 2003
Yet it has a history of great interest, crowded with important events and famous characters, from Julius Caesar at Brentford to Winston Churchill at Harrow. Its history also includes minor curiosities of the past—the devil of Edmonton, the witch of Finchley, the miser of Harrow Weald, the highwaymen of Hounslow Heath—amid the varied incidents of local life in places that are now London dormitories. First published in 1953, at the time this book was the most comprehensive history and description of an English county ever attempted in a single volume. Its first part describes the county's natural situation and its earliest history and surveys its economic life, in particular its almost vanished agriculture and its modern industrial development. There are chapters on particular aspects of Middlesex's history, inhabitants, and buildings. The second part—virtually a book in itself—is a lively gazetteer of the places in contemporary Middlesex, from Acton to Yiewsley. The whole work is fully indexed and referenced, and includes tables of population and a detailed bibliography (both updated for this edition), line maps, diagrams, and 48 pages of superb photographs. Michael Robbins had a lifelong love of the county of his birth, and tramped many miles along Middlesex roads while researching and writing this book; he believed there was no other way of getting to know the county. It remains the standard work on the local history of the county—a book for all who know and love Middlesex.