Brice’s Day, England, 1002. At the order of King Aethelred, thousands of Danes are murdered in a frenzy of ethnic cleansing.Outraged, the Danish King, Sweyn Forkbeard, swears he will take Aethedred’s head, and his crown. But Sweyn needs allies. Chief amongst his supporters is Aelfgifu, an English noblewoman and head of a once great family.She has her own reasons to hate Aethelred, and as a pagan, she is sympathetic to the Danish cause. When Aelfgifu marries Sweyn’s son, Canute, war is inevitable.But if Aethelred is weak, his Norman queen is not. And Emma will stop at nothing to destroy the woman at the heart of the Viking army.Love, ambition and revenge combine in an epic struggle for justice during the most turbulent period in England’s history.The Northern Queen is Kelly Evans’ first novel. Meticulously researched, the novel takes place in the early eleventh century and tells the story of Aelfgifu of Northampton, a woman lost to the pages of history. Until now.Real people, real battles, real history.

    Even during his lifetime, tales of the sharpshooting, skilled woodsman were—to his delight—told, retold, and elaborated on. As a US congressman, the former Creek War militiaman steadfastly opposed President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. As a soldier, he made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for an independent Texas. Nearly two centuries after his untimely demise, he remains a legendary figure in American lore.   In this fictional account of Crockett’s life, author Cameron Judd offers a nuanced portrait of the man behind the myth. He depicts Crockett’s triumphs as a hunter, cattle drover, warrior, and legislator in riveting detail and poignantly illustrates his subject’s hardscrabble youth and complicated relationship with his father. Meticulously researched and rich in vibrant action, Crockett of Tennessee captures the charisma, ambition, and bravery of the man known as the “King of the Wild Frontier.”

    His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.

    Now, for the first time in the United States, comes the book that started the career of the author that the Irish Examiner calls "one of the best and original of the new generation of Irish writers."It is 1758 and Matthieu Zela is fleeing Paris after witnessing the murder of his mother and his stepfather's execution. Matthieu's life is characterized by one extraordinary fact: before the eighteenth century ends, he discovers that his body has stopped ageing. At the end of the twentieth century and the ripe old age of 256 he is suddenly forced to answer an uncomfortable question: what is the worth of immortality without love?In this carefully crafted novel, John Boyne juxtaposes history and the buzz of the modern world, weaving together portraits of 1920s Hollywood, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the French Revolution, the Wall Street Crash, and other landmark events into one man's story of murder, love, and redemption.

    Their tribe has moved and escaped for thousands of years - across oceans, deserts, and mountains - but now, it seems, there is nowhere else to go. Danger is imminent in every direction, yet the territory of imagination and belief is limitless. At the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger who has washed up on the riverbank, the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch. Destiny is unwritten. Time and history are forgotten. Jobs, husbands, a child, are reassigned. And for years, there is boundless hope. But the real world continues to unfold alongside the imagined one, eventually overtaking it, and soon our narrator - the girl, grown into a young mother - must flee her village, move from one world to the next, to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future. A beguiling, imaginative, inspiring story about the bigness of being alive as an individual, as a member of a tribe, and as a participant in history, No One Is Here Except All Of Us explores how we use storytelling to survive and shape our own truths. It marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.

    It was on his travels that he found his own very real gift for healing—a gift that urged him on to become a doctor. So all consuming was his dream, that he made the perilous, unheard-of journey to Persia, to its Arab universities where he would undertake a transformation that would shape his destiny forever.

    

    But Louis IX is a religious zealot who denies himself the love and companionship his wife craves. Can she borrow enough of her sister's boldness to grasp her chance for happiness in a forbidden love?Passionate, strong-willed, and stubborn, Eleanor becomes Queen of England. Henry III is a good man, but not a good king. Can Eleanor stop competing with her sister and value what she has, or will she let it slip away?The Sister Queens is historical fiction at its most compelling, and is an unforgettable first novel.

    Petersburg after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the march on Berlin, and Stalin's purges, and of a transcendent love affair. Volsky's life is an inspiration to Shutov -- because for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just another unknown man . . .

    His father, John Dudley, saw his own father executed by Henry VIII when he ascended the throne, and suffered ignominy and obscurity as a result. But John is determined to rise high and see his family restored to its former glorious position. He places his sons in the Royal Household, and Robert spends his childhood years at the Royal Court, as playmate to King Henry's children, Prince Edward and the Lady Elizabeth. Robert sees his father gain power and influence, becoming the young King Edward VI's most important courtier. But when John tries to make his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, queen,the Catholic Mary Tudor proves she has the support of the people, and John is forced to renounce Jane and proclaim Mary queen. For their part in the Nine Days Queen affair, John and his sons are imprisoned in the Tower of London, to await trial and probable execution. Forced to admit that he erred in his belief in the New Religion, Protestantism, John, along with his son, Guildford who married Jane Grey, are executed, having their heads cut off on Tower Hill. One more brother dies of illness, and Queen Mary shows mercy and releases the remaining three brothers. Robert becomes desperate to restore the family's name and fortune, and persuades his brothers to join Queen Mary's husband, King Philip of Spain, in a war against the French. In France, the youngest Dudley brother, Henry, is killed, but Robert is mentioned in despatches as having fought valiantly, and the taint of attainder is removed from the Dudley family name. The Dudleys are not considered traitors any longer. But Robert is still not wanted at court, and he is forced to leave London and settle down with his wife, Amy Robsart, in Norfolk. But he soon grows tired of both the country and his wife, and hopes one day to be able to return to the court. His chance comes when Queen Mary dies and Elizabeth Tudor becomes queen. Abandoning his wife, Robert rushes to her side. Elizabeth soon falls in love with Robert, and sordid rumours spread throughout Europe about their relationship, made worse when Robert's wife dies in mysterious circumstances, and he is suspected of having her murdered. Exiled from the court, Robert has to wait in the country for the coroner's court to return a verdict of Accidental Death before Elizabeth allows him to return to her. Robert is now a free man, but Elizabeth, ever fearful of relinquishing her power, and haunted by the beheadings of her mother, Anne Boleyn, and her stepmother, Katherine Howard, will not agree to marry him, while jealously keeping him by her side. But Robert keeps hoping, and with his heart set on becoming king, he is forced to live a double life, keeping his mistress and illegitimate son secret to avoid Elizabeth's wrath. Until he falls in love with Elizabeth's cousin, the pretty and seductive, Lettice. Lettice demands marriage when she becomes pregnant, and Robert, tired of waiting for Elizabeth and wanting an heir to carry on the Dudley name, agrees. Meanwhile, his growing reputation as politician and staunch Protestant, means that Europe looks to him to solve their religious and territorial problems. Ever eager to improve his reputation and to prove that he is more than Elizabeth's favourite, he launches himself into war in the Netherlands, and is finally offered the governorship of the Dutch, making him a king in all but name. He accepts the Dutch offer but when Elizabeth hears of it, she is furious and insists that he renounce the title. Robert is forced to make a humiliating exit. He returns to England, disappointed and broken in body. Forced to become a soldier again when the Spanish launch their Armada, Robert is too ill to celebrate the English victory and dies en route to taking the spa waters at Buxton. When Elizabeth hears the news, she looks herself away in her room to grieve alone.

    The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the character in her most famous novel, written 20 years earlier. Seeking distraction, she begins to research a biography of Branwell Bronte.

    Then, during a single amazing month at the beginning of 1848, history lurches: America wins its war of manifest destiny against Mexico, gold is discovered in northern California, and revolutions sweep across Europe–sending one eager English gentleman off on an epic transatlantic adventure. . . .Amid the tumult, aristocratic Benjamin Knowles impulsively abandons the Old World to reinvent himself in New York, where he finds himself embraced by three restless young Americans: Timothy Skaggs, muckraking journalist, daguerreotypist, pleasure-seeker, stargazer; the fireman Duff Lucking, a sweet but dangerously damaged veteran of the Mexican War; and Duff’s dazzling sister Polly Lucking, a strong-minded, free thinking actress (and discreet part-time prostitute) with whom Ben falls hopelessly in love.Beckoned by the frontier, new beginnings, and the prospects of the California Gold Rush, all four set out on a transcontinental race west–relentlessly tracked, unbeknownst to them, by a cold-blooded killer bent on revenge.A fresh, impeccable portrait of an era startlingly reminiscent of our own times, Heyday is by turns tragic and funny and sublime, filled with bona fide heroes and lost souls, visionaries (Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin, Alexis de Tocqueville) and monsters, expanding horizons and narrow escapes. It is also an affecting story of four people passionately chasing their American dreams at a time when America herself was still being dreamed up – an enthralling, old-fashioned yarn interwoven with a bracingly modern novel of ideas.

    John, Malta will become the stage upon which the fate of the world turns. For one of its sons, the hand of violence strikes swiftly, when young Nicolo Borg is seized by Barbary slavers and launched on a remarkable journey to the court of the supreme ruler of the Muslim world. Renamed Asha, plotting his escape even as he swears allegiance to the god of his masters and is schooled in the arts of culture and war, the innocent boy will be transformed into one of the Sultan’s deadliest commanders. For Nico’s beloved sister, Maria, his loss fires her hatred for the knights who did nothing to save him and her dreams of escape from her stifling home. As the headstrong girl grows into a fierce beauty, she will capture the attention of one man in particular, Christien de Vries, a surgeon-knight torn between duty and desire, caught up in Malta’s frantic preparations against the coming Ottoman storm. Around Nico and Maria are men and women who will share their destinies: Dragut Raïs, a brilliant corsair, arch-rival of the knights…Giulio Salvago, a priest in full flight from his carnal nature…Alisa, a young beauty hidden away in a harem…Jean de La Valette, the master knight who is Malta’s only hope for survival.As the mighty Ottoman fleet bears down on the tiny island, as Nico Borg makes his way back to his homeland at the helm of a warship, Ironfire moves inexorably to a shattering climax where all will face ultimate justice in the murderous cauldron of siege warfare. Brilliantly capturing the crosscurrents of a storied age, Ironfire is historical fiction in the grand tradition, a stirring realization of a pivotal moment in time that irrevocably shaped the world we inhabit today.

    The author of The World Is Not Enough paints a vivid tale of chivalry, passion, and ruthlessness in 13th-century France, in the dramatic story of the struggle of the Medieval man for his soul, and of ultimate self-sacrifice for spiritual goals.