Book picks similar to
The Chamber And The Cross by Deborah K. Reed


historical-fiction
elizabethan
romance
historical-fiction-mystery

The Brethren Prince: Piracy, Revenge, and the Culture Clash of the Old Caribbean


Ira Smith - 2012
    But when his passage is interrupted by a terrible battle at sea, he is washed ashore and taken in by an international band of the underclass: English, French, Hollanders, Native Americans, and runaway black slaves.However, as he builds a life with these castaways of humanity, the Empire of Holy Spain launches a campaign to purge all “heretics” from its imperial lands: a campaign that will take from James all that he loves. He abandons his humble ambitions, taking up sword and sail to avenge the atrocities committed by the Spanish crown and inquisition, unaware that he would one day become the most feared pirate on the Spanish Main, a hero to his countrymen, and the Brethren Prince.The Brethren Prince is the real story of buccaneers in the New World. It is a thoroughly researched, historically accurate portrayal of life in the mid-17th Century Caribbean, nested in authentic historical events of the time. It captures the cruelty, nationalistic fervor, and religious virulence of the Imperial powers of the day, but also the pirates who preyed on them.

Awakening


Tracy L. Higley - 2014
    Alone and unclaimed. Despite her shattered memories, she's made a quiet life for herself as museum curator. But then the blackouts start. Lost time, stranded in terrifying danger, frantic visions that can't be real. And now Kallie's journal has morphed into something else... What began as a romantic fairy tale becomes the tale of a woman plunged into crisis in the ancient misty islands of Minoan Greece, home to myth and legend. When a mysterious billionaire invites Kallie to scour the black market with him for the most valuable of all Minoan treasures, Kallie can't resist. Dimitri is wealthy, charming and good-looking, but she's not interested--not in someone who's clearly hiding secrets of his own.Meanwhile, Kallie's memories are bleeding through and her journal has turned violent. She's teetering on the verge of a breakthrough, but what devastating truth has she been suppressing? ”Best book I've read in years. [Higley] is a master storyteller!”  ~ Recent Amazon Reviewer ********************************************************************************Click the Look Inside button above to read the first chapter... ********************************************************************************Romantic Suspense Novel Categories: > Romantic Suspense Adventure > Romantic Suspense HistoricalWith page-turning romantic suspense and evocative scenes set in exotic locales, Higley's novels transport readers into a romantic adventure they won't soon forget.

The Gargoyle


Andrew Davidson - 2008
    As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul. A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love.He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

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 Gresham County Boxed Set: Bad Girl Lessons & Bad Boy Secrets


Seraphina Donavan - 2014
     THE GRESHAM COUNTY BOXED SET BAD GIRL LESSONS by Seraphina Donavan Evangeline Harper has been everyone's good girl. But after being dumped at the altar by her fiancé, Evie decides it's time to stop playing by the rules and have some fun. There's only one problem... she doesn't know how. But one of her oldest friends, Jackson Cope, is just the man to teach her. Hotter than a Georgia tent revival in July, Jackson has had a starring role in every erotic fantasy Evie has ever had. Can she convince the local bad boy to help transform her from a slightly pudgy, former debutante into a wanton, sex kitten? Jackson's been secretly in love with Evie since they were kids, but she was always off limits to the likes of him. Now she's offering him everything he's ever wanted, but only as friends with benefits. Planning to seduce her into his life on a permanent basis, he starts out with hot, steamy lessons on how to walk on the wild side. When Evie's former fiancé shows up, trying to woo her and her trust fund back to save his sorry hide from the Dixie Mafia, it's up to Jackson to protect her from danger. But who will protect him from a broken heart? BAD BOY SECRETS by Seraphina Donavan Reed Harrison has always played by the rules, at least in public. A decorated soldier turned small town attorney, he’s a pillar of Gresham County. But he’s also a man with dark, secret desires. No one sparks those desires more than curvy, confident Cass Blakely. Cass has lived her life by one motto…Take no crap off anyone. She’s always bucked authority and thumbed her nose at the people of Gresham County who looked down on her. But Reed is different. He grew up just like she did, and he’s turned it all around. Still, the sparks fly between them, and no one has ever issued the kinds of orders to Cass that he does… orders she’s more than eager to comply with. With the wedding of their best friends, Jackson and Evie, throwing them together constantly, the combustion between them is inevitable. But not everyone in town wants them to have a happy ending.

To Sleep No More


Dinah Lampitt - 1987
    This panoramic novel skilfully interweaves past and present, fact and fiction, exploring the enigma of reincarnation through the ages.Set in the village of Mayfield in Sussex, To Sleep No More opens in the tumultuous reign of Edward III when monarch and Church struggled for supremacy and ambitious noblemen aimed to better themselves by marrying their daughters well. Oriel accepts the Archbishop's half-witted brother Colin de Stratford to please her father but soon falls in love with the dashing Gascon squire, Marcus de Flaviel. A strange and touching friendship develops between the three but, when Oriel becomes pregnant, suspicions are aroused and Marcus disappears without trace.But their souls cannot rest and the story follows them through the times of witchcraft persecution under James I to the troubled Georgian period when highwaymen and smugglers held sway.

Overseas


Beatriz Williams - 2012
    Julian’s relentless energy and his extraordinary intellect electrify her, but she’s baffled by his sudden interest. Why would this handsome British billionaire "Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor” pursue a pretty but bookish young banker who hasn’t had a boyfriend since college? The answer is beyond imagining . . . at least at first. Kate and Julian’s story may have begun not in the moneyed world of twenty-first-century Manhattan but in France during World War I, when a mysterious American woman emerged from the shadows of the Western Front to save the life of Captain Julian Laurence Ashford, a celebrated war poet and infantry officer.Now, in modern-day New York, Kate and Julian must protect themselves from the secrets of the past, and trust in a true love that transcends time and space.

The Leader


P.G. Van - 2018
    When his stay gets extended due to unexpected reasons, he doesn’t fight the situation but eases into it. One of the reason’s being Komal, the woman who was part of his ‘Unexpected’. When Vishwa’s past life that he walked away from, finds him, he has no choice but to embrace it. He needs to be a cold, hard and an utterly ruthless ruler to protect the ones who he cares about, even if he has to sell his soul to the devil. Komal never expected her future to be tangled with the darkness of her past, just when she thought her life seemed to be good. Vishwa promises to be her protector but can she get herself to trust him?

Kiss Me, I'm Irish


Bella Street - 2011
    But it's more loneliness than rebellion that motivates her to escape her certain fate. Liam Jackson is going nowhere fast in modern-day Tennessee. Playing his Dobro in seedy bars and backward dives along with his fiddling sister, Tinker, is doing nothing for his music career--and even less for the dark places in his soul. Pixie mischief can not only change time-lines, it can change hearts. Because sometimes a girl just needs a little magic in her life.

The Last Pendragon


Sarah Woodbury - 2016
    She has been taught to fear them. But from the moment Cade is dragged before her father's throne, beaten and having lost all of his men to her father's treachery, he stirs something inside her that she has never felt before. When Cade is revealed to be not only Arthur's heir but touched by the sidhe, Rhiann must choose between the life she left behind and the one before her--and how much she is willing to risk to follow her heart.The Last Pendragon is the first novella (30,000 words) in The Last Pendragon Saga. (The Last Pendragon Saga was originally published as two volumes: The Last Pendragon and The Pendragon's Quest.)

Dream On


Terry Tyler - 2012
    Not only must she deal with the thrills and spills of life as a hardworking single mum, but also the imminent return of singer-songwriter Ariel Swan, Dave's one true love.Poor Janice. Dave is still the love of her life.Ariel Swan returns to small town life - and Dave's heart. She and her friend Melodie (whose ambition is to be "a celebrity") enter a TV talent competition, so Dave and the rest of Thor decide to make the most of the opportunity for possible fame and fortune, too. This adventure brings about big changes in the lives of all of them - none of which Dave could have anticipated.One member of Thor even ends up on The Jeremy Kyle Show...

Christmas Cookies and a Confession


Kelsey Browning - 2014
    But a recent brush with online dating has made him realize Jenny Northcutt always has been and always will be his one perfect fit. He’s ready to do whatever it takes to win her back. Jenny Northcutt is a divorcee with an eight-year-old son, and no time or energy for romance. But when her mom moves to the small Georgia community where Teague is sheriff, she’s forced to come face-to-face with the man who first stole her heart. Unfortunately, he’s also the man who destroyed her belief in happily ever after when he married another woman. Ten years later, Jenny still can’t deny the spark between them, but this time more than her heart is at risk. Teague cooks up a plan to woo Jenny, but a local theft could cast doubt that Summer Shoals is a great place to live. He and Jenny join forces to solve the mystery that could ruin the Christmas holiday for everyone in town. Now Teague must once again keep a secret from Jenny. This time, will the past repeat itself, or will they find true happiness?

Blessop's Wife


Barbara Gaskell Denvil - 2014
    Through necessity, he has lived life in the shadows. But when tragedy points to regicide, Andrew delves deeper into a maze of dangerous duplicity.She's a fighter who barely survived a treacherous relationship…When young Tyballis discovers her husband arrested for murder, she is delighted. As a young orphan, coerced to marry her abusive neighbour, she was horribly used. Now is her chance to be rid of him for good and find the confidence she never had.Can they try their hand at uncovering one of England's biggest conspiracies?When Tyballis joins forces with the motley network of Andrew’s informers and thieves, they are lured into the dark and dangerous world of medieval London’s political intrigue and back alley slums.It’s not long before Tyballis is accused of murder herself…A thought-provoking mystery that fuses fact and fiction to stunning effect and explores what it means to be human.This edition of Blessop’s Wife includes editorial revisions.What readers are saying:•“This is a terrific book! As a lover of English history, I was totally engrossed with this story. Spies, treachery, poison, plots against England's throne and romance all combine into a thoroughly absorbing tale. I couldn't stop reading it!”•“Wow! Well developed, multifaceted, relatable characters set in a historical era fraught with medieval political intrigue come together to create a thoroughly enjoyable book.” •“I was expecting a common bodice ripping historical romance and was happily surprised to find myself immersed in 15th-century intrigue instead.”•"A great read that transported the reader instantly into 15th century England. I felt I walked in the footsteps of the characters and lived their lives."•"Medieval London, the setting for this tale, is as much a character as are the people who populate the city and the story. We see it as it was back in the 1400s."

Completely Restored


Robert Kerr - 2009
    Renovating it will allow them to indulge their passion for antiques and to get closer to an era they believe was a better time. Privately, Joe hopes that the project will also fill the void that has opened within their family life. They embark upon a grueling three-year renovation to restore the house to its former splendor, and everything seems perfect…until the morning Joe awakes to find a horse-drawn milk cart in his driveway and his family inexplicably transported back to the year 1909. Suddenly the Murphys’ dream for a simpler time becomes a shocking reality, one in which they will struggle to adapt to turn-of-the-century Iowa while seeking a way to return home. Completely Restored is a unique page-turner of a novel, filled with historical figures and events that help to teach a modern family about the simple joys of life.

Again


Diana Murdock - 2010
    Though secretly holding out for a love that would consume her, she acquiesces her fate to wed this knight, a man she loves no more than she could a brother. But a chance meeting with a devastatingly handsome merchant shakes the very foundation of her world, compelling her to act and think in ways she never thought possible.LOVE CAME BACK TO HAUNT HER…ERYN REXFORD, a modern-day photographer, has everything many women dream of: Beauty, wealth, a sexy and successful husband, a career she loves, and a beautiful house nestled in a community of beach homes. But passionate love, the one thing she longs for, she learns to live without, until recurring dreams and visions spark memories of a life lived long ago and of a man whose love promises to follow her through time. Eryn recognizes a whisper of that promise in the eyes of a handsome stranger who stays close enough for her to notice, but not close enough for her to remember.LOVE HAS NO BOUNDARIES…Two women, born centuries apart, both accept lives of obligation and responsibility; lives without passion, with men who would claim them for their own. Until, that is, a chain of events complicates things in ways they never imagined, all because of one man’s love for a woman…a love that crosses through centuries to find her again.