Book picks similar to
A History Of Insects by Yvonne Roberts


fiction
middle-east
bildungsroman
historical-fiction

Where Fortune Lies


Mary-Anne O'Connor - 2020
    For fans of Nicole Alexander, Colleen McCullough, and Fiona McIntosh.1879: 'Invisible' Anne Brown fears she'll never escape the harshness and poverty of her life in County Donegal, Ireland. Until, one heartbreaking Beltane night, her life is changed forever and she leaves to seek her fortune in far-flung Australia.Upon the death of their father, charismatic Will Worthington and his beloved sister Mari are stunned to find he has left all their money and a ticket to the far shores of Australia to an enigmatic painted woman. It seems their only hope for a brighter future also lies in Australia, where together with Will's best friend, the artist Charlie Turner, they seek their fortunes.Charlie finds love with a mysterious exotic dancer, yet there is trouble on the horizon. His new friends up in the Victorian Alps might be teaching him to run with the wild horses and find his talent with a brush at last, but life in a bushranger gang is a dangerous game.As Charlie struggles to break free from his fate, all four are left with impossible choices as fortunes waver between life and death, loyalty and the heart.

The Sewing Machine


Natalie Fergie - 2017
    For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother’s sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents.  His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams.  He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

Lord of the Atlas


Colin Falconer - 2021
    Purely an advisory role, they are told.Harry Delhaze is on a lonely path to self-destruction; George Marriott has promises to keep. It seems to them like the easiest money they’ll ever make.They couldn’t be more wrong.They are forced to battle frostbite in the Atlas Mountains and endure the baking deserts of the sub-Sahara; they are traded, kidnapped, and used as pawns in high-stakes political rivalries; they encounter women who worship cannons for fertility and magician-warlords who talk to the dead and play bloody games of chess with living slaves; and the three muzzle-loading cannon the Sultan has hired them to command are antiques that could explode in their faces at any moment.Then there is the Lord of the Atlas himself, Amastan el-Karim, who harbors a shocking secret that could cost them both their lives – or give one of them a reason to live again.An epic historical adventure that evokes the beautiful and the barbaric of nineteenth century Morocco that transports the reader to a now-lost world of ancient medinas, crumbling palaces, and wild mountain passes.

The Moonflower Vine


Jetta Carleton - 1962
    Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive—and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.

American Wife


Curtis Sittenfeld - 2008
    But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie. As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona? In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland. Praise for American Wife “Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined.” –Richard Russo “What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady’s. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable.” –Kurt Andersen

A Gentle Love


Emily Woods - 2017
    He has a secret that could drive any woman away. Can they find a love to overcome it all? A Sweet Western Romance from #1 Best Selling Author Emily Wood Kate is a widow who watched her whole life go up in flames. With nowhere else to turn, she heads west to live with her aunt and start a new life for herself and her daughter. As she struggles to provide a new life for her daughter, she finds herself attracted to man who has vowed to never love again. Can she overcome her lack of faith and trust someone enough to find love again? A Gentle Love is a clean western romance from #1 Best Selling author Emily Woods. If you like clean, historical fiction about women who must overcome tragedy in order to love again, you will love this sweet romance! Buy A Gentle Love and get lost in another sweet western romance today. Always FREE on Kindle Unlimited

Ashoka: Satrap of Taxila


Ashok K. Banker - 2017
    But when he sees the brutality and disrespect to Mauryavansh by the Pashtun rebels, he cannot stay silent. His sword is as quick as his temper, and the result is swift and bloody justice. Taxila is saved—but the Emperor is furious. Emperor Bindusara, egged on by his favorite queen, Noor Khorasan, becomes convinced that Ashoka’s show of initiative is an act of treason. Even the wise words of nonagenarian Kautilya, emerging from retirement, fall on deaf ears. Queen Khorasan’s well-mounted plot to control the empire sweeps up everyone who opposes her. Suddenly, Ashoka is forced to choose between his mother’s life and his own. What will the young prince do?India’s epic storyteller brings alive the battles, brutality, lust and politics of ancient India in vivid detail with thrilling action, and no-holds-barred storytelling. Relive the extraordinary life story of India’s greatest emperor as a young man in Ashoka: Satrap of Taxila.

When the White House Was Ours


Porter Shreve - 2008
    It’s 1976, and while the country prepares to celebrate the bicentennial, Daniel Truitt’s family is falling apart. His father, Pete, has been fired from yet another teaching job, and his mother, Valerie, is one step away from leaving for good. But when Pete lucks into a crumbling mansion in the nation’s capital, he makes a bold plan to start a school under his own roof where students and teachers will be equals. Replete with the wry humor, human insight, and cultural resonance that characterizes Shreve’s critically acclaimed fiction, When the White House Was Ours will be a joy to anyone whose family has lived through an idealistic time and ended up in an era of compromise.

Orhan's Inheritance


Aline Ohanesian - 2015
    When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal—a man who built a dynasty out of making kilim rugs—is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal’s will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan’s grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal’s ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda’s past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built.  Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan’s Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations. “Aline Ohanesian draws from her family’s own dark history to create a tender, powerful story of love and reclamation. Orhan’s Inheritance is a breathtaking and expansive work of historical fiction and proof that the past can sometimes rewrite the future.” —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train

The Docklands Girls


June Tate - 2016
    Working as a supervisor on a production line for planes, Hildy believes she is doing her part to help with the war effort. But troubles at home, with her dependent and overly-protective mother, make it harder for her to findhappiness as she hides her relationship with an American GI.Meanwhile, Cora has lost both her parents in the Blitz and is still reeling from the devastating loss. Along with her friend, Belle, the two young women turn to the dark streets of Southampton to work on the game, wishing to raise enough money for a new beginning elsewhere and put their pasts behind them.For all three women, the war provides challenges and hardships that they will only emerge from by maintaining courage, strength and, above all, hope.

For The Love Of A Sister


Meg Hutchinson - 2005
    When her sister Eden visits her, she is sent away with a stinging slap, to prevent her from catching the predatory eye of Myra's mistress. Puzzled by her sister's behaviour, she sets off to make her way in the world.

The Wednesday Sisters


Meg Waite Clayton - 2008
    Then one evening, as they gather to watch the Miss America Pageant, Linda admits that she aspires to write a novel herself, and the Wednesday Sisters Writing Society is born. The five women slowly, and often reluctantly, start filling journals, sliding pages into typewriters, and sharing their work. In the process, they explore the changing world around them: the Vietnam War, the race to the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they believe about themselves. At the same time, the friends carry one another through more personal changes—ones brought about by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success. With one another’s support and encouragement, the Wednesday Sisters begin to embrace who they are and what they hope to become, welcoming readers to experience, along with them, the power of dreaming big.

Leaving Lucy Pear


Anna Solomon - 2016
    The unwed daughter of wealthy Jewish industrialists and a gifted pianist bound for Radcliffe, Bea plans to leave her shameful secret behind and make a fresh start. Ten years later, Prohibition is in full swing, post-WWI America is in the grips of rampant xenophobia, and Bea's hopes for her future remain unfulfilled. She returns to her uncle’s house, seeking a refuge from her unhappiness. But she discovers far more when the rum-running manager of the local quarry inadvertently reunites her with Emma Murphy, the headstrong Irish Catholic woman who has been raising Bea's abandoned child—now a bright, bold, cross-dressing girl named Lucy Pear, with secrets of her own.In mesmerizing prose, award-winning author Anna Solomon weaves together an unforgettable group of characters as their lives collide on the New England coast. Set against one of America's most turbulent decades, Leaving Lucy Pear delves into questions of class, freedom, and the meaning of family, establishing Anna Solomon as one of our most captivating storytellers.

Eternal Life


Dara Horn - 2018
    Her recent troubles—widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son—are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, and hundreds of children. In the 2,000 years since she made a spiritual bargain to save the life of her first son back in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, she’s tried everything to free herself, and only one other person in the world understands: a man she once loved passionately, who has been stalking her through the centuries, convinced they belong together forever.But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren—consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering—develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive.

A Whisper To The Living


Ruth Hamilton - 1989
    When the doctor finally got through the nine-foot drifts of snow, mother and daughter were in a pretty bad way, but both the new-born Annie and her exhausted mother - a spinner in the cotton mill - were fighters, tough and determined not to let the world knock them down.They needed to be tough, for when Annie's father was killed in the war, Nancy married again. And Eddie Higson - once he'd courted and won Nancy Byrne - turned into a nightmare of a man, terrorizing the young girl with one secret evil after another.She had two friends who helped her through these bad years. Martin Cullen, rough, uneducated, loyal, who knew he wasn't good enough for her, and David Pritchard, the doctor who had supported her through the worst times and who had bad problems of his own.Together they watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, desperately fighting the legacy of her childhood.