Book picks similar to
In My Wildest Dreams by Ellen Tanner Marsh


historical-romance
historical-fiction
19th-century
historical-romance-have-read

Homeland


John Jakes - 1993
    At the dawn of a new century, from the uncontrolled chaos of Chicago's infamous Pullman Strike, to the birth of the moving picture, and the bloody carnage of the Spanish-American War, the immigrant Crown family raced with the currents of a changing world and their own desires, to claim America as their own.

To Capture What We Cannot Keep


Beatrice Colin - 2016
    But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Émile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife. As the Eiffel Tower rises, a marvel of steel and air and light, the subject of extreme controversy and a symbol of the future, Cait and Émile must decide what their love is worth. Seamlessly weaving historical detail and vivid invention, Beatrice Colin evokes the revolutionary time in which Cait and Émile live - one of corsets and secret trysts, duels and Bohemian independence, strict tradition and Impressionist experimentation. To Capture What We Cannot Keep, stylish, provocative, and shimmering, raises probing questions about a woman's place in that world, the overarching reach of class distinctions, and the sacrifices love requires of us all.

The Quality of Love


Rosie Harris - 2009
    Studying hard to please them, she earns a place at Cardiff University. Here she is swept off her feet by handsome Gwyn Roberts, but when she becomes pregnant her parents are devastated and turn her from their door. All Gwyn and Sarah can afford are two squalid rooms in the infamous slums of Cardiff and Sarah soon realises she's made a terrible mistake. Gwyn becomes increasingly distant and when the baby dies in infancy, he leaves Sarah with little choice but to fall on her parents' mercy. But just when Sarah is starting to pull her life back together again, she is drawn to the charms of Stefan Vaughan and finds herself in trouble once more...

The Lady Chosen & A Gentleman's Honor


Stephanie Laurens - 2003
    In response, they create the Bastion Club, a retreat for exchanging intelligence and escaping from matchmaking mamas. Lady Chosen is the story of Tristan, fourth Earl of Trentham and Leonora Carling, a neighbor to the club. In A Gentleman's Honor (book 2), Lord Anthony Blake meets the widow Alicia Carrington at a soiree just after she has stumbled upon a dead body.

Of Moths and Butterflies


V.R. Christensen - 2011
    Gina Shaw is a servant in his uncle’s house. Clearly out of place in the position in which she has been discovered, she becomes a source of fascination . . . and curiosity. A girl with a blighted past and a fortune she deems a curse, Gina has lowered herself in order to find escape from her family and their scheming designs. But when she is found, the stakes suddenly become dire. All Gina wants is the freedom to live her life as she would wish. All her aunts want is the money that comes with her. But there is more than one way to trap an insect. An arranged marriage might turn out profitable for more parties than one. Mr. Hamilton is about to make the acquisition of a lifetime. But will the price be worth it? Can a woman captured and acquired learn to love the man who has bought her?

Jane Fairweather: A Madcap Regency Romance (The Fairweather Sisters Book 4)


Anya Wylde - 2021
    

Lessons in French


Laura Kinsale - 2010
    In this, her first new book in five years, she delivers a poignant, funny, sexy, Regency romance sure to delight her many fans and attract a whole new readership.Trevelyan and Callie are childhood sweethearts with a taste for adventure, until the fateful day her father discovers them embracing in the carriage house and, in a furious frenzy, drives Trevelyan away in disgrace. Nine long, lonely years later, Trevelyan returns. Callie discovers that he can still make her blood race and fill her life with excitement, but he can't give her the one thing she wants more than anything--himself.For Trevelyan, Callie is a spark of light in a world of darkness and deceit. Before he can bear to say his last goodbyes, he's determined to sweep her into one last, fateful adventure, just for the two of them.

Look, Listen and Love


Barbara Cartland - 1977
    So when Lady Rothley's womanly wiles attract an invitation from none other than the Duke of Chevingham to join him in the South of France, it's a Godsend. At last - the prospect of a handsome, aristocratic suitor for Tempera's Belle-m re who would keep them both in the style to which they would dearly love to be re-acquainted! To arrive without a lady's maid is inconceivable - to afford one impossible. So Tempera escorts her Belle-m re in the guise of a servant and attempts to coach her in fine art, the Duke's consuming passion. While her stepmother flirts with C te D'Azur society Tempera contents herself with capturing the local flora's beauty on canvas. And when the flair she inherited from her father captivates and mystifies the magnificent Duke, something stirs in Tempera that she has never felt before. Is it love? Or is it betrayal?

Bellfield Hall: or, the observations of Miss Dido Kent


Anna Dean - 2008
    An engagement party is taking place for Mr Richard Montague, son of wealthy landowner Sir Edgar Montague, and his fiancee Catherine. During a dance with his beloved, a strange thing happens: a man appears at Richard's shoulder and appears to communicate something to him without saying a word. Instantly breaking off the engagement, he rushes off to speak to his father, never to be seen again. Distraught with worry, Catherine sends for her spinster aunt, Miss Dido Kent, who has a penchant for solving mysteries. Catherine pleads with her to find her fiance and to discover the truth behind his disappearance. It's going to take a lot of logical thinking to untangle the complex threads of this multi-layered mystery, and Miss Dido Kent is just the woman to do it.

A Well Pleasured Lady


Christina Dodd - 1997
    In the ten years since, she had abandoned her youthful impetuousness and transformed herself into a housekeeper -- disguising her beauty beneath a servant's dour clothing determined to conquer the passions of the past.But Sebastian Durant, Viscount Whitfield, did recognize her as a Fairchild, one of his family's bitter enemies. When he demanded her help recovering a stolen diary, she dared not refuse him. When he proposed they masquerade as a betrothed couple, loyalty forced her to agree. And when the restraint between them shattered and pleasure became an obsession, Mary had to trust a powerful man who could send her to the gallows ... or love her through eternity.

Lone Eagle


Cassie Edwards - 1998
    When her horse goes lame, she steals one from a nearby Crow Indian village, only to be caught by its owner, the proud Lone Eagle. But the warrior's anger quickly turns to passion for this willful woman, and her own desire for escape and freedom turns into something else entirely....

Catrina's Return: Victorian saga


AnneMarie Brear - 2012
    A life altering event led Catrina Davies to hide from her family and society. Alone in The Highlands she exists in a lonely world cared for only by her savior, a kind old gentleman. When she receives a surprise visitor, Travis Millard, the man she used to love, her head and heart are thrown into turmoil. Travis is determined to save her from this poor life and return her to her family where she belongs. No one is more surprised than he when she agrees to marry him. When Catrina arrives back at her family estate, Davmoor Court in Yorkshire, she is stunned to see the changes. While her father clings to life, Davmoor is nearly ruined by her brother's gambling obsession, and there is something strange about his new wife. As Catrina adjusts to her regained position in society and being with Travis, her marriage comes under attack from Travis's grandmother, who has her own secrets and reason for loathing the Davies family. When one of her brother's adversaries comes to stake his claim on the estate, the resulting chaos threatens not only Catrina's home, but the very lives of those she loves the most. Can she find the strength to fight once more for the right to be happy?​

An Important Family


Dorothy Eden - 1982
    . . and the woman who uncovers their dark secretFor Kate O’Connor, desperate to escape her tragic past in England, the opportunity to immigrate to New Zealand with Sir John Devenish and his wife and daughter is a chance to start over.Exhilarated by this wild, primitive place on the other side of the world, Kate’s happiness is marred by a love she knows is taboo. When a sudden and suspicious death throws her life into turmoil, she begins to uncover the real reason the Devenish family left England.From a grand townhouse in London to a sheep farm in New Zealand, An Important Family, which was hailed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as “a compulsive page turner,” is the story of a country in the midst of colonization—a transformation that parallels Kate O’Connor’s own rite of passage into womanhood as she finds her future in a magnificent new land.

No One's Girl


Rosie Goodwin - 2006
    Though she seems a devoted daughter, his cruelty has left her afraid to love. After his sudden death she becomes a virtual recluse, leaving her small farm only to sell the fruit and vegetables she grows. But everything changes on a dark, cold night when she finds a young runaway hiding near her cottage. Alice, too, is unloved and in pain, and as the pair become friends, Jane begins to wonder whether she could offer the girl the loving home she's never had. But dark secrets in both their pasts threaten everything Jane hopes for...

Under the Wide and Starry Sky


Nancy Horan - 2014
    Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her brood repair to a quiet artists' colony in France where she can recuperate. There she meets Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who is instantly smitten with the earthy, independent and opinionated belle Americaine.A woman ahead of her time, Fanny does not immediately take to the young lawyer who longs to devote his life to literature, and who would eventually write such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson's charms. The two begin a fierce love affair, marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness, which spans decades as they travel the world for the sake of his health. Eventually they settled in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried underneath the epitaph: Under the wide and starry sky,Dig the grave and let me lie.Glad did I live and gladly die,And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me:Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,And the hunter home from the hill.(Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson)