Book picks similar to
Alexandrian Saga by Thomas K. Carpenter


historical-fiction
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historical-mystery
v-middle-east

The Stockholm Octavo


Karen Engelmann - 2012
    He is a true man of the Town--a drinker, card player, and contented bachelor--until one evening when Mrs. Sofia Sparrow, a fortune-teller and proprietor of an exclusive gaming parlor, shares with him a vision she has had: a golden path that will lead him to love and connection. She lays an Octavo for him, a spread of eight cards that augur the eight individuals who can help him realize this vision--if he can find them.

The Smuggler's Daughter


Kerry Barrett - 2020
    Only she can save them.1799Emily Moon lives with her mother in an inn on a clifftop in the darkest reaches of Cornwall. After her father mysteriously disappears, her mother finds solace at the bottom of a bottle, and the only way to keep afloat is to turn a blind eye to the smugglers who send signals from the clifftops. But Emily knows that the smugglers killed her father to ensure his silence, and she will not let his murder go unpunished…Present dayAfter a case ends in tragedy, police officer Phoebe Bellingham flees to Cornwall for a summer of respite. But rather than the sunny Cornwall of her dreams, she finds herself on storm-beaten cliffs, surrounded by stories of ghosts and smugglers – and the mysterious Emily Moon, who vanished without a trace over two centuries ago. As rain lashes down around her, Phoebe determines to find the truth behind the rumours – but what she uncovers will put herself in danger too…A haunting and moving timeslip novel perfect for fans of The Girl in the Letter, The Forgotten Village and The Witchfinder’s Sister.

Wrong One


Varun Vashist - 2015
    However, he started sensing something wrong with everyone in the wedding party. Kiara shrugged it off as Jake being paranoid, but Jake persisted. Is Jake going to find out anything or is it a mere hunch? Or Kiara's fear of Jake creating a trouble in the marriage will come true?

This Magnificent Dappled Sea


David Biro - 2020
    His only hope for survival is a bone marrow transplant. After an exhaustive search, a match turns up three thousand miles away in the form of a most unlikely donor: Joseph Neiman, a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, who is suffering from a debilitating crisis of faith. As Luca’s young nurse, Nina Vocelli, risks her career and races against time to help save the spirited redheaded boy, she uncovers terrible secrets from World War II—secrets that reveal how a Catholic child could have Jewish genes.Can inheritance be transcended by accidents of love? That is the question at the heart of This Magnificent Dappled Sea, a novel that challenges the idea of identity and celebrates the ties that bind us together.

Angela Marchmont Mysteries: Books 1-3 - The Murder at Sissingham Hall, The Mystery at Underwood House, The Treasure at Poldarrow Point


Clara Benson - 2016
    But in the dead of night Sir Neville is murdered. Who did it? As suspicion falls on each of the house guests in turn, Knox finds himself faced with deception and betrayal on all sides, and only the enigmatic Angela Marchmont seems to offer a solution to the mystery. This 1920s whodunit will delight all fans of traditional country house murder stories. THE MYSTERY AT UNDERWOOD HOUSE (Book 2) Old Philip Haynes was never happier than when his family were at each other's throats. Even after his death the terms of his will ensured they would keep on feuding. But now three people are dead and the accusations are flying. Can there really be a murderer in the family? Torn between friendship and duty, Angela Marchmont must find out the truth before the killer can strike again. THE TREASURE AT POLDARROW POINT (Book 3) When Angela Marchmont goes to Cornwall on doctor's orders she is looking forward to a nice rest and nothing more exciting than a little sea-bathing. But her plans for a quiet holiday are dashed when she is caught up in the hunt for a diamond necklace which, according to legend, has been hidden in the old smugglers' house at Poldarrow Point for over a century. Aided by the house's elderly owner, an irrepressible twelve-year-old, and a handsome Scotland Yard detective, Angela soon finds herself embroiled in the most perplexing of mysteries. Who is the author of the anonymous letters? Why is someone breaking into the house at night? And is it really true that a notorious jewel-thief is after the treasure too? Angela must use all her powers of deduction to solve the case and find the necklace—before someone else does.

The Bookseller


Cynthia Swanson - 2015
    . . Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn’t quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.Then the dreams begin.Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It's everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted—but it only exists when she sleeps.Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?

Leaving Berlin


Joseph Kanon - 2014
    Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors.Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the cross-hairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment — to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? At betrayal? Survival? Murder?Joseph Kanon’s compelling thriller is a love story that brilliantly brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.

Napoleon's Pyramids


William Dietrich - 2007
    The first book in Dietrich’s fabulously fun New York Times bestselling series, Napoleon’s Pyramids follows the irrepressible Gage—a brother in spirit to George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman—as he travels with Napoleon’s expedition across the burning Egyptian desert in an attempt to solve a 6,000 year old riddle with the help of a mysterious medallion. Here is superior adventure fiction in the spirit of Jack London, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and H. Rider Haggard, and fans of their acclaimed successors—James Rollins, David Liss, Steve Berry, Kate Mosse—will certainly want to get to know Ethan Gage.

Mask of Duplicity


Julia Brannan - 2015
    However, Beth's hopes of a quiet life are dashed when Richard, dissatisfied with his meagre inheritance and desperate for promotion, decides to force her into a marriage for his military gain. And he will stop at nothing to get his way.Beth is coerced into a reconciliation with her noble cousins in order to marry well and escape her brutal brother. She is then thrown into the glittering social whirl of Georgian high society and struggles to conform. The effeminate but witty socialite Sir Anthony Peters offers to ease her passage into society and she is soon besieged by suitors eager to get their hands on her considerable dowry. Beth, however, wants love and passion for herself, and to break free from the artificial life she is growing to hate. She finds herself plunged into a world where nothing is as it seems and everyone hides behind a mask. Can she trust the people professing to care for her?The first in the series about the fascinating lives of beautiful Beth Cunningham, her family and friends during the tempestuous days leading up to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which attempted to overthrow the Hanoverian King George II and restore the Stuarts to the British throne. Join the rebellion of one woman and her fight for survival in... The Jacobite Chronicles.

The Clockmaker's Daughter


Kate Morton - 2018
    The truth about that summer, no one else knows.In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing; and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins.Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist’s sketchbook containing the drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

The Plague Lord


Paul Doherty - 2002
    Of his many ministers and advisors, his favourite is a foreigner - the Venetian Marco Polo, whose understanding of the language and etiquette of the court is exemplary, and whose advice is widely sought. So when a flood of portents, strange visions and ghastly murders occur throughout the kingdom and even across the oceans, Marco's wisdom is called upon. The leaders of a demonic sect have disappeared from the desert to which they were banished, and Kublai Khan believes that they will attempt to release the Plague Lord himself, and open the gates of Hell...

Murder in the Seventh Cavalry


Robert Broomall - 2001
    Lysander goes undercover as an enlisted man to find the killer, who is believed to have been one of the officer’s men. He discovers that the vaunted Seventh Cavalry is not the elite regiment that the papers make it out to be, and that a large number of its officers and enlisted man despise their famous commander. Lysander reluctantly teams up with newspaper reporter Verity Winslow. Lysander and Verity mix like oil and water, but Verity has information that’s important to the case and she won’t share it unless Lysander agrees to let her help. As the two of them dig deeper, they start to believe that Custer may not want them to find the real killer . . .

Florence and Giles / The Turn of the Screw


John Harding - 2011
    In a remote and crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence is neglected by her guardian uncle and banned from reading. Left to her own devices she devours books in secret and talks to herself - and narrates this, her story - in a unique language of her own invention. By night, she sleepwalks the corridors like one of the old house's many ghosts and is troubled by a recurrent dream in which a mysterious woman appears to threaten her younger brother Giles. Sometimes Florence doesn't sleepwalk at all, but simply pretends to so she can roam at will and search the house for clues to her own baffling past.After the sudden violent death of the children's first governess, a second teacher, Miss Taylor, arrives, and immediately strange phenomena begin to occur. Florence becomes convinced that the new governess is a vengeful and malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against this powerful supernatural enemy, and without any adult to whom she can turn for help, Florence must use all her intelligence and ingenuity to both protect her little brother and preserve her private world.Inspired by and in the tradition of Henry James' s The Turn of the Screw, Florence & Giles is a gripping gothic page-turner told in a startlingly different and wonderfully captivating narrative voice.

Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties


Renée Rosen - 2013
    Bobbing her hair and showing her knees, the lipsticked beauty dazzles, doing the Charleston in nightclubs and earning the nickname “Dollface.” As the ultimate flapper, Vera captures the attention of two high rollers, a handsome nightclub owner and a sexy gambler. On their arms, she gains entrée into a world filled with bootleg bourbon, wailing jazz, and money to burn. She thinks her biggest problem is choosing between them until the truth comes out. Her two lovers are really mobsters from rival gangs during Chicago’s infamous Beer Wars, a battle Al Capone refuses to lose. The heady life she’s living is an illusion resting on a bedrock of crime and violence unlike anything the country has ever seen before. When the good times come to an end, Vera becomes entangled in everything from bootlegging to murder. And as men from both gangs fall around her, Vera must put together the pieces of her shattered life, as Chicago hurtles toward one of the most infamous days in its history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Legacy: A Justice Belstrang Mystery


John Pilkington - 2020
    He locates the youth in Bedlam asylum, silent and starving himself. When he tries to free Jessop, he is warned off the case by a politic lawyer, Anstis. Soon after, Belstrang finds himself drugged, robbed and falsely imprisoned.Once released Belstrang persists in his investigation, but he is thwarted at every turn: unseen forces are at work who seemingly want Thomas Jessop to die. When Belstrang confronts Anstis, even he turns up dead.The trail grows murkier by the hour, drawing Belstrang into the fear-ridden Catholic underworld - until he uncovers a plan with its roots in the Gunpowder Plot of more than a decade ago. Young Thomas, an embittered papist, was being used in a desperate scheme to mark the anniversary of the Plot. The scheme failed – and now the conspirators seem eager to cover up the whole business.But Belstrang’s a stubborn man. With the help of ex-soldier Daniel Oldrigg, he sticks doggedly to his purpose - and stumbles on the real causes of the Anniversary Plot, which stem from the very heart of a corrupt government.Belstrang must uncover the truth, or die trying.