Book picks similar to
To the Fair Land by Lucienne Boyce
historical-fiction
historical-mystery
ai-or-aiba-approved
detective-murder-mystery-thriller
House of Bathory
Linda Lafferty - 2014
During bizarre nightly rites, she tortured and killed the young women she had taken on as servants. A devil, a demon, the terror of Royal Hungary—she bathed in their blood to preserve her own youth.400 years later, echoes of the Countess’s legendary brutality reach Aspen, Colorado. Betsy Path, a psychoanalyst of uncommon intuition, has a breakthrough with sullen teenager Daisy Hart. Together, they are haunted by the past, as they struggle to understand its imprint upon the present. Betsy and her troubled but perceptive patient learn the truth: the curse of the House of Bathory lives still and has the power to do evil even now.The story, brimming with palace intrigue, memorable characters intimately realized, and a wealth of evocative detail, travels back and forth between the familiar, modern world and a seventeenth-century Eastern Europe brought startlingly to life.Inspired by the actual crimes of Elizabeth Báthory, The House of Bathory is another thrilling historical fiction from Linda Lafferty (The Bloodletter’s Daughter and The Drowning Guard). The novel carries readers along with suspense and the sweep of historical events both repellent and fascinating.
The Ohana
C.W. Schutter - 2013
Her life depends on an explosive secret her grandmother has kept from their Ohana (family). As Mary Han wrestles with the toxic revelations, she must finally face the past she fought so hard to forget....
Death in the Dark Walk
Deryn Lake - 1994
Summoned to the magistrate’s office as prime suspect, Rawlings not only clears his own name but impresses Fielding so much with his power of recollection that he is asked to investigate the crime. From gaming hell to fashionable house, Rawlings follows a trail of lustful liaisons and illicit intrigue which prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the girl has had quite a past … a past with threatening secrets. Death in the Dark Walk is a richly atmospheric and compelling Georgian mystery woven around the real characters John Fielding, the phenomenal sightless magistrate known as the ‘Blind Beak’, whose Runners formed London’s early police force, and John Rawlings, the Apothecary reputed to have invented soda water.
Hail! Hail!
Harry Turtledove - 2018
Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?
Her Father's Sins
Josephine Cox - 1989
Her mam died giving birth to her, her drunken father George Kenney ignored her unless he was cursing her, and only beloved Auntie Biddy provided an anchor for the little girl. Growing up in post-war Blackburn, life could be tough when Biddy had to take in washing to make ends meet - at a time when the washing machine began to gain popularity. After Auntie Biddy's death there was only Queenie to care for the home and to earn money, and no one to protect her from the father who blamed his daughter for her mother's death.But Queenie was resilient. And in spite of hardship, she grew up tall and strikingly beautiful with her deep grey eyes and her abundant honey-coloured hair. Love, in the shape of Rick Marsden, might have released her from the burden of the drink-sodden George. But the sins of the fathers would not be easily forgotten . . .