Book picks similar to
Samuel Richardson by Jocelyn Harris
18th-century
alice
long-18th-century
The Complete Alice & the Hunting of the Snark
Lewis Carroll - 1987
The Real Rebecca
Anna Carey - 2011
Again.I didn’t mind her writing boring books for grown-ups. But now she’s written one about an awful girl my age and everyone thinks it’s me!Including the boy who delivers our newspapers, aka Paperboy, aka the most gorgeous boy in the whole world. Oh, the shame!And if that wasn’t awful enough, the biggest pain in my class wants to use my ‘fame’ to get herself on the reality show ‘My Big Birthday Bash’.I’ve just got to show everyone the REAL Rebecca. But how?
The Gathering Dawn
Sally Laity - 1994
Barely does she set foot on American soil before she is embroiled in the schemes and intrigues against the British Crown...Daniel Haynes is a bold and courageous post-rider, whose Christian beliefs more him to work secretly in the fight for freedom from England... and whose revolutionary activities put him in constant danger... Amid the conflict and drama of the Colonies in uprising, these two people meet, drawn together by circumstance and unexpected emotions. But tragedy and treachery separate them, and only their faith in God - and a miracle - can bring them together again. A gripping drama of love and triumph is set against the colorful backdrop of pre-Revolutionary America.
Touching Distance
Rebecca Abrams - 2008
After ten years’ training in the great medical schools of Europe, Alec Gordon has returned to Scotland to take up the post of physician in the Aberdeen Dispensary. Alec has ambitious plans for modernizing medical practice in the town, starting with the local midwives, whose ignorance and old-fashioned methods appal him.But Alec’s dreams of progress are thrown into disarray when a mysterious disease suddenly strikes the town, attacking and killing every newly delivered mother for miles around. Alec alone recognizes it as childbed fever, a disease more deadly than the plague, a condition that has baffled the greatest physicians of the age, an illness with no known cause and no known cure.Desperate to save his patients’ lives, Alec sets out on an astonishing medical quest to conquer the disease. But while Alec struggles to find solutions that lie far in the future, his wife Elizabeth is increasingly lost in the past, prey to terrifying memories of her childhood in Antigua. As she knows and he will learn, some diseases lie beyond the reach of reason.Based on a true story, Touching Distance is a stunning historical novel that brings to life a fascinating period in world history, exploring the tragic limitations of knowledge and the deep-seated tension between reason and passion in the Age of Enlightenment.
The Smuggler's Gambit
Sara Whitford - 2015
When 17-year-old Adam Fletcher is forced into an apprenticeship, he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a smuggling war. Soon, he’s forced to make a tough decision. Will he agree to become a spy performing a civic duty to the Crown? Or will he risk everything—possibly even putting his own family in danger—to protect his new master? Secrets will be revealed, loyalties will be questioned, betrayals will be uncovered, and a young man’s character will be put to the test in ... The Smuggler’s Gambit.
Lo stregone dei venti
Miki Monticelli - 2010
She discovers that the lamp is the handle to a secret door that lets her walk into the picture, and right into the middle of a war between a wizard and a sorceress.
I, Hogarth
Michael Dean - 2012
Through Hogarth's lifelong marriage to Jane Thornhill, his inability to have children, his time as one of England's best portrait painters, his old age and unfortunate dip into politics, and his untimely death, I, Hogarth is the remarkable story told through the artist's eyes. Michael Dean blends Hogarth's life and work into a rich and satisfying narrative, recommended for fans of Hilary Mantel and Peter Ackroyd.
Wicked New Orleans: The Dark Side of the Big Easy
Troy Taylor - 2010
Those first pioneering citizens of the Big Easy were thieves, vagabonds and criminals of all kinds. By the time Louisiana fell under American control, New Orleans had become a city of debauchery and corruption camouflaged by decadence. It was also considered one of the country's most dangerous cities, with a reputation of crime and loose morals. Rampant gambling and prostitution were the norm in nineteenth-century New Orleans, and over one-third of today's French Quarter was considered a hotbed of sin. Tales in this volume include that of the notorious Axeman who plagued the streets of the Crescent City in the early 1900s and Kate Townsend, a prostitute who was murdered by her own lover, a man who later was awarded her inheritance.
Before the Storm
Melanie Clegg - 2012
Although they initially take the city of light by storm, they soon discover that the glittering facade of social success hides a multitude of sins and iniquities while their own dark secrets could well destroy everything that they have worked so hard to achieve...Based on The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, Before the Storm is a tale of passion, betrayal and true love set against the backdrop of the opulent and often treacherous worlds of Georgian London, Versailles and Revolutionary Paris.‘It was a blissfully warm day. The worst of the heat wave was now over and a light flower scented breeze blew leaves into the pavilion where the party drowsily lazed against cushions, idling listening as Eugène d’Aigueville played his guitar, his eyes fixed on Venetia, who smiled lazily back at him.Comte Edmond reclined in between Phoebe and Eliza, none of them spoke but the air around them shimmered with tension as both girls subtly did their best to claim his attention for themselves. Phoebe had long since realised that she was fighting a losing battle though and that although he very much enjoyed flirting with her, it was Eliza that he looked for first whenever he walked into a room.Eliza did not share this view though and kept thinking about Venetia’s wedding day when Phoebe, radiant with sexual confidence had told her that she wouldn’t let her chastity stand in the way of making a good match for herself. She curled her hands into fists every time Comte Edmond and her friend left the room together and tried not to think about what they might be doing. He’d tried to kiss her once, but she’d shoved him away. Perhaps that was a mistake? She looked across at him now as he gazed up at Phoebe and her heart sank.‘Who is that woman?’ Phoebe said suddenly, shielding her blue eyes as she looked back towards the house.Venetia followed her gaze and gave a nervous laugh. ‘It’s your landlady, Eliza,’ she said, with a quick look at Edmond, who immediately sat up and automatically began to retie his loosened cravat. ‘Madame de Saint-Georges.’They all stood up and instinctively, Eliza, Phoebe and Venetia stood close together as Corisande de Saint-Georges hurried across the lawn towards them. She had dressed to impress in a shimmering, rich lace trimmed blue and white striped silk gown, with wide skirts pulled back from flounced flower sprigged white silk underskirts. A huge muslin fichu was arranged around her shoulders and on her elaborately curled, ringleted and backcombed powdered hair was a vast ribbon and flower bedecked white straw hat.‘Goodness me, she really means business,’ Venetia murmured as they watched this vision of elegance and high fashion approach. She looked back over her shoulder at Edmond, who was standing uneasily behind them, looking as if he desperately wished he could run away. ‘I wonder what she wants?’
D'Alembert's Principle
Andrew Crumey - 1996
Cunningly structured and as satisfying as an intricate piece of clockwork, it plays with narrative, revels in ideas and succeeds in being both fey and sharp, detached and compassionate. At a time when fiction gives all to the tired virtual realities of sex and violence, internets, Agas and middle-class Angst, it is a brilliant reminder of the power of the imagination to surprise, delight and open windows."David Coward in The Times Literary Supplement"Crumey does produce excellent post-modernist novels, each as concentric and cunning as the others. This is a triptych starting with D'Alembert penning his imagined memoirs. The literary equivalent of an Escher, the story has no identifiable end or beginning. Clever, entertaining, engaging
The Georgian Rake: An intriguing historical romance
Alice Chetwynd Ley - 1977
An impetuous heroine uncovers a shocking scandal…
1760, England
Amanda Twyford, confronted unexpectedly with the unwelcome news of her elder sister Isabella’s engagement to notorious rake Charles Barsett, is determined to put a stop to the impending nuptials. Amanda immediately takes a dislike to cold, haughty Charles, and she is sure Isabella’s heart lies with another… As she meddles more in their affairs, Amanda discovers that dark rumours surround Charles’ reputation. And they all seem to be connected to the secretive Medmenham Abbey. But as Amanda becomes more involved in protecting her sister’s heart, does she risk losing control over her own…?
What is really going on at the mysterious Abbey? And what connection has Charles Barsett with that centre of ill-repute?
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction…
THE GEORGIAN RAKE is a thrilling adventure story by Alice Chetwynd Ley: a traditional British, pre Regency romance novel with a twist of suspense and mystery, set in Georgian England. ‘Ley tosses in little hints and glimpses of what is really going on in her characters’ heads rather than let every thing wait until the end when it blows in out of the blue. This one is a Georgian era which is one of my favorites.’ – Dear Author It is a fast-paced story, well plotted and really well written that made me "turn" the pages impatiently because I just had to know what would happen! I really loved this book and can definitely recommend it! - Cup of Tea and Book Blog
Daily Light On The Daily Path
Samuel Bagster - 1789
This highly principled and religiously minded bookshop owner gathered his large family together daily for reading God's Word, testing their knowledge by connecting the day's verses with other passages, and praying over how it could be applied. It was from this practice of worship that the Bagster family compiled the material for Daily Light on the Daily Path.It is said that this daily devotional book is the most popular of all time. It has touched hundreds of thousands of Christians to the remotest corners of the world with the biblical message of comfort and help. Originally printed in the 1800s, this work is timeless because each reading is a connection of Scripture verses centered around a theme. Crossway is delighted to re-release this classic book in the beautiful and clear language of the English Standard Version.
The Midnight Court
Brian Merriman - 2006
This extended satiric poem assesses the growing economic, political, and familial constraints of late 18th-century Catholic Ireland under British colonial rule, while subversively playing on the tradition of the aisling (or vision) poem in which a beautiful woman represents Ireland’s threatened sovereignty.At the beginning of The Midnight Court, a dreadful female envoy from the fairies appears in a dream to the unmarried poet. She summons him before the court of Queen Aoibheall in order to answer charges of wasting his manhood while women are dying for want of love. He listens to complaints that vary from the celibacy of the clergy to marriages performed between old and young for purely economic reasons. In all their bawdy tales, the female courtiers praise fertility, as well as sexual fulfillment, and condemn the conventions of the day. At last the Queen pronounces judgment on the poet, who awakens as he is being severely chastised by all of the women of the court.While containing many insights into 18th-century social conditions, The Midnight Court is also an exuberant, even jaunty work of the comic imagination. As the translator Ciaran Carson states in his foreword: “The protagonists of the ‘Court,’ including ‘Merriman’ himself, are ghosts, summoned into being by language; they are figments of the imagination. In the ‘Court’ the language itself is continually interrogated and Merriman is the great illusionist, continually spiriting words into another dimension.”
Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon
Tabitha Gilman Tenney - 1801
Davidson, who places the novel in an historical and literary perspective. Ranging from serious cautionary tales about moral corruption to amusing and trenchant social satire, these books provide today's reader with a unique window into the earliest American popular fiction and way of life.First published in 1801, Female Quixotism is a boisterous, rollicking anti-romance and literary satire. It takes place in the fictional village of L---, Pennsylvania, where its central character Dorcas Sheldon—who styles herself the romantic "Dorcasina"—sets out on a quixotic quest for the kind of romantic love portrayed in her favorite English novels. Having rejected the prosaic yet honorable advances of her first suitor, "Lysander," Dorcasina narrowly escapes marriage to a series of unscrupulous rogues interested mostly in her considerable fortune. Moving from one misadventure to another, the heroine's journey ends in a lonely old age bereft of romantic illusion.Female Quixotism was written during a period of self-definition for the fledgling American republic, and offers a telling glimpse of gender, race, and class issues—as volatile then as they are today. Its woman's-eye view of the life and literature of the age provides a tragicomic parody of the limited choices available to women in a society dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal.
A Dance Worth Dancing
J.L. Long
It can heal, it can hurt and it can be astonishing. For Rori and Colt, it is all of these things. Rori is a single mom, looking for love in all the wrong places. Until one fateful night her hero comes to her without her even knowing it. She doesn’t want to give in to what her heart tells her. She has too much at stake to risk a dance on the wild side. Colt isn’t the type to settle down. He’s been there done that and got left high and dry. He throws himself into his work and living the simple life. Or as simple as he can until the demons come calling. Can they pull through when it seems like the universe is doing everything in its power to pull them apart? Can love really conquer all?