Book picks similar to
High Towers by Thomas B. Costain
historical-fiction
fiction
historical
canada
Lydia Bailey
Kenneth Roberts - 1947
This 1947 outing features Albion Hamlin, who comes to Boston in 1800 to defend a man accused of violating the Alien and Sedition Act. In a whirlwind of action, Hamlin is jailed, then escapes to Haiti in search of his client's daughter, Lydia Bailey, with whom he has fallen in love simply by gazing at her portrait. Roberts is known for his historical accuracy, so this should please fans of the genre.
The Virgin Blue
Tracy Chevalier - 1997
When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own. Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family’s French ancestry. As the novel unfolds—alternating between Ella’s story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier—a common thread emerges that unexpectedly links the two women. Part detective story, part historical fiction, The Virgin Blue is a novel of passion and intrigue that compels readers to the very last page.
The Wolves of Andover
Kathleen Kent - 2010
Thomas Carrier labors for the family and is known both for his immense strength and size and mysterious past. The two begin a courtship that suits their independent natures, with Thomas slowly revealing the story of his part in the English Civil War. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger is ever present, whether it be from the assassins sent from London to kill the executioner of Charles I or the wolves -- in many forms -- who hunt for blood. A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent's ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history.
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
Jim Fergus - 1998
government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.
Bellefleur
Joyce Carol Oates - 1980
They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.
The Saracen Blade
Frank Yerby - 1952
CRUSADER... LOVERPietro di Donati, son of a 13th-century Sicilian peasant, who was born at almost the exact same moment as the Emperor Frederick. Their stories are linked and backdrop of the Children’s and Albigensian Crusades. Pietro slashed his way across across the teeming, violent world and carved out his destiny with the fury of a man possessed - by God or Satan, none knew which. He was a man of many enemies and many loves, a man born to battle who mocked at death, a man for whom no danger was too great if it brought him nearer the power he craved or the women he lusted for....
Anna and the King of Siam
Margaret Landon - 1943
A young widow and mother, her services were engaged in the 1860's by King Mongkut of Siam to help him communicate with foreign governments and be the tutor to his children and favored concubines. Stepping off the steamer from London, Anna found herself in an exotic land she could have only dreamed of lush landscape of mystic faiths and curious people, and king's palace bustling with royal pageantry, ancient custom, and harems. One of her pupils, the young prince Chulalongkorn, was particularly influenced by Leonowens and her Western ideals. He learned about Abraham Lincoln and the tenets of democracy from her, and years later he would become Siam's most progressive king. He guided the country's transformation from a feudal state to a modern society, abolshing slavery and making many other radical reforms.Weaving meticulously researched facts with beautifully imagined scenes, Margret Landon recreates an unforgettable portrait of life in a forgotten extotic land. Written more than fifty years ago, and translated into dozens of languages, Anna and the King of Siam (the inspiration for the magical play and film The King and I)continues to delight and enchant readers around the world.
Slammerkin
Emma Donoghue - 2001
In 18th-century England, Mary's shrewd instincts will get her only so far, and she despairs of the plans made for her to carve out a trade as a seamstress or a maid. Unwilling to bend to such a destiny, Mary strikes out on a painful, fateful journey all her own. Inspired by the obscure historical figure Mary Saunders, Slammerkin is a provocative, graphic tale and a rich feast of an historical novel. Author Emma Donoghue probes the gap between a young girl's quest for freedom and a better life and the shackles that society imposes on her. "Never give up your liberty."
Rules of Civility
Amor Towles - 2011
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.
Captains and the Kings
Taylor Caldwell - 1972
It was the early 1850's and he was a penniless immigrant, an orphan cast on a hostile shore to make a home for himself and his younger brother and infant sister. Some seventy years later, from his deathbed, Joseph Armagh last glimpsed his adopted land from the gleaming windows of a palatial estate. A multi-millionaire, one of the most powerful and feared men, Joseph Armagh had indeed found a home. CAPTAINS AND KINGS is the story of the price that was paid for it in the consuming, single-minded determination of a man clawing his way to the top; in the bitter-sweet bliss of the love of a beautiful woman; in the almost too-late enjoyment of extraordinary children; and in the curse which used the hand of fate to strike in the very face of success itself.Once again, Taylor Caldwell has looked into America's roistering past as a setting for a drama of the consequences of savage ambition - and its meaning then and now.
Before Green Gables
Budge Wilson - 2008
This remarkable and heart-warming prequel to the classic Anne of Green Gables was specially authorized by L.M. Montgomery's heirs to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of the original novel. Before Green Gables is the story of Anne Shirley's life before her arrival at Green Gables-a heartwarming tale of a precocious child whose lively imagination and relentless spirit help her to overcome difficult circumstances and of a young girl's ability to love, learn, and above all, dream. Published in 1908, L. M. Montgomery's coming-of-age classic Anne of Green Gables has enchanted generations of readers, both children, and adults. The story of the spunky red-haired orphan from Prince Edward Island is known to millions, and copies of the eight titles in the series have never gone out of print. But when readers first meet Anne, she is eleven and has just been sent from an orphanage to meet her new family. No one ever learned the events of Anne's life before she arrived at Green Gables. Until now. For the millions of readers who devoured the Green Gables series, Before Green Gables is an irresistible treat; the account of how one of literature's most beloved heroines became the girl who captivated the world.
The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje - 1992
Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates - 1961
Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is now about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.
The Keeper of the Bees
Gene Stratton-Porter - 1925
In it a Master Bee Keeper, his bees, and the natural beauty of California restore a wounded World War I veteran to health.
Letters Across the Sea
Genevieve Graham - 2021
I had obviously hoped to see you again, to explain in person, but fate had other plans. 1933 At eighteen years old, Molly Ryan dreams of becoming a journalist, but instead she spends her days working any job she can to help her family through the Depression crippling her city. The one bright spot in her life is watching baseball with her best friend, Hannah Dreyfus, and sneaking glances at Hannah’s handsome older brother, Max. But as the summer unfolds, more and more of Hitler’s hateful ideas cross the sea and “Swastika Clubs” and “No Jews Allowed” signs spring up around Toronto, a city already simmering with mass unemployment, protests, and unrest. When tensions between the Irish and Jewish communities erupt in a riot one smouldering day in August, Molly and Max are caught in the middle, with devastating consequences for both their families. 1939 Six years later, the Depression has eased and Molly is a reporter at her local paper. But a new war is on the horizon, putting everyone she cares about most in peril. As letters trickle in from overseas, Molly is forced to confront what happened all those years ago, but is it too late to make things right? From the desperate streets of Toronto to the embattled shores of Hong Kong, Letters Across the Sea is a poignant novel about the enduring power of love to cross dangerous divides even in the darkest of times—from the #1 bestselling author of The Forgotten Home Child.