Book picks similar to
The Aviator by Ernest K. Gann


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Sweet Carolina


Stephen Bly - 1998
    In this Heroines of the Golden West title, Carolina Cantrell goes to Montana Territory to settle her late brother's estate only to face internal conflict fueled by an explosion of emotions centered around a particularly handsome drifter that walks into her life.

Tulip Fever


Deborah Moggach - 1999
    Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist. As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach has created the rarest of novels--a lush, lyrical work of fiction that is also compulsively readable. Seldom has a novel so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion.

The Museum of Broken Promises


Elizabeth Buchan - 2019
    The Museum of Broken Promises is a beautiful, evocative love-story and a heart-breaking exploration of some of the darkest moments in European history.Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences. It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can make finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life.

Labyrinth


Kate Mosse - 2005
    Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.

Codex 632


José Rodrigues dos Santos - 2005
    As Thomas slowly begins to unravel the cryptograms and enigmas that shroud the old professor's work, he finds a code that could possibly change the course of historical scholarship:Moloc Ninundia OmastoosIn his quest to decipher this mysterious code, Thomas travels around the world from Lisbon to Rio, New York, and Jerusalem. He quickly immerses himself in the fascinating history of the discovery of the Americas, and the one enigma that no historian has ever been able to solve: the true identity of Christopher Columbus.Mesmerizing in the way in which it reinterprets history most have come to regard as fact, Codex 632 reveals what could be one of the greatest historical misinterpretations of all time.

Land of My Heart


Tracie Peterson - 2004
    Adventurers, families, outlaws...all driven west in the 1860s by a longing for endless blue sky along with wild and wide-open spaces. Tracie Peterson, from her own Montana home, paints an unforgettable portrait of this rich, rugged landscape, populated by strong and spirited characters. When Dianne Chadwick urges her family to move west to her uncle's ranch in the Montana Territory, she has no idea that her new life in the rugged frontier ~and even within her uncle's home~ will not be the idyllic adventure she expects. But first she has to survive the arduous wagon journey with the help of guide Cole Selby, whose heart seems to be as hard as the mountains he loves.

Cast Under an Alien Sun


Olan Thorensen - 2016
    A cross-genre adventure with elements of science fiction, history, hard science, epic fantasy, time travel, romance, alien contact, and space colonization.Joe Colsco boarded a flight from San Francisco to Chicago to attend a national chemistry meeting. He would never set foot on Earth again.On planet Anyar, Joe is found unconscious on a beach of a large island inhabited by humans where the level of technology is similar to Earth circa 1700. He awakes amidst strangers speaking an unintelligible language, and struggles to accept losing his previous life and finding a place in a society with different customs, needing a way to support himself, and not knowing a single soul. His worry about finding a place is assuaged when he finds ways to apply his knowledge of chemistry—as long as he is circumspect in introducing new knowledge not too far in advance of the planet’s technology and being labelled a demon.As he adjusts, Joe finds that he has be dropped into a developing clash between the people who cared for him, and for whom he develops an affinity, and a military power from elsewhere on the planet, a power with designs on conquest.Unaware, Joseph Colsco has been poured into a crucible, where time and trials will transform him in ways he could never have imagined.

Frenchman's Creek


Daphne du Maurier - 1941
    She finds the passion her spirit craves in the love of a daring French pirate who is being hunted by all of Cornwall.Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him.

11/22/63


Stephen King - 2011
    What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force. Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination.So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Where the Lost Wander


Amy Harmon - 2020
    Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.

Unbroken


Carolynn Amara - 2012
    But the man that returns isn't the same fresh-faced eager soldier that boarded the plane so many months ago. He may have left the war in another country but the one that brews inside follows him everywhere he goes. Can Anna find the strength to stand by the man she barely recognizes?

Toward the Midnight Sun


Eoin Dempsey - 2020
    Anna Denton is not like the other prospectors traveling to the Yukon on the promise of riches. It’s duty—not profit—that calls her into the wild unknown. With her family nearing financial ruin, Anna has agreed to marry Henry Bradwell, the wealthy King of the Klondike.She meets Will and Silas, childhood friends, on the steamer north. After the ship docks in a lawless Alaska town, Anna’s chaperones run afoul of local criminals, leaving her stranded. Will and Silas agree to escort her the hundreds of treacherous miles to Dawson City—the gateway to the goldfields—and her betrothed, a man she doesn’t know.Upon their arrival, Bradwell warmly welcomes them all. But as a brutal winter sets in, relations sour, and Anna is caught between the promise her family made to the power-hungry Bradwell and her feelings for Will. Anna and her companions soon find themselves in a deadly game where few can be trusted and where the greatest danger in the frozen wilderness of the Klondike is man himself.

Hippie


Paulo Coelho - 2018
    In the Dam Square in Amsterdam, long-haired young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense could be found meditating, playing music and discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness and the search for an inner truth. They were a generation refusing to live the robotic and unquestioning life that their parents had known.At this time, Paulo is a young, skinny Brazilian with a goatee and long, flowing hair who wants to become a writer. He sets off on a journey in search of freedom and a deeper meaning for his life: first, with a girlfriend, on the famous “Death Train to Bolivia,” then on to Peru and later hitchhiking through Chile and Argentina.His travels take him further, to the famous square in Amsterdam, where Paulo meets Karla, a Dutch woman also in her 20s. She convinces Paulo to join her on a trip to Nepal, aboard the Magic Bus that travels across Europe and Central Asia to Kathmandu. They embark on a journey in the company of fascinating fellow travelers, each of whom has a story to tell, and each of whom will undergo a transformation, changing their priorities and values, along the way. As they travel together, Paulo and Karla explore their own relationship, an awakening on every level that brings each of them to a choice and a decision that sets the course for their lives thereafter.

The Hunger


Alma Katsu - 2018
    Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history. While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"

Walk on Earth a Stranger


Rae Carson - 2015
    She has a home she loves and a loyal steed. She has a best friend—who might want to be something more.She also has a secret.Lee can sense gold in the world around her. Veins deep in the earth. Small nuggets in a stream. Even gold dust caught underneath a fingernail. She has kept her family safe and able to buy provisions, even through the harshest winters. But what would someone do to control a girl with that kind of power? A person might murder for it.When everything Lee holds dear is ripped away, she flees west to California—where gold has just been discovered. Perhaps this will be the one place a magical girl can be herself. If she survives the journey.The acclaimed Rae Carson begins a sweeping new trilogy set in Gold Rush-era America, about a young woman with a powerful and dangerous gift.