Category: Historical
Do not believe too quickly... What if Elizabeth Macarthur - wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in early Sydney - had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? In her introduction Kate Grenville tells, tongue firmly in cheek, of discovering a long-hidden box containing that memoir. Wh ...Show more
Category: Historical
WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL'S LITERARY AWARD There is a woman, somewhere, here, in Van Diemen's Land, unless she had died or otherwise departed, called Maryanne Maginn. Gabriel Fox, the young son of an old English house, arrives in a land both ancient and new. Drawn by the promise of his heart's de ...Show more
Category: Historical
Luke Elliott and Claudia Marsden have fallen in love at a perilous time. The Second World War is raging in the Pacific, barbed wire and gun emplacements are strung along the northern beaches in preparation for invasion. As the war moves closer, their 'sextet' of loyal school friends is splintering as in ...Show more
Category: Historical | Reading Level: good
1843. Grace Marks, sixteen, is declared guilty and sentenced to life in prison for participating in the murders of Thomas Kinnear, for whom she was a maid, and Nancy Montgomery, the housekeeper and Thomas' lover. Years later, a group of reformists and spiritualists try to obtain a pardon for her.
Category: Historical
A spellbinding reimagining of 'Sleeping Beauty' set amongst the wild bohemian circle of Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets. The Pre-Raphaelites were determined to liberate art and love from the shackles of convention. Ned Burne-Jones had never had a painting lesson and his family wanted him to be a pars ...Show more
Category: Historical | Series: Wolf Hall Trilogy
An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists. ‘Our most brilliant English writer’ Guardian Bring Up the Bodies unlocks the darkly glittering court of Henry VIII, where Thomas Cromwel ...Show more
Category: Historical
Who remembers the onlookers on the sidelines of big events? Such bystanders as the deposed queen Vashti, the blood-stained murdering grandmother Athaliah, the bluff soldier in King David's army, or the desperately searching mother Phoebe? In Bystanders Valerie Volk has created fifteen absorbing characte ...Show more
Category: Historical | Series: The Tattooist of Auschwitz #2 | Reading Level: very good
The sequel to the International Number One Bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, based on a true story of love and resilience. In 1942 Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, a ...Show more
Category: Historical
February 29, 1944: I am about to jump out of an aeroplane for the first time … I don’t care that every man is looking at me as though I don’t belong. Besides, I’m hungover. And I think I might throw up … In 1936 intrepid young Australian journalist Nancy Wake is liv ...Show more
Category: Historical
For much of the World War II conflict, Japan had been a safe haven for its citizens, far, far away from Germany's relentless advance in Europe and the daily horrors of such events as the London blitz, concentration camps and the fall of France. But Alex Faure always felt that one day the war would come ...Show more
Category: Historical | Reading Level: very good
Birth. Death. Wonder ... One woman's journey to the edge of love and loyalty from the bestselling author of The Lace Weaver London, 1702. When her husband is lost at sea, Mary Burton Gulliver, midwife and herbalist, is forced to rebuild her life without him. But three years later when Lemuel Gulliv ...Show more
Category: Historical
A stunning new departure for Maggie O'Farrell's fiction, Hamnet is the heart-stopping story behind Shakespeare's most famous play. TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon ta ...Show more
