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Historical Fiction April 2025 |
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Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy—but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?
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Twelve-year-old Harp Delaney is an unusual child, quiet and intelligent far beyond her years. She would rather spend her days in the library of the grand Georgian house that she sees as her home than playing on the streets with other children. Her mother, Rose, is the reserved and ladylike housekeeper at the Cliff House. The local women envy her grace and poise while the men admire her beauty. She behaves not as a servant should, but as someone who belongs at the ancestral home of eccentric loner Henry Devereaux. Nobody ever visits the Cliff House, but Harp, Rose and Henry have a happy life together, each accepting the idiosyncrasies of the others. The day Titanic sails from Queenstown, taking with it the hopes and dreams of so many, Harp’s life too is devastated. The small port town is shaken to its foundations at the loss of the unsinkable ship, but the revelation of a long-held secret means that Harp and Rose have a much more pressing issue to solve, one that could destroy them if they cannot find a solution. Unexpectedly, fate takes a hand, and mother and daughter find themselves thrown a lifeline, one that inextricably links them to the stories of men, women and children for whom Queenstown was the last-ever sight of Ireland as they sailed away to new lands and new lives. Last Port of Call is the first book in The Queenstown Series. |
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The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin by Alison GoodmanTo most of Regency high society, forty-two-year-old Lady Augusta Colebrook, or Gus, and her twin sister, Julia, are just unmarried ladies of a certain age. But the Colebrook twins are far from useless old maids. They are secretly protecting women and children ignored by society and the law.
When Lord Evan—a charming escaped convict who has won Gus’s heart—needs to hide his sister, Hester, from their vindictive brother, Gus and Julia take Hester and her lover into their home. But Lord Evan’s complicated past puts them all in danger. Gus knows they must clear his name of murder if he is to survive the thieftakers who hunt him. No easy task—the fatal duel was twenty years ago and a key witness is nowhere to be found.
In a deadly cat-and-mouse game, Gus, Julia, and Lord Evan must dodge their pursuers and investigate Lord Evan’s past. They will be thrust into the ugly underworld of Georgian gentlemen’s clubs, spies, and ruthless bounty hunters, not to mention the everyday threat of narrow-minded brothers. Will the truth be found in time, or will dangerous secrets from the past destroy family bonds and rip new love and lives apart?
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In this homage to True Grit, a young woman makes a perilous journey west in 1863 in search of her gold-mining father.
After their mother dies, Haidie Richards and her younger brother, Boots, are put to work in an orphanage. Their father left four years earlier to find a gold mine in Colorado Territory, and since then he’s sent only three letters. Still, Haidie is certain that he is alive, has struck gold, and will soon send for them.
But patience is not one of Haidie’s virtues, and soon she and her brother make a break for it. Boots and Haidie, disguised as a boy, embark on a dangerous journey deep into Western territory. Along the way, Haidie learns fast not only how to handle mules, oxen, and greedy men, but also that you are better off in a community. Hers includes a card shark, independent “spinster” sisters, and a very fierce dog. Once she arrives in Colorado and finds out the truth about her father, Haidie will need all her new friends for a get-even plot worthy of The Sting.
Filled with vivid period detail, colorful characters, and the irreverent voice of our scrappy heroine, Tough Luck celebrates both the tenacity of youth and the persistence of the heart in the great American West. |
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Trail to Love: Great Wagon Road by Susan F. CraftA widowed father…a heartbroken nanny…and a wagon train journey that will change their lives forever.Since the death of her fiancé, Anne Forbes has given up on the life she thought she’d have. After taking a role as nanny to her two young nephews, she’s grown close to her brother’s family—a replacement for the one she never had the chance to start. But when she accompanies them on the wagon trail to their new life in South Carolina, a handsome and gallant widowed father who’s also part of the group catches her eye and her heart, making her wonder if God might have plans of love for her after all. If only the beautiful woman the man escorts didn’t have her sights set on him.
Michael Harrigan never considered remarrying after the death of his wife. No woman could ever compare. But when he meets the gentlehearted Anne while escorting his sister-in-law on their journey to the Blue Ridge Mountains, he’s taken aback by Anne’s lovely voice and her compassion. As they face the trials and adventures of life on the trail, he finds himself open to the idea of marriage for the first time in many years.
But when disaster strikes the wagon train, Michael and Anne must work side-by-side to save lives. In the midst of their struggles, can they find a way to abandon their separate trails of grief and hardship for the trail to love?
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| In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir successfully smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls wounded from the sky, The Choir is plunged into danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened. The Escape Line’s collapse would leave thousands stranded. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, its architect and the acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, paralyzed by the perils of keeping his Roman underground railroad functioning. Meanwhile, SS Commander Paul Hauptmann has been tasked with destroying the entire operation, and the price of failure is high—his wife and children are under Gestapo lock-and-key in Berlin. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann’s authority. |
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There is a Season: A Civil War Novel by Andrea BoeshaarTo onlookers, Carrie Ann Bell Collier might appear to be the dutiful wife, sitting at her unconscious husband’s bedside. But she feels like a hypocrite. Instead of trusting her intuition, she allowed herself to believe Peyton was dead. And then she fell in love with his best friend, Eli Kent.
Except, Peyton wasn’t dead, and now Carrie will do anything to keep him alive.
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While at City Point, as her husband lay dying, Carrie meets a nurse who claims to be able to work miracles. Hearing her out, Carrie’s hope rises. Doctors had given up on Peyton, so Carrie hires the woman and makes plans for all of them to return home as soon as Peyton regains his strength.
CSS Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Kent has loved Carrie Ann since he met her a year ago. However, now that Peyton is alive, he promises Carrie he will not continue to pursue her. With Peyton near death, Eli finds it difficult to completely forget her and their plans for the future. But he does his best to focus on the ultimatum that General Ulysses S. Grant has offered him.
USA Colonel Peyton Collier awakens to intense pain and utter confusion. Why did his body hurt so badly? His leg, his back…his head. What was his name? His rank? Why couldn’t he recall?
And who was the stern-looking female standing over him with a hypodermic needle in her hand?
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A Wallflower's Guide to Viscounts and Vice by Manda CollinsA wallflower by choice, wealthy Lucy Penhallow would rather sit out the dancing all season than listen to false flattery from the fortune hunters who pursue her. But when she and her best friend’s brother witness a crime in progress, they’ll need to put every skill Lucy’s learned from reading detective stories to the test in their hunt for a missing woman. And if Viscount Gilford happens to be handsome as sin and clever to boot? Well, that's no hardship for her.
Viscount Gilford needs a wife to save him from financial ruin, and there’s only one heiress who’s off limits. So when he and Lucy find themselves inextricably linked in the tabloids, it’s a disaster. As their investigation progresses, their once unwelcome alliance becomes something more—a love match neither will give up. But there’s a killer watching their romance from the wings who’s only too happy to keep these meddlesome sleuths together . . . in the afterlife.
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Slash and Pecos match wits with the wiliest opponent they’ve ever had—a wickedly smart woman who can’t be caught—in their wildest western adventure yet. . . .
It sounds like an easy job: track down the lady friend of notorious outlaw Duke Winter and bring her in for questioning. There’s just one problem: Slash and Pecos have never met a woman like Miss Fannie Diamond, a glamorous showgirl who’s prettier than a French poodle, slicker than a Dodge City gambler, and more slippery than a Mojave rattlesnake. She knows that Slash and Pecos are coming for her and has no intention of being caught—not without one of hell of a fight. . . .
By the time the duo arrive at the Rocky Mountain mining camp where Miss Diamond is performing, the devilishly clever gal has already arranged a welcome wagon for them: some hired thugs who knock Slash and Pecos silly. Still, the show must go on—so the pair decide to snatch Miss Diamond off the stage in the middle of a performance. It doesn’t take long for Slash and Pecos to learn that there’s no business like show business—and no showgirl like Miss Fannie Diamond. Sometimes, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. . . .
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A Silence in Belgrave Square by Jennifer AshleyKat Holloway knows that her beau and confidante Daniel McAdam has a talent for dangerous work as a Scotland Yard agent. At long last though, Daniel’s coldhearted boss has promised that after a final mission, his debt will be repaid, and he’ll finally be free. However, Daniel must risk his life one last time, masquerading as a secretary to an elderly viscount who could be the mastermind behind the recent plots against the Queen and her government.
Using her contacts throughout London, Kat discovers several of her friends and colleagues have been victims of vicious blackmail. They’ll do anything to protect their scandalous secrets, even conform to the blackmailer’s political agenda. If Kat and Daniel wish to save each other and the Crown, they must prove the blackmailer’s identity and evade those who will stop at nothing to eliminate them.
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