Historical Fiction

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a mill town called Commonwealth votes to quarantine itself in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic, setting up guards to prevent anyone from coming in or out, but a violent confrontation with a tired, hungry, and cold soldier will have devastating repercussions for the entire town. 125,000 first printing.

A fictional tale of the life of Marie Antoinette presents the story of a teenage empress's daughter who is forced to leave her family home to marry the future king of France and who rebels against the formality and rigid protocol of court life.

When she is sold away from her family, Moinette, the daughter of an African mother and an unknown white father, begins to prepare herself for an escape to freedom, journeying through a world of brutality, sexual violence, loss, and struggle to find her way out of the bonds of slavery to discover the true meaning of freedom, in a novel set in early nineteenth-century Louisiana. 15,000 first printing.

Published more than sixty years following the author's death at Auschwitz, a remarkable story of life under the Nazi occupation includes two parts—"A Storm in June, " set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied provincial village rife with jealousy, resentment, resistance, and collaboration. 75,000 first printing.

The last living survivor of a 1911 sweatshop fire, 106-year-old Esther Gottesfeld passes away leaving numerous questions about the fire, which is investigated by her granddaughter Rebecca and a feminist historian with a personal agenda.

In 1849 Baltimore, following the death of Edgar Allan Poe, Quentin Clark, a young city dweller fiercely loyal to his favorite author, discovers that Poe's final days had been marked by a series of bizarre, unanswered questions and, inspired by Poe's fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin, launches his own investigation to resolve the mystery of Poe's death. 70,000 first printing.

Number Forty-Seven, a fourteen-year-old slave boy growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal master in 1832, meets the mysterious Tall John, who introduces him to a magical science and also teaches him the meaning of freedom.

Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.

When Daniel Musgrove's troubled family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, he is appalled. On top of the usual teenage humiliations, he now has to learn to say "y'all" and "Co-Cola" or risk being ostracized as a Yankee. But Daniel's loneliness fades when he meets fellow outsider Tim Cousins. You only need one best friend, he figures, to make it through high school alive. Daniel and Tim become inseparable, sharing a fascination with ridicule, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. The boys join the cast of a bouncy evangelical musical. They take their dates to the prom in matching sky blue tuxedos. But then things start to go terribly wrong. The friends' feud with the school bully gets outof hand. They commit a small crime that grows larger and larger, and threatens to engulf the whole town.—From publisher description.Struggling with his outsider status after moving to a small Mississippi town at the beginning of his junior year, 1970s teen Daniel Musgrove befriends fellow misfit Tim and becomes embroiled in a devastating chain of events following a car accident.

In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief utilizes the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician's case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself.In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief uses the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician's case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself.

A tale set in World War II London finds a rescue worker struggling for composure after a bombing, a young woman longing for her soldier lover, and a convict who watches a battle through the bars of his window. By the author of Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. 60,000 first printing.

After losing his job and the respect of his family, Russian avant-garde artist Anatoly Sukhanov confronts his past in a series of dreams that reveals the sacrifices he has made to gain material wealth in twentieth-century Moscow.

In 1939 Paris, the murders of an Italian political émigré—editor of a clandestine newspaper opposing Italian facism—and the wife of a French politician by OVRA, Mussolini's secret police, brings new danger to his successor, Carlo Weisz, who finds himself the target of OVRA, MI6, Stalin's NKVD, and Hitler's Gestapo as the war in Europe escalates. 60,000 first printing.

Empress Wu, China's only female emperor, rises from a humble clan and position of concubine to brave the intrigues, betrayal, and violence of the court to become the first Empress of China during the great Tang dynasty in seventh-century China.