Item category 1: Historical Fiction

Emilia del Valle was always destined for great things. Abandoned at birth by her Chilean aristocrat father, Emilia comes of age in nineteenth-century San Francisco as an independent and fiercely ambitious young woman, decades ahead of her time. She will do whatever it takes to pursue her life's p...

Quiet and reserved, Clemmie is happy in the background. Although her parents may overlook her talents, her ability to read hieroglyphs makes her invaluable at the Egyptian relic parties which have made her father the toast of Victorian society. But at one such party, the words Clemmie interprets ...

Emperor Tiberius first dispatches a traitor. Then his whole family. Next all his friends. It is as if he never existed. Into this fevered forum, a child is born. His mother is Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. But their imperial blood is no protection. The closer you are to the heart ...

1894, Echuca, Victoria. Tess Hawthorn is a woman on the run from her abusive husband. All she has to do is get on the riverboat Victor and she will be free. But with tensions at an all-time high between unionist shearers and Scabs, Tess isn't the only person trying to board a boat under the cover...

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn'...

Northern Germany, 1945. Dead of night and dead of winter, a boy hears soldiers and sees strangers, forced labourers, fleeing across the heathland by his small town: shawls and skirts in the snowfall. The end days are close, war brings risk and chance, and Benno is witness to something he barely u...

Meet Betty: storyteller, feminist, eternally curious and phenomenally old. On the eve of her 100th birthday party, Betty tells us her story. Born into poverty in pre-war London, and growing up fast during the Blitz, Betty grabs the chance at a bigger life by migrating to Australia. On board the S...

Nuneaton, 1880. Twenty year old Daisy Armstrong lives a happy life with her loving father, Jed. They have a special bond, particularly after losing her beloved Irish mother and younger brother. But when Jed falls in love with a local widow, everything is set to change for them both. With expensiv...

It's 1941 and school is almost over not just for summer, but forever. Darwin could be bombed any day, and everyone Pearlie knows is leaving for a safer place. Animals and pets of all kind are being left behind, and Pearlie can't bear it. But can she rescue them all? And what will happen when it's...

In World War II England, orphaned siblings William, Edmund, and Anna are evacuated from London to live in the countryside, where they bounce from home to home in search of someone willing to adopt them permanently.

London, 1608. Three years after the Gunpowder Treason, the King's enemies prepare to strike again. Daniel Pursglove is tasked by royal command with one final mission: he must infiltrate the Serpents - a secret group of Catholics plotting to kill the King - or risk his own execution. But other con...

Poppy is on the road again, desperately trying to catch up with her brother. When she meets a mysterious Chinese boy, she thinks she might finally be getting closer to finding Gus and solving the mystery of the Chinese letter with the very special dragon seal. In Wahgunyah, she makes contact with...

Set in Brisbane, Vietnam, London, Paris and Sydney, Leopold Cloud, an ambitious young journalist, plots his own course leaving casualties behind him, and sometimes being a casualty himself. Central to his rise and rise are two women, safe and steady Muriel, herself a journalist, and the provocati...

London, 1924. Following several months abroad, Judge Dee Ren Jie has returned to the city to intercept a transaction between a Russian diplomat and a Japanese mercenary. Aided by Lao She - the Watson to his Holmes - along with several other colorful characters, Dee stops the illicit sale of an ex...

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to...

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective -- she doesn't, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her "pictures" foretell various inci...

Rome, 410 AD. Half-sister to Emperor Honorius, unmarried and powerless, twenty-year-old Galla Placidia watches from the shadows as imperial policies are made and unmade. Her plans to gain power and influence are halted when the city is besieged and captured by a vast army led by Alaric the Visigo...

The Federation celebrations are fast approaching but Rose hardly has time to get excited - so many other marvellous things are happening in her world, including her first real cricket match! But then she has a nasty accident, her best friend disappears and Aunt Alice is thrown in gaol. Can Rose s...

Rose's journey continues in this, the second of four books about a Federation girl who's determined to do things her way. Rose's Mother and Aunt Alice are fighting again, and Rose is caught in the middle. So when it looks as if Aunt Alice might leave, it's up to Rose to fix things! Will Rose ever...

Rose is finally allowed to go to school! But Rose has never been to school before - will she be able to keep up? Will she fit in? And will she be allowed to join the cricket team? In the meantime, change is afoot in Melbourne: Federation is imminent, and the suffragette movement is gathering forc...

In late Victorian England, private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn find themselves in the middle of the deadly chaos when powerful forces align to take over London's criminal underworld. Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker, along with his partner Thomas Llewelyn, has a long, accomp...

1944, Poland. Hana's heart is beating frantically as she weaves through the bombed-out streets of Warsaw. She prays she'll make it back to the safety of her family's warm, sweet-scented bakery. Just the thought of being greeted by her younger sisters and sweeping her innocent little brother into ...

334 BC. Alexander the Great is just twenty-one years old when he sets out with a small army to challenge Persia, the largest and most powerful empire in the world. Together, his Macedonian army marches East into the unknown - winning battles against overwhelming odds, storming impregnable fortres...

A new translation of Persia's founding epic. Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi (940-1020 CE), one of Iran's greatest poets, versified the ancient legends of the Persian Book of Kings (Shahnameh) in verse over one thousand years ago. It is the longest poem written by a single poet. A combination of myth and h...

Sergeant Akal Singh, an unwilling transplant to Fiji, is just starting to settle into his life in the capital city of Suva when he is sent to the neighboring island of Ovalau on a series of fool's errands. First: investigate strange reports of Germans, thousands of miles from the front of World W...

1910. With the disappearance of her mother and the sudden death of her father, Lena instantly loses any security she has within the circus she has known all her life. She is advised to sell the carousel her father cared for like a child and look for a husband, or a job in a factory. Until flame-h...

In Autumn of 1912, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins arrives at his new post in the fading gold town of Colley, NSW. On his first day, he is ambushed by a hidden gunman, his junior officer is killed before his eyes, and he escapes back to town to find the police station burning to the ground. Some...

Without parents, peerage, or merit, ducking school but barred from actual work, fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he's old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One...

In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets and enormous dust storms. One of its own has gone missing - six-year-old Denny Wallace - and the whole town is intent on finding him.

In a sleepy German village, Allina Strauss's life seems idyllic. She works at her uncle's bookshop, makes strudel with her aunt, and spends weekends with her friends and fiancé. But it's 1939, Adolf Hitler is Chancellor, and Allina's family hides a terrifying secret her birth mother was Jewish, m...