Item category 1: Historical Fiction

It is 1925 and Bert Mueller and his German-Australian family have moved from Ipswich to their new house at 11 Ruby Road. Bert's father has been deported to Germany after the Great War, and with Dad still absent, Bert is unsure about moving away. But the city means opportunity and jobs for his mot...

Even when you come out of bloodshed and disaster in the end you have got to learn to live. Narrated by Winona, the young Lakota orphan adopted by soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole in Days Without End, A Thousand Moons continues Sebastian Barry's extraordinary fictional exploration of late nin...

1831, New South Wales. Reeling from her mother's death, Madeleine Barker-Trent arrives in the newly colonised Hunter River to find her father's promises are nothing more than a halcyon dream. A day later, after a dubious accident, she becomes the sole owner of a thousand acres of bushland, with o...

This a WWI-era picture book is based on true events and a real-life young soldier from Dunedin named Alexander Aitken, who was a brilliant mathematician and a gifted violinist, as well as an artifact - the violin - that has survived the war and remains on display at Otago Boys High to this day.

Born in the Year of the Snake, May Tang is like flowing waterwhen she should have more fire. A dreamer, she will never be sensible and obedient like her elder sister Jie Jie or clever like her brother Peter, studying in Australia. But her parents are worried by rumoured events in China, and May f...

It's 1918, and it feels to Alice as if the war has been dragging on forever. It's four years since Alice's father went away to be a doctor for the army and when Papa Sir stops writing home, his family sense that something is wrong, and for the first time they contemplate the fact that he might no...

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly-built Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for h...

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats, leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the ho...

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats, leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At just ...

A fascinating novel of the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood's earliest female legends--screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator's Wife It is 1914, and twenty-five-ye...

1960: Nancy Drayton, an American nurse living on Lake Sebu, is visited by a stranger who hands her some faded letters, given to her by a dying man. Reading them transports Nancy back to the terror of the war years. 1941: When Nancy's world is blown apart by the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor,...

"1934: Connie Burroughs loves living in the orphanage that her father runs in the English countryside. But everything changes the day she sees him carrying a newborn baby that he says he found near the broken front gate. A baby she recognizes ... Present Day: Arriving at her father's beloved cott...

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identiti...

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom, one separate, apart, and in lieu of Bavar...

1914: Spindrift House, Cornwall. Edith Fairchild's good-for-nothing husband, Benedict, deserted her when their children were babies. Now the children are almost adult, Edith and Pascal, her faithful lover of two decades, are planning to leave their beloved Spindrift artists' community and finally...

Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth. Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city's most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch ...

Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to be...

England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own de...

As the fourth daughter of the perpetually in-mourning Queen Victoria, Princess Louise's life is more a gilded prison than a fairy tale. Expected to sit quietly next to her mother with down-cast eyes, Louise vows to escape the stultifying royal court. Blessed with beauty, artistic talent, and a co...

Calabria, Italy, 1936 In a remote farming village nestled in the mountains that descend into the sparkling Ionian Sea, young and spirited Giulia Tallariti longs for something more. While she loves her home and her lively family, she would much rather follow in her nonna's footsteps and pursue her...

Growing up in Hitler's Germany, Charlotte von Klein has big dreams for the future. Her mind is full of plans for a sumptuous wedding to her childhood sweetheart Heinrich while working for the Luftwaffe, proudly giving her all for the Fatherland. But in 1943, the tide of the war is turning against...

Hannah Todd dreams of a future where women have the right to vote. Fresh from her teaching studies in Durham, the university city, she joins her parents in a rural village, brimming with newly found passion and the groundswell towards women's suffrage unfolding in London. Working tirelessly to he...

The iconic song about the Battle of Gallipoli, written by Eric Bogle in 1972 at the height of the anti-war movement, re-imagined by esteemed children's illustrator Bruce Whatley.

The youngest daughter of Lord Kensley-Balfe, Delia is privileged and beautiful. Cossetted by her parents, her older sister Mona and her brother Clement, she lives a sheltered life, her days punctuated by lessons with her governess and horse rides through the wild Irish countryside. But then an en...

Three young people find themselves face-to-face with deadly animals -- and must summon all their courage to survive. From the shark-infested waters of the HMS Birkenhead in 1852 to the haunting roars of the Tsavo lions in 1898 and the ruthless Sankebetsu brown bear in 1915, three short stories br...

At what stage does a search for justice become a mission for revenge? When Tabby Post, a fiercely independent and dedicated healer, confesses to cold-blooded murder, she must fight to save herself from the gallows. After her father is condemned for a crime he did not commit - the murder of his br...

Fan's idyllic life in Adelaide is interrupted when her mother, Agnes, announces the family must move to Western Australia to take care of Fan's grandfather, a man Agnes has never even mentioned before. As her relationship with her mother fractures, Fan is surprised to find herself forming an alli...

In March of 1603, as she helps to nurse the dying Queen Elizabeth of England, Frances Gorges dreams of her parents' country estate, where she learned to use flowers and herbs to become a much-loved healer. When King James of Scotland succeeds to the throne Frances is only too happy to stay at hom...

Based on the author's family history, a young Armenian boy is forced to leave his home and parents to trek across the desert until he finds refuge in Lebanon -- and only years later does he find the words to tell his own children the story.

In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. N...