Item category 1: Historical Fiction

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here - like the glass the island's maestros spend their lives learning to control. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creation...

It's 1808... and Grace's world is about to change - from her tough life as a mudlark on the River Thames in London, to the adventures and challenges she faces as a servant girl in a new country. Journey with Grace across all four exciting stories about a convict girl who's given a second chance.

1915, the Cabrach, Aberdeenshire. An isolated Scottish community is disturbed by a strange discovery, a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved. Two people haul the body from the ground, Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearth side and ...

Elektra, and Atalanta, a propulsive, empowering retelling of Hera, reclaiming her as a feminist hero Even the gods must have their queen. When the immortal goddess Hera and her brother Zeus overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side. But as they establish their reign on M...

For the people who live on the banks of the Thames, the river is a living, breathing thing. It can take your treasures. It can hide your treasures. And, sometimes, it can give them back... Bo and Billy are two children who have never met. Billy is an orphan. Bo's dad died when she was small and n...

Amherst, 1857. The Dickinson family braves one of the worst winters in New England's history. Trains are snowbound and boats are frozen in the harbor. Emily Dickinson and her maid, Willa Noble, have never witnessed anything like it. As Amherst families attempt to keep their homes warm, fears of f...

France, 1531. Orphaned by the age of five, Marguerite de la Rocque was heir to a chateau with its own village and lands. But her guardian, Jean Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, sells Marguerite's property to embark on an expedition to New France, bringing Marguerite and her maidservant with him...

Jam is sweet but it can also burn. Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job as label-paster ...

All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship – books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also ...

As Allied bombs rain down on Torino in the autumn of 1942, Stella Costa's mother sends her to safety with distant relatives in a Tuscan villa. There, Stella finds her family tasked with a great responsibility: hiding nearly 300 priceless masterpieces from Florence, including Botticelli's famous P...

The Battle of Evesham has been fought and lost. The King is triumphant, Simon de Montfort is dead, and Adam de Norton is a prisoner, stripped of everything he once honoured and prized. Escaping from captivity in the grim castle of Beeston, Adam becomes a fugitive in a country in turmoil. Branded ...

The Olympics are over, and everyone is feeling flat - including Lina. As she reads the newspaper every night with her father, Lina finds out that some of the Hungarian athletes have stayed behind and are hiding in Melbourne so they don't have to face the fighting in their homeland. Lina begins to...

We called him Vati, Dad. Not Papa. He thought it sounded modern. He wanted to present himself to us, and through us, as a man in tune with the modern age. A man who could be read as having a different past. Inspired by the author's family history, Library for the War-Wounded transports readers to...

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century's worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy's life takes an unexpected turn wh...

In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin's thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, bu...

It's 1956 and the Melbourne Olympic Games have finally arrived! The whole city is buzzing with excitement and Lina can't wait to go along as a reporter for the school magazine. Now is her chance to prove to everyone that she's a real writer, and nothing could be more important until Lina makes a ...

It's 1956 and Lina has won a scholarship to a wonderful girls' school. As hard as she tries, fitting into St Brigid's isn't easy - especially when she's the only Italian and the only student from a poor family.

Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her ma is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone. As she wends...

When Santo's father left their tiny town in Italy for America, he made Santo promise to keep their family together until he has enough money to bring the rest of them to the US. It takes a few years, but Mama finally gets word that their family can join Papa. Santo couldn't be more excited to go ...

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,...

Morocco, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Frenchwoman Marie-Madeleine is not the kind of woman who goes through life sitting down, and it's a trait that not everyone is a fan of - including her husband. Her unconventionalities - rally car driving, flying planes and dabbling in intelligence work for the go...

2016: Fresh from her mother's funeral, Mari arrives on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts to study under the enigmatic painter Elizabeth Devereux. But she soon realises that her relationship to the island runs deeper than she ever thought possible. 1942: It's World War II, and Smith...

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...

It's 1849 and Nellie O'Neill is arriving in South Australia on a ship bringing orphan girls from Irish workhouses. Nellie and her best friend, Mary, have left the famine in Ireland far behind, and are full of hopes and dreams for the future. Nellie longs to learn to read, to be part of a family o...

It's 1941 and the war is changing Pearlie's life every day. Darwin is full of soldiers, there's a spy on the loose, and people are turning against Pearlie's best friend, Naoko, just because she's Japanese.

1938: As war looms over Britain and there is talk of gas masks and blackout, people are understandably jumpy and anxious. Stella Fry, who's been working in Vienna for a Jewish family, returns home with no job and a broken heart. She answers an advertisement from a famous mystery writer, Hubert Ne...

An incredible story of one woman's courage and determination to reunite her family in the aftermath of surviving Auschwitz. 1945, Ester Pasternak walked out of the gates of Auschwitz barely alive. She survived against devastating odds, but her heartbreaking journey is only just beginning. In the ...

Intelligent, beautiful Alexandra Bouvier was raised believing she could achieve anything. But when the First World War breaks out in 1914, and both her parents are killed while volunteering on the front lines, Alex's world collapses. Supported by her loving grandmother, Alex is determined to carr...

It's 1914 and Molly Dunnage wants to see change: at home, at work and in underwear. Her burgeoning corsetry business is starting to take off, thanks to some high-profile supporters. She's marching with Melbourne's suffragists for better conditions for women everywhere. And her family - her eccent...

They said I would swing for the crime and I did... Surely, they can't hang me twice? 1724. In a village tavern on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Maggie Dickson's family drown their sorrows, mourning her death yet relieved she is gone. Shame haunts them. Passersby avert their eyes from the cheap-look...