Item category 1: Historical Fiction

Junchow, China, 1928. Lydia Ivanova has a fierce spirit. Nothing can dim it, not even the foul waters of the Peiho River. Into the river's grime bodies are tossed - those of thieves and Communists alike. So every time Lydia steals from someone to feed herself and her mother, she takes her life in...

In 1892, the grisly murders of Whitechapel prostitutes by a killer dubbed Jack the Ripper remain a terrifying enigma. And in a packed Old Bailey courtroom, Superintendent Thomas Pitt's testimony causes distinguished soldier John Adinett to be sentenced to hang for the inexplicable murder of a fri...

Mystery. This sweeping, powerful epic tells the story of one of the bloodiest years in Rome's history through the eyes of two remarkable women fighting for survival A.D. 69. The Roman Empire is up for the taking. The Year of the Four Emperors will change everything - especially the lives of two s...

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...

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...

Shadow of the Moon is the story of Winter de Ballesteros, a beautiful English heiress who has come to India to be married. It is also the tale of Captain Alex Randall, her escort and protector, who knows that Winter's husband-to-be has become a debauched wreck of a man.

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...

Will Campbell is a Templar Knight, trained for war. But as a member of the secret brotherhood known as the Brethren, he is also a man of peace. After years of bloodshed, the Brethren have helped to create an uneasy truce between the Christian and Muslim forces in the Holy Land. But there are thos...

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...

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.

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.

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...

"Elegant, secretive Sabina may be Empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister Emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly sec...

"In the chaos of World War II, Polish teenagers Helena and Luzyna Grabowski have lost everything. Without parents or a home, they are shipped to a refugee camp in Persia, where the days ahead hold only darkness. When they hear that orphans are being selected for relocation to New Zealand, Helena ...

Orphan, Victoria Carlton is brought up by her uncle, a banker, to be a lady and make a good marriage. Yet, she is drawn to help the poor families in the slums, much to her family's disgust. When her uncle dies suddenly, her cousins blame Victoria, and she is thrown out of the house with nothing. ...

2019: Life changed beyond recognition for Alice when her son, Eddie, was born with autism spectrum disorder. She must do everything to support him, but at what cost to her family? When her cherished grandmother is hospitalised, a hidden box of mementoes reveals a tattered photo of a young man, a ...

The boy was murdered in Auschwitz. The killer isn't a Nazi. Poland, 1944: Adam Lapid used to be a police detective. Now he's a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. Reduced to a slave after losing his family in the gas chambers, Adam struggles to find a reason to carry on living. But when a boy is found ...

In 1932, Wanny Woldstad, a young widow, travels to Svalbard, daring to enter the Norwegian trappers' fiercely guarded male domain. She must prove to Anders Saeterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task. Over the course of a Svalbard winter, W...

France, 1794. In the aftermath of the bloody end to the French Revolution, Rose de Beauharnais stumbles from prison on the day she is to be guillotined. Within a decade, she'll transform into the scandalous socialite who marries Napoleon Bonaparte, become Empress Josephine of France and build a g...

It's 1880 in the North Island town of Otaki, where Aroha lives contentedly with her mother, Linda - until a fateful tragedy leaves Aroha traumatized and plagued by a cursed guilt. For the long recovery ahead, Aroha is sent to Rata Station, a thriving sheep farm that Aroha's mother and grandmother...

1946. Three years after a cataclysmic event which tore their lives apart, a mother and daughter flee Poland for Paris, shame and fear at their heels, not knowing how hard it is to escape your past. Nearly eighty years later, Gretel Fernsby lives a life that is a far cry from her traumatic childho...

Scarlett O'Hara, the beautiful, spoiled daughter of a well-to-do Georgia plantation owner, must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea.

It's 1914. Gretta lives a privileged life in Singapore, the daughter of a businessman; Tilly lives a modest life in Brisbane, the daughter of a baker. When war breaks out and both countries turn on their families for being German, the two girls find themselves taken from their homes, interned at ...

It begins in the highlands of Scotland in 1746, at the Battle of Culloden, the last desperate stand of the Stuart 'pretender' to the throne of the Three Kingdoms, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his rabidly loyal supporters. Vanquished with his comrades by the forces of the Hanoverian (and Protestant)...

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.

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.