Item category 1: Historical Fiction

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.

When Arabella Grant's wicked aunt dies suddenly, both Arabella and her cousin Lady Isabelle cannot help but feel relieved. She'd made their lives miserable, and now Lady Issie is free to read to her heart's content, and Bella is free from taunts about her ignoble birth. Their newfound freedom is ...

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...

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...

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they...

Charlotte Sauvin has always seen the world differently. At home on 33 Place Brugmann, in the heart of Brussels, her father and her closest friends and neighbours the Raphaels from the fourth floor, and Masha from the fifth have ensured her secret is safe. But when the Nazis invade Belgium, and Ma...

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 ...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

When orphaned Jake Harding is sent away from his adoptive home aged just seven, he does not understand why... Forced to make his own way in the world, Jake falls in with a gang of petty thieves, who make their living lifting valuables from those who are better off. At 16, he crosses paths with th...

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...

An epic saga of brotherhood, betrayal and revenge. On the unforgiving streets of 1920s Sydney, the Leach family have nothing but each other. In a tale spanning decades, three children of the broken, working-class family find adventure, heartache and trouble, as their lives drift apart. John finds...

April 1941: Belfast has escaped the worst of the Second World War -- so far. Over the next two months, it will be so destroyed from above that people will say, in horror, "My God, Belfast is finished." Many won't make it through, and those who do will be forever changed. Living amid the rubble ar...

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...

1942: As the Vichy government hunts for Jews across France, Claudette Pelletier, a young and talented seamstress and lover of romance novels, falls in love with a Jewish man who seeks shelter at the château where she works. Their whirlwind and desperate romance before he must flee leaves her preg...

In Roman-occupied Britain, the Iceni tribe crowns an extraordinary new queen. Tall and flame-haired, Boudicca is devoted to Andraste, the Iceni's patron goddess, known for her raven familiar, her fierceness and her swirling blue tattoos. Boudicca and her two young daughters will carry the tribe f...

Sydney, 1871. Twenty-five-year-old widow Tatty Crowe is the owner of busy undertaking firm Crowe Funerals. Life and business are good until Tatty notices how many women are dying after unlawful abortions, and after a terrible tragedy strikes close to home, she vows to expose the culprit. And then...

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...

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...

Winter, 1947. Britain's secret services have been penetrated. The country is more vulnerable than ever - and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create extra chaos. But Stalin has a more important motive than mere disruption. He has...

21 June, 1815. London may be cheering the news of Napoleon's surrender at Waterloo, but Lady Petra Forsyth has little to celebrate after discovering that the death of her viscount fiancé three years earlier was no accident. Instead, it was murder, and the man responsible is her handsome, half-Sco...

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 1980, designer Claudie Miller is a household name. Girls are begging their mothers to make them her famous dress, the ‘Juliet’. But there’s a big hole in Claudie’s life – sixteen years ago she was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Now she’s in a race to track her daughter down before it...

Ten years after the eruption of Vesuvius, the surrounding countryside lies buried and barren. But the destroyed cities and luxury villas on the Bay of Naples are not utterly lost. Flavia Albia and her husband Tiberius Manlius are tasked with restoring one villa and identifying any surviving remai...

Welcome to a glamorous gateway to the jet age. Judy Goodman and Beverly Caldwell have different reasons for putting continents and oceans between themselves and their disparate pasts, but they have the same desire to earn a coveted position on an elite team of stewardesses for Pan American Airlin...

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 ...