Item category 1: Historical Fiction

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 ...

Everything in the Kingdom of Arrow is a lie. Leith of Grey has nothing left, except his dying sister and his battle-scarred human body, fuelled by rage and hardened by years of fighting. So when the chance comes to fight as a gladiator in a vicious, bloodthirsty tournament, he seizes it with both...

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...

The boy Nero lives. His mother Agrippina has married her way to power, tangling the Emperor Claudius in her skirts. The emperor may have a son and heir of his own, but Agrippina sees no obstacles to her ambition. Rome is a path through a marsh, lit by torches. Those who walk it are always one ste...

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...

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 ...

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...

February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome. Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as 'The Choir'. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss ...

England 1940: Paris has fallen to the Third Reich. Farmer John Cook and society heiress Lady Margaret are waiting for the day when German tanks roll across the green fields of their homes. Both are ready for the moment they will disappear into the woods and the fields to carry out their top-secre...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Sixteen-year-old Tasha Ancel turns to take one last look at the imposing place that stole her freedom and her childhood. She has no idea how she continued to live when so many others did not. For the first time in months, her heart beats with hope for her future and that of the smaller children w...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

1814: Ashore on leave, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd learns of a dismal harvest and general hardship among the population. In Germany, Napoleon Bonaparte is celebrating victories that once again make his name feared throughout Europe. An armistice is signed and while the Allies lick their wounds Bonapa...

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...

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...

The year is 1859 and the goldfields are filled with diggers -- and danger! Orphaned twelve-year-old Tigg is the Bandicoot Bushranger, the youngest bushranger on the Ballarat goldfields in 1859. When a robbery goes wrong, Tigg must flee in disguise as one of the tens of thousands of Chinese men an...

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...

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...

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...