I have always loved novels that sweep me away to another time, immersing me in a historical era and characters I care about. The first time I read Anne of Green Gables I remember looking up from the book and blinking the real world into disoriented focus, surprised I wasn’t in ‘Anne’s world’! My aim and hope for my own historical novels are that they will provide readers with a similar sweeping-away experience, so they feel they’re living and breathing the world I’m writing about. The best feeling in the world is when you are lost in the pages of a good book—wherever or whenever that story takes place.
This classic novel of colonial-era India is an absolute epic, and it immerses you in that world, in all its beauty, injustice, majesty, and history, focusing on a heartrending love story between a doomed Indian princess and a rebellious British soldier who has been raised by a Hindu woman, and the forbidden love they share in the shadow of the 1879 Uprising. With a sympathetic view of the Indian population and a clear-eyed look at colonialism, this book is as much as a love letter to India (the author grew up there) as it is a rollicking adventure story and heartrending romance. Satisfies on every level!
This is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of M.M. Kaye's epic novel of love and war. M.M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich and vibrant tapestry of love and war that spans over twenty years, moving from the foothills of the Himalayas, to the burning plains, to the besieged British Mission in Kabul. It begins in 1857 when, following the Indian Mutiny, young English orphan Ashton is disguised by his ayah Sita as her Indian son, Ashok. As he forgets his true identity, his destiny is set...A story of divided loyalties and fierce friendship; of true love made impossible…
This is a powerful story set in Depression-era America, about a handful of children who escape an orphanage in the Midwest, riding the rails to find their way to freedom, and discovering much about love and sacrifice along the way. Full of atmosphere and poignancy, it is a triumphant story about the power of friendship and perseverance, set in a world of Hoovervilles and desperation, yet with incredible beauty for America’s heartland.
1932, Minnesota-the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O'Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent's wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will fly into the unknown and cross paths with others…
This is a wonderfully romantic saga focusing on a young woman in the East End of London in the late 1800s, and how she works her way up to run her own business empire, facing tragedy and treachery along the way. Set alongside the Jack the Ripper murders, it has plenty of intrigue and mystery, as well as romance, perfect for fans of Downton Abbey or The Gilded Age. A true saga of the kind that was popular in the 1980s—a big, glitzy, wonderful, passionate book!
This is a splendid, heartwarming novel of pain, struggle, decency, triumph - and just what we need in these times - Frank McCourt
It is 1888 and Jack the Ripper is stalking the streets of Whitechapel. For the people that live there, he is just one more adversary in their everyday battle to survive. Despite working long days at the tea factory, and the constant threat of the Ripper, Fiona Finnegan knows that life is better for her than for many others. With a father in work, a roof over her head, enough to eat and a loving family to…
While this book is different in scope, it still has the feeling of a saga, with a definite journey, and is wonderfully anchored in both time and place—1950s Midwest America, with the narrator an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy who, with his father and younger sister, go travelling to find his older brother who is on the run after killing a boy who tried to kidnap his younger sister, Swede. Full of both humor and sorrow, with a unique spiritual element, this book is incredibly atmospheric and powerful, and definitely makes you think long after you’ve finished the story—about the possibility of miracles and the power of love.
When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the…
Sometimes sagas can be small in focus and still sweep you away—in this case to a small town in 1950s Kent, and the narrow life of a woman reporter who lives with her mother, a most unpleasant woman, and longs for adventure, which she finds in unexpected ways as she digs deeper into the case of a woman who claims she’s had an immaculate conception. Poignant and bittersweet, Chambers gives an exquisite sense of time and place, with a main character you are desperate to root for, and a sense of impending dread you are almost able to forget as you are swept away by the story.
'A very fine book... It's witty and sharp and reads like something by Barbara Pym or Anita Brookner, without ever feeling like a pastiche' David Nicholls
'Perfect' India Knight
'Beautiful' Jessie Burton
'Wonderful' Richard Osman
'Miraculous' Tracy Chevalier
'A wonderful novel. I loved it' Nina Stibbe
'Effortless to read, but every sentence lingers in the mind' Lissa Evans
'This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I honestly don't want you to be without it' Lucy Mangan
London, 1944: When Lily finds meets American GI Matthew, she’s mesmerised by him. She knows his mission will take him into battle, and that their love barely stands a chance. But she wants to listen to her heart. Then she discovers Matthew is not the man he claims to be. He is harbouring a secret that could change not just her life, but the lives of many others…
Present-day, USA: Abby has done everything she can to keep her life quiet, unassuming, and safe. Living on an apple farm in rural Wisconsin, nothing can shake her stability. Until a mysterious stranger arrives—with a Purple Heart he insists belongs to her grandfather. A medal that his grandmother had kept for decades. But how did she end up with Abby’s grandfather’s medal?
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
