Historical Fiction Classics

Orphaned at age ten, Jim is traveling west to his grandparents’ home in Black Hawk when he first meets Ántonia, the daughter of a Bohemian family who settles on a neighboring farm. Through sunbaked summers and frigid winters, Ántonia bears the hardships of a young immigrant as she longs for a vanishing past.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is desperate. Finally confronted with a woman who ignites all his hopes, he agonizes over the cruel trick of fate which placed her in a situation beneath his notice. The morning after the Netherfield ball, he resolves to put as much distance between himself and her as possible.

After her impoverished family sends her to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle at opulent Mansfield Park, Fanny Price finds her life forever changed by the aristocratic Bertrams and the city-dwelling Crawford siblings. But is it for the better? While the others seem content to abandon what’s right to further their own interests, Fanny decides to hold true to her heart - a choice that will make or break her future.

Set in the 1870s, the same period as Wharton's The Age of Innocence, The Buccaneers is about five wealthy American girls denied entry into New York Society because their parents' money is too new. At the suggestion of their clever governess, the girls sail to London, where they marry lords, earls, and dukes who find their beauty charming—and their wealth extremely useful.

An American classic, Ben-Hur is both a vivid historical epic and the powerful story of one man's spiritual journey from slavery to vengeance to redemption. Born the son of a Jewish nobleman, Ben-Hur is condemned to the galleys for life for accidentally dislodging a piece of tile that falls on the Roman procurator. He is betrayed by his best friend, manages to escape his imprisonment, and gains revenge and glory before the cheering multitudes in the chariot races at the Roman circus in Antioch.

Love is in the air when five sisters discover that a wealthy and eligible bachelor is suddenly within reach. But it is his friend, the haughty Mr. Darcy, who becomes smitten. Unfortunately for him, the object of his affection is not so easily swayed. One of the most popular characters in English literature, Elizabeth Bennet is intelligent, witty, well-spoken and ahead of her time. If the terrible rumors about Mr. Darcy are true, he doesn't stand a chance. Yet not all gossip is to be believed when marriage, money, and reputations are on the line.

On the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, an island consumed by the flames of revolution, a senseless attack leaves only one survivor - an infant girl. She falls into the hands of two French émigrés, Henri and Solange Fournier, who take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah. What follows is the sweeping tale of Ruth's life as shaped by her strong-willed mistress and other larger-than-life personalities she encounters in the South.

A tempestuous acquaintance and disastrous marriage proposal makes it unlikely Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet will ever reconcile. Despairing of their own reunion, they attend with great energy to salvaging that of Darcy’s friend Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth’s sister Jane. People are rarely so easily maneuvered in and out of love, however, they follow a series of misunderstandings, both willful and unwitting, that complicates all four star-crossed lovers’ alliances more than ever before.

Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.

For the first time we discover what really happened between his sister and the dastardly Wickham. How did he distract his friend Bingley from pining for his beloved Jane? Why did he propose to another young woman? Only to his diary does he tell his true story. At last we see Darcy as he really is; and, beneath his polite facade, we find a sensitive, private and passionate man.

Once there was a mermaid called Amelia who could never be content in the sea, a mermaid who longed to know all the world and all its wonders, and so she came to live on land. Once there was a man called P. T. Barnum, a man who longed to make his fortune by selling the wondrous and miraculous, and there is nothing more miraculous than a real mermaid. Amelia agrees to play the mermaid for Barnum and walk among men in their world, believing she can leave anytime she likes. But Barnum has never given up a money-making scheme in his life, and he's determined to hold on to his mermaid.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" is a masterful work of historical fiction by Willa Cather. Set in the American Southwest in the mid-19th century, the novel tells the story of a young French priest who is sent to establish a Catholic diocese in a rugged and unfamiliar land. Through his encounters with the indigenous people and his fellow settlers, the priest comes to understand the complexities and beauty of the human spirit.

August 1911. Emily Hardcastle and her inimitable lady’s maid Florence Armstrong are enjoying a fine summer until Harry, Lady H’s brother, turns up out of the blue with a mystery for them to solve. A routine parachute test at a local aeroplane factory has gone horribly wrong - with pilot Dickie Dupree plummeting to his death. Harry is certain there is more to this ‘tragic accident’ than meets the eye, having discovered that someone at the airfield is leaking top secret intelligence to foreign rivals.

After attacking Devil's Reef in 1928, the US government rounded up the people of Innsmouth and took them to the desert, far from their ocean, their Deep One ancestors, and their sleeping god, Cthulhu. Only Aphra and Caleb Marsh survived the camps, and they emerged without a past or a future. The government that stole Aphra's life now needs her help. FBI agent Ron Spector believes that communist spies have stolen dangerous magical secrets.

Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of 40 men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation, and cruelty - a gripping and visceral story, impossible to pause.

Der Zauberberg erstmals als ungekürztes Hörbuch, virtuos gelesen von Thomas Sarbacher. Geplant als Novelle, als heiteres Gegenstück zum Tod in Venedig, entstand mit dem Zauberberg einer der großen Romane der klassischen Moderne. Ein kurzer Besuch in einem Davoser Sanatorium wird für den Protagonisten Hans Castorp zu einem siebenjährigen Aufenthalt, der Kurort wird zur Bühne für die europäische Befindlichkeit vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg.

When the great Thomas Hardy published this heart-wrenching novel, he had no idea it would be his last. But the book stirred so much controversy and protest, Hardy vowed to never write fiction again. Jude the Obscure tells the story of a stonemason, tricked into a loveless marriage, who craves a formal education and a finer existence. Separated from his wife, Jude begins a new life with his cousin, and the couple defies social convention at every turn.

If you want to understand the daily life and psychology of the late Middle Ages, Ronald Ecker’s classic translation of The Canterbury Tales provides one of the very best means of doing so. Within its audio is to be found a broad range of society - high and low, male and female, rich and poor - who express their innermost beliefs and extravagant fantasies in a series of stories they tell as they make their way to Canterbury Cathedral.

A young girl called Tozi stands at the bottom of a pyramid, waiting to be led to the top where her heart will be cut out.... Pepillo, a Spanish orphan who serves a sadistic Dominican friar, is aboard the Spanish fleet as it sails towards Mexico.... This is the epic story of the clash of two empires, two armies and two gods of war. Five hundred desperate adventurers are about to pit themselves against the most brutal armies of the ancient Americas, armies hundreds of thousands strong.

As part of the d'Artagnan Romances following The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, and devoted in large part to romantic events at the court of France's King Louis XIV, Louise de La Valliere is the second part of Alexandre Dumas's 268 chapter novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, which first appeared in serial form between 1847 and 1850.