Historical Fiction Europe

Hugo Kendal and his wife, Margaret, finally receive a royal pardon and are permitted at last to return to their beloved homeland. Most of the family warmly welcome the couple and the news that they are soon to become three. However, despite the smiles, Hannah Kendal cannot help but dwell on the threat that Hugo might pose to her husband Simon's position as Master of Heron.

It is wartime and Carrie and her little brother Nick have been evacuated from their London home to the Welsh hills. In an unfamiliar place, among strangers, the children feel alone and find little comfort with the family they are billeted with: Mr Evans, a bullying shopkeeper and Auntie Lou, his kind but timid sister. When Carrie and Nick visit Albert, another evacuee, they are welcomed into Hepzibah Green's warm kitchen. Hepzibah is rumoured to be a witch, but her cooking is delicious, her stories are enthralling and the children cannot keep away.

Anglo-Saxon England. Having built a rich empire and keen to win the favor of the royal court, Hilda and AEligard have little time for their daughter, Catheryn. But one man, Selwyn, is intrigued by the intelligent and high-spirited girl.

The extraordinary novel Pride and Honour is a completely revised and rewritten version of the surprise initial success of the novel Honour and Glory by Nathaniel Burns. The author took many of his listeners‘ tips, reviews, and advice to heart to make his fascinating tale about Charlemagne and the Saxon King Widukind an even better listen. Take this suspenseful, captivating, and exciting journey back into Europe’s Dark Ages to meet the pivotal figure of Charlemagne and one of his greatest adversaries.

One day, a mysterious stranger arrives at a boardinghouse of the widow Gateau - a sad-faced stranger, who keeps to himself. When the widow’s daughter, Mirette, discovers him crossing the courtyard on air, she begs him to teach her how he does it. But Mirette doesn’t know that the stranger was once the Great Bellini - master wire-walker. Or that Bellini has been stopped by a terrible fear. And it is she who must teach him courage once again.

Hitler's U-boats rule the North Atlantic and threaten to eliminate the Allied supply lines through meticulously coordinated attacks using Germany's secret weapon: the Enigma. Desperate to turn the tide of the war, British scientists at Bletchley Park work tirelessly to break the codes. But there is a problem. They need the German ciphers and a working Enigma machine.

July 1839, without the permission of the English Government, the New Zealand Company ship, Tory, quietly departed England, anxious to reach New Zealand with the utmost speed. Expedition leader, Colonel William Wakefield's objective is clear - acquire millions of acres of valuable land from the natives at the lowest possible price. On board the Tory, Andrew and Eleanor Stewart, young Scottish emigrants indentured to the New Zealand Company, are excited at the prospect of beginning a new life in a perfect town called Britannia. It's the Utopia the company promised.

Paris, 1938. A shadow edges over Europe, while in Spain the war has already begun. Cristián Ferrar, a handsome Spanish lawyer in Paris, is approached to help a clandestine agency supply weapons to beleaguered Republican forces and agrees, putting his life on the line. Joining Ferrar is an unlikely group of allies: including Max de Lyon, a man hunted by the Gestapo, and the Marquesa Maria Cristina, a refined beauty with a taste for danger.

It's April 1940 and German troops are pouring onto the streets of Denmark. 12-year-old Bamse is ordered by his father to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. But Bamse and his daring friend Anton can't resist playing the occasional practical joke on the invading soldiers. When it becomes clear that the trouble isn't just going to pass them by, the people of Denmark decide to take action and Bamse and his eccentric family are about to take part in one of history's most dramatic rescues - smuggling Denmark's Jewish population, across the water to Sweden and safety.

Holmes is summoned to Geneva by the legendary “Sisi”, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, to “rake through the coals of Mayerling” and learn the true fate of Crown Prince Rudolf, her dead son.

At the center of this fiercely compelling story is Devlin Judge, an American lawyer in Europe as part of the International Military Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals. Haunted by his own demons, Judge has a secret agenda: to find Erich Seyss, the Nazi responsible for his brother's death. An elite member of Hilter's SS and former Olympic sprinter known as "The White Lion", Seyss has just escaped from an American P.O.W. camp.

Valencia, Spain, 1491. The ambitions of four men collide in a deadly game of intrigue. David Sanz, a young militiaman, is forced to carry out a heinous crime, and he becomes an unwitting pawn in a tense battle for power. Luis Peráto, the duke of Sagrat, sacrifices his own people to cover up dark secrets that could see him burnt at the stake for treason. Sergio Garcia, Sagrat’s lord treasurer, is a cruel and unscrupulous man, willing to eliminate anyone who opposes his rise to power. The inquisitor, Gaspar de Amo, zealously punishes heretics for their sins against Rome.

Leonard is shocked when he arrives with his mother in the port of Southampton. His father is a stranger to him, it's cold and even the Jamaican food doesn't taste the same as it did back home in Maroon Town. But his parents have brought him here to try to make a better life, so Leonard does his best not to complain, to make new friends, to do well at school - even when people hurt him with their words and with their fists. How can a boy so far from home learn to enjoy his new life when so many things count against him?

The gallows, the rack, and angry mobs are part of the menace in this horrific novel set in 15th century Paris. Quasimodo, the kind-hearted, hunchbacked bell ringer and the lovely La Esmaralda struggle to survive the brutality that surrounds them.

The three tales in this audiobook are adapted from stories told by the peasants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They are drawn from some books I found in shops when I visited the former USSR in 1988 as part of a citizen diplomacy group. I was intrigued by these folktales, since my paternal grandmother lived for some time in Odessa in the Ukraine. Also, I found these stories share a common theme - the poor peasant is able to succeed despite obstacles against an unfair ruler.

One by one the seven precious relics of the Arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, are disappearing from sanctuaries across the world. After former Justice Department agent Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder - blackmail that both the United States and Russia want, but for vastly different reasons.

The pope is dead. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican to select his replacement, but one has fled for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the fourth century and Constantine the Great. Former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone is in Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that could rewrite history. But someone else is after the same letters, and when Malone obtains and then loses them, he's plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.

In this, the twelfth of the series, Dumas, the novelist-historian, is back in full force. His subject is a well-documented historical fact: that a man named Arnaud du Thil was able to pass for two years as Martin Guerre, deceiving villages, neighbors, friends, family, and even the wife of Martin Guerre with equal success, even to the point of becoming the father of two children by Martin Guerre's wife.

Flavia, Jonathan, Lupus, and Nubia - friends and detectives - sail to the Bay of Naples to spend the summer with Flavia's uncle, who lives near Pompeii. There they uncover a riddle that may lead them to a great treasure. Meanwhile, tremors shake the ground, animals behave strangely, and people dream of impending doom. One of the worst natural disasters of all time is about to happen: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius!

In this fiction, a former University classmate, now colonel of the SS, meets Edith Stein in Auschwitz to persuade her to contribute to the doctrinal development of a new religion that would be functional to the Nazi regime. The story presents the development of the conflict between two world views that are absolutely irreconcilable.