Historical Fiction White

It is spring 1916, and Great Britain is at war with Germany. On the home front, stylish lady detective Miss Isabel Hewitt has joined the Women's Emergency Corps. Her duties include driving a military ambulance. But she continues with her detective work. One morning, she is approached by a wealthy young woman Miss Jen-Eva Howard. This lady's fiancé, a journalist by the name of Giles Chichester, has been brutally murdered.

Set in an unnamed NZ city in 1953, Fire tells the story of four working-class friends, all employed at Dawsons, one of the country's most glamorous and sophisticated department stores. A historical romance based on the Ballantynes department store fire in 1947 that killed 41 people, most of them store employees trapped in controversial circumstances.

From the rural festivities in 'Village Christmas' to the poignant tale of a white robin, these two stories demonstrate the wry wit and light touch of Miss Read. Two heartwarming and wonderfully festive listens.

Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura's prearranged marriage to the son of her father's business associate would secure her family's status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man - an American sailor, a gaijin - and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it's learned Naoko carries the sailor's child, she's cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.

Madu, a young African, is captured by the English slave-trader Sir John Hawkins. Tom Oakley is a young sailor in charge of the slaves. At first, the two boys hate each other. But as the story develops, their roles are reversed, and they become closer friends than either would have once believed possible.

Join the crew of the Panther in this thrilling continuation of the Tides of Fortune series. As tensions mount in San Francisco, Nick Van Doran and his crew are thrust into a desperate race against time. Their mission: to navigate the treacherous waters and war-torn landscapes to reach New York.

A fortune in gold and the future of a nation are at stake. King Henri is dead, leaving Haiti in disorder and his treasury empty. A mysterious crewman is able to interpret a series of cryptic clues leading the crew on a chase through the mountains and fortresses of Haiti. With his own goal of taking over the nation, the political intrigue builds, but nothing is as easy as it seems.

Gavin Guile, once the most powerful man the world had ever seen, has been laid low. He's lost his magic, and now he is on a suicide mission. Failure will condemn the woman he loves. Success will condemn his entire empire. As the White King springs his great traps and the Chromeria itself is threatened by treason and siege, Kip Guile must gather his forces, rally his allies, and scramble to return for one impossible final stand.

Francie Meeker and Vi Carothers were sold a bill of goods: Find a man, marry him in a white wedding gown, and live happily ever after. These best friends never expected to be on the train to Reno, those “lies in white dresses” shattered, their marriages over. On board the train, they meet June Samples, who is fleeing an abusive husband with her daughter, and take the vulnerable young mother under their wing. The three decide to wait out the required six weeks together, and then they can toss their wedding bands into the Truckee River and start new lives as divorcees.

Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases.

Buried deep in The Florida Panhandle is a dark secret that can set an innocent man free or destroy the entire Juvenile System for the State of Florida. Jerry White, a young man growing up in the 60’s is shipped to a reform school for boys, but as his sentence begins he discovers the many forms of torture and brutality that the young men must endure including race, racism, and murder.

When Clara returns home from the convent of her childhood to begin life at a local girls' school, she is at a loss: although she has comparative freedom, she misses the discipline the nuns imposed and worries about keeping her faith in a secular world. Against the background of the First World War, Clara experiences the confusions of adolescence—its promise, its threat of change. She longs for love, yet fears it, and wonders what the future will hold. Then tragedy strikes and her childhood haltingly comes to an end as she realizes that neither parents nor her faith can help her.

Louisa Hoffman has just endured a humiliating annulment, which has left her bitter and determined never to marry again. Having tarnished her reputation in New York, she flees to the Colorado Territory to live with her sisters, Hannah and Paulina, who have happily married and settled.

Chicago in the 1890s is the fastest growing metropolis in America. It rivals New York as the City of the Century and the epitome of the Gilded Age. This melting pot of thieves and corrupt politicians, and robber barons and immigrants, is rife with scandal and social injustice. An eccentric heiress and a cub reporter find themselves repeatedly drawn into the hidden world of intrigue and murder that lurks within the shadows of the White City.

Irrepressible Terrell Calder is a cigarette-smoking, school-skipping six-year-old boy growing up in a migrant work camp under growing rumors of World War II during the last days of the Great Depression. Son of the camp manager, Terry has no interest in school, and instead is drawn into an unlikely friendship with Mr. McCree, an eccentric old man living in the cracks of civilization. Together, they prowl the Everglades in search of rattlesnakes, epiphytes, and adventure until the law and society change their lives forever.

After reading about her sister Hannah's success in homesteading to Denver City, Paulina Hoffman decides to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling with an older couple to the Kansas territory. What she hadn't anticipated was wagon master, Samuel Tucker, who catches her eye from the start.

Blown off course by a storm, Nick and the men remaining from Gasparilla's crew find themselves and their fortune in dire straights in the Cayman Islands. Double crossed by the island's governor, Nick must find a way to keep the crew together, rescue Rory, and recover the confiscated treasure. When a local reveals a clue to a fortune hidden in one of the ships lost in The Wreck of the Ten Sails, Nick and the crew fight the dangers of primitive diving to salvage the treasure, save Rory, and cast off the pirate mantle.

It's late summer in the Alleghany Highlands, 1775. Colonial Virginia has resolved to support the American Revolutionary cause for liberty. The British are determined to retain control of the fur trade and keep frontiersmen fighting Indians instead of joining the Continentals. Thirteen-year-old Mary Shirley is still recovering from emotional wounds inflicted when she risked her life delivering traitorous dispatches. She trusted the wrong men, and now the family must flee Indian Creek to stay ahead of British Loyalists who seek her papa's life.

Joelle Daughtry has a secret. By day, the impoverished Southern belle has been helping her sisters to turn the run-down family plantation into a resort hotel after the close of the Civil War. But by night and under a male pseudonym, she has been penning articles for the local paper in support of constructing a school for former slaves. With the Mississippi arm of the Ku Klux Klan gaining power and prestige, Joelle knows she is playing a dangerous game. Loyalties shift when Schuyler Beaumont, childhood enemy, takes over his assassinated father's candidacy for state office.

Jack Holmes is in love, but the man he loves never shares his bed. The other men Jack sleeps with never last long and he dallies with several women. Jack's friend, Will Wright, comes from old stock, has aspirations to be a writer, and like Jack works on the Northern Review, a staid cultural quarterly. Will is shy and lonely-and Jack introduces him to the beautiful, brittle young woman he will marry. Over the years Will discovers his sensuality and almost destroys his marriage in doing so.