Historical Fiction White

The body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the unsolved murder of another Englishwoman, 10 years before. A magistrate in the new secular courts, Kamil Pasha, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a mystical voice, a young Muslim woman recounts her own relationship with one of the dead women and with the suspected killer.

The Battle of North Fields is over - or so Aliza Bentaine, now a Daired, fervently wants to believe. But rumors are spreading of an unseen monster ravaging the isolated Castle Selwyn on the northern border of the kingdom. When she and Alastair are summoned from their honeymoon by the mysterious Lord Selwyn, they must travel with their dragon Akarra through the Tekari-infested Old Wilds of Arle to answer his call. And they are not alone on this treacherous journey. Shadowing the dragonriders is an ancient evil, a harbinger of a dark danger of which the Worm was only a foretaste.

The burgeoning 1840s New Holland wool market is irresistible to entrepreneurial souls prepared to brave the open oceans. Having survived unimaginable tragedy together, Grace and Seamus Fitzwilliam plan a fresh start aboard their new ship, Elias. Lucius Chittenden, the new first mate, comes highly-recommended, and with the return of the trusted crew, the journey promises smooth sailing. The Elias is bursting with goods for the colony as well as shepherds for Gilly Downs, but it is not long before a theft is discovered, souring the mood aboard.

A searing new novel from leading Indigenous storyteller Tony Birch that explores the lengths we will go to in order to save the people we love. Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families.

Spanning the years 1925-1945, Lily Claybourne, the Countess of Gloucester, forges her path in the post-World War I era. Despite difficulties with her marriage, her dreams remain intact, and she strives to make them a reality. She enters into a tumultuous time in her life, filled with great achievement and heartbreaking loss. Through it all, Lily continues to grow and refuses to let misfortune block her way. This is the engaging finale to the much-loved trilogy, which began in 1914, at the beginning of the Great War.

Fifteen years after the notorious War at Cat Lake, Missy Parker, the child who stood in the center of the demonic war, now lives in Texas with her husband, Pat. But Satan's minions remain at Cat Lake, waiting. On a bleak night in April, 1960, evil is aroused. An innocent black woman is attacked by a mob of white men. Old Mose Washington confronts the men with a 12-gauge shotgun, and people die. When the dawn comes, Mose is a fugitive, diligently pursued by an FBI agent who is unprepared to accept the nature of the forces at work here.

Catherine L. Knowles has written White Dove, an epic story of love, betrayal, hate, and survival set against the tumultuous background of the Civil War and General Sherman’s Scorch the Earth campaign. At the center of the tale is a former bordello business manager Mollie “Sissy” Greenleaf, a “spitfire” loud, outspoken woman. Sissy finds herself in the middle of a heated courtroom battle to defend the honor of her deceased best friend and confidant Mollie Teal and her estate.

Grace and Seamus, united by their past experiences, are adrift on a raft of shame in the sea of 1830s London society. After a personal tragedy, Grace's desperation to leave London forces Seamus to accept a dubious commission on the private explorer, Clover. With the expedition financed by Colonel Hamilton and his private backers, Seamus is tasked with mapping a round-the-world voyage. But Colonel Hamilton has an additional package that requires delivering - Father Babcock, a priest wanted for murder.

Munich, Germany, 1942. Hans Scholl never intended to get his younger sister involved in an underground resistance. When Sophie Scholl finds out, she insists on joining Hans and his close friends in writing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets entitled The White Rose.

On a small island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, the Tabés are a family mourning the death of their son in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone, while worrying over the looming departure of another. Desperate to find a way to change their fates, David Tabé places a phone call halfway around the world to the Stewarts, a family bound to his own through a fraught connection in the distant past—their ancestors met on the island two hundred years earlier, with calamitous results.

Their mom is the newly elected President of the United States, the Secret Service is always hovering nearby, and First Daughters Marissa and Clara don’t expect they’ll be venturing out anytime soon—until they discover a secret passage in the White House dining room and a candlelit clubhouse full of antique curiosities and mysterious doors. The candle blows out, a door opens, and the girls find themselves in the White House of President Teddy Roosevelt and his boisterous family.

As the early years of detective fiction gave way to two separate golden ages - of hard-boiled tales in America and intricately-plotted, so-called “cozy” murders in Britain - the legacy of Sherlock Holmes, with his fierce devotion to science and logic, gave way to street smarts on the one hand and social insight on the other, but even though these new sub-genres went their own ways, their detectives still required intelligence and clear-sightedness as characterized the earliest works of detective fiction: the trademarks of Sherlock Holmes, and of all the detectives featured here.

Princess Thora, the youngest daughter of the infamous Queen of Norseland, has only known life behind the walls of Winterwood Keep. Shut away from the outside world, Thora awaits the day she is called upon to fulfill her royal duty. When that day arrives, Thora learns she will marry the kingdom’s most sinister chieftain. She must decide between her freedom and the dangers that stalk the wild winter lands or her obligation to her kingdom and confronting the evils that lurk in the castle corridors she calls home.

Jessamin has been an outcast since she moved from her island home of Melei to the dreary country of Albion. Everything changes when she meets the gorgeous, enigmatic Finn, who introduces her to the secret world of Albion's nobility. It's a world that has everything Jessamin doesn't—power, money, status . . . and magic. But Finn has secrets of his own, and the vicious Lord Downpike will do anything to possess them. Unless Jessamin, armed only with her wits, can stop him.

Emilia and Teo's lives change in a fiery, terrifying instant when a bird strike brings down the plane their stunt pilot mothers are flying. Teo's mother dies immediately, but Em's survives and is determined to raise Teo according to his late mother's wishes - in a place where he won't be discriminated against because of the colour of his skin. But in 1930s America, a white woman raising a black adoptive son alongside a white daughter is too often seen as a threat.

No one can be alone on an island...but Ingrid is alone on Barrøy, the island that bears her name, and the war of her childhood has been replaced by a new, more terrible present: the Nazi occupation of Norway. When the bodies from a bombed vessel carrying Russian prisoners of war begin to wash up, Ingrid can't know that one will not only be alive, but could be the answer to a lifetime of loneliness—nor can she imagine what suffering she will endure in hiding her lover from the German authorities, or the journey she will face, after being wrenched from her island, to return home.

December, 1938. Rozalin Sachs has grown up in the vibrant city of Frankfurt. But with the Nazi Revolution gaining power, her family is forced to flee Germany. When a tragic accident separates Roz from her parents, she finds herself aboard the Kindertransport bound for Holland. Here Roz meets a young lad called Felix, and they vow to stick together as their journey takes them to England. Eventually, they find themselves in Liverpool with the promise of a new life, until a devastating incident takes Felix away.

Gwenhwyfar moves in a world where gods walk among their pagan worshipers, where nebulous visions warn of future perils, and where there are two paths for a woman: the path of the Blessing or the rarer path of the Warrior. Gwenhwyfar chooses the latter, giving up the power that she is born into. Yet the daughter of a king is never truly free to follow her own calling.

The Ottoman Empire is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches. Within days, the lost objects appear for sale in Europe. Among them is a reliquary presumed lost for 400 years and around which an elaborate, mysterious sect has grown.

In an alternate London, the city's Theatre District is a walled area south of the river where an immersive production - the Show - has been running for centuries, growing ever bigger, more sprawling and lavish. The Show is open to anyone who can afford a ticket but the District itself is a closed world. Juliet's mother died when she was a baby. Brought up by her emotionally distant father and even more distant stepmother, she has never felt wanted. It's only when her father passes away that Juliet - now nineteen - learns her birth was registered in the District.