Historical Homes

It's 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina, and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude's aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home.

Harper Fleming is done with being passed over. As a journalist for a Chicago newspaper, she’s been refused a shot at the sportswriter position she longs for. And her on again/off again relationship is going nowhere. Leaving both behind, she heads to Nashville, Tennessee, where she plans to interview her widowed grandfather, Bernard Fleming, for a book about his father Kelton Fleming’s time in the Negro Baseball Leagues. When Bernard reveals health issues within days of her arrival, Harper assumes responsibility for taking care of him.

Pearl Spence has finally settled into a routine in Bliss, Michigan, far from her home in Red River, Oklahoma. Like all the other kids, she goes to school each day, plays in the woods, and does her chores. But there's one big difference: Mama is still gone and doesn't seem to have a thought for the family she's left behind.

In wartime New Zealand, a body on the rocks near a US Marine Base sparks a romantic encounter and a search for a group of traitors embedded in Kate Hardy's community New Zealand, June 1943. Kate Hardy, a reporter for the Dominion newspaper and the newest member of the Hardy clan, is sent to Kapiti Coast to see what's happening at Camp Russell, one of several US Marine training camps in New Zealand during World War II. The Marines are training for an attack on the Central Pacific, but her editor has heard that something unusual is happening down on the beach in front of the camp. Could they ...

When Karlina Richter discovers that a new shepherd will be sent to her village, she fears she'll no longer be allowed to help her father with the sheep. She'll be relegated back to kitchen work, stuck inside all day. Her fears increase when the new shepherd shows little interest in the flock - or in divulging why he's suddenly been sent to East. Is he keeping secrets that will impact Karlina's family? Dovie Cates visits the Amana Colonies to learn more about the place where her mother grew up.

Freedom fighter, brilliant businessperson, devoted wife, master of languages, and ultimately, savior of a European dynasty. Claudia Patterson would become all of these—spurred on by the fiercely powerful loves and losses along the way … Denny Clark. An abused thirteen-year-old White boy whose life twelve-year-old Claudia saves—complicating her own life for years to come.

In the shadow of the War of 1812, a riveting tale unfolds during the pivotal Battle of Baltimore. This historical fiction novel intricately weaves the lives of several individuals against the backdrop of a nation in turmoil. Francis Scott Key, detained aboard a British ship, pens the words that would become the Star-Spangled Banner. Meanwhile, Frederick Hall, an escaped slave, bravely fights for the American side that denied him his freedom. Amidst the build up to war, young Grace Wisher, an indentured servant, pours her skill and silent hopes into the very stitches and fabric of the ...

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

The setting is the beginning of an Amish settlement in colonial America in the forests of eastern Pennsylvania. There, a young Amish couple, Hans and Kate Zug, are in their ninth year of marriage, still waiting to have a child. Then, one April morning, Kate finds a Native infant, wrapped in deerskin and placed next to the spring where she went to fill her water bucket.

Born a Native American but brought up Amish, Hester Zug, at age 20, flees her Amish home. Her father's too-tender care of her has made her stepmother wildly jealous, and so Hester sets off, knowing only that she can't stay. Hester's natural instincts for navigating the forests in colonial Pennsylvania, along with the book of medicines and remedies given to her by an aged Native American woman, allow her to survive until she gets sick from drinking river water.

He didn't need a wife . . . until he met her. With nothing left for her at home, Hazel Hart takes a chance on becoming a mail-order bride to a rancher in the Colorado Territory. But her dreams of love and family are dashed when she meets her stoic, work-driven husband-to-be. Wade Pierce has neither the time nor the inclination for romance. Love made a shell of a man out of his father, and so Wade's only reason for sending for a wife is to have someone to cook and keep up with the house. But instead of getting the woman he imagined, he finds himself wedded to Hazel--who seems bent on making ...

Can she trust the man who broke her heart? Sterling Matthews is done with the danger and uncertainty that came with being a bounty hunter. It's just as well, since he's suddenly found himself responsible for his most recent quarry's ten-year-old son. Sterling can't suss out why he volunteered for the job, but something wouldn't let him allow young Noah to be shipped off to the nearest orphanage. Taking on an assumed name to protect both himself and the boy from anyone still bearing a grudge, Sterling settles in out-of-the-way Crest Stone, Colorado. All he needs now is steady work--and a ...

In July 1944, Arielle von Auspeck arrives at the glamorous Hotel Ritz in occupied Paris. Half French, half German, she is happy to be back in France, where her husband, Gregor, a retired colonel, will join her soon from Germany. Arielle and Gregor have thus far been able to hide their private opposition to Hitler. Then her world falls apart. She receives word that Gregor was part of Operation Valkyrie, a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in Poland, and has been shot as a traitor.

When he inherited a ranch, he didn't expect a bride to be part of the deal. When Cade Harris receives word that his older brother has passed away and left him a ranch, he pushes aside his grief and decides to take on the ranch himself. But when he arrives at the plot of land outside Crest Stone, Colorado, he finds a half-built house and cattle that have long since run off. And if that wasn't enough, his brother's bride-to-be arrives. Jolie Taylor always preferred studying the stars in the sky and the plants on earth to making the rounds of society. But when she loses her father and every ...

In ancient Rome, the number of slaves was far greater than that of free citizens. As a result, often the people Romans feared most were the "enemies at home," the slaves under their own roofs. Because of this, Roman law decreed that if the head of a household was murdered at home, and the culprit wasn't quickly discovered, his slaves - all of them, guilty or not - were presumed responsible and were put to death...without exception.

In the spring of 1972, Joyce Maynard, a freshman at Yale, published a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about life in the sixties. Among the many letters of praise, offers for writing assignments, and request for interviews was a one-page letter from the famously reclusive author, J.D. Salinger. At Home in the World is the story of a girl who loved and lived with J.D. Salinger, and the woman she became. A crucial turning point in Joyce Maynard's life occurred when her own daughter turned eighteen--the age Maynard was when Salinger first approached her.

Naomi Henderson has been working with her grandfather, Will, who is a doctor. He and his wife have raised her since her father's death, in a small town in Wyoming in the late 1800s. He's passed his knowledge on to her, and the town trusts her and considers her to be their second doctor. Will's brother, Jeb, comes to visit, and it soon becomes clear to Naomi and the town of Cedarville that he's nothing like their beloved Will. When Will dies tragically, Jeb comes to town again and causes one problem after another, while the town rallies around Naomi. A local sheriff tries to sort out one ...

Jimmy Propfield joined the army for two reasons: to get out of Mobile, Alabama, with his best friends Hank and Billy and to forget his high school sweetheart, Claire. Life in the Philippines seems like paradise—until the morning of December 8, 1941, when news comes from Manila: the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. Within hours, the teenage friends are plunged into war as Japanese warplanes attack Luzon, beginning a battle for control of the Pacific Theater that will culminate with a last stand on the Bataan Peninsula and end with the largest surrender of American troops in history.

Peggy Serrano couldn’t wait for her best friend to come home from the war. But the Jimmy Barnett who returns is much different from the Jimmy who left, changed so drastically by his experience as a medic in Europe that he can barely function. When he attempts the unthinkable, his parents check him into the VA hospital. Peggy determines to help the Barnetts unravel what might have happened to send their son over the edge. She starts by contacting Jimmy’s war buddies, trying to identify the mysterious woman in the photo they find in Jimmy’s belongings.

Sharla Cody is only five, but has already lived a troubled life - only to find herself dumped on an elderly neighbor's doorstep when her mother takes off for the summer. Although Sharla is not the angelic child Addy Shadd had pictured when she agreed to look after her, the two soon forge a deep bond. To Addy's surprise, Sharla's presence brings back memories of her own childhood in Rusholme, a town settled by fugitive slaves in the mid-1800s. She reminisces about her family, her first love, and the painful experience that drove her away from home.