Historical Homes

Liesl Bannon has never felt like she was truly at home anywhere, not since her mother placed her and her brother Erich on the last Kindertransport out of Berlin in 1939. She’d been so much more fortunate than most Jews, saved from the horrors of the Nazi regime. Being adopted by Elizabeth and Daniel Lieber meant she and Erich spent the war in Northern Ireland, safe and loved, but Liesl always knew something was missing. When an opportunity to return to Berlin to represent her university presents itself, she is so torn.

New cover. A courageous woman. A Union officer torn by loyalty. A perilous journey through war-torn Texas. Parmelia Bailey is determined to protect the women in her family until the men return from war. As fighting draws near, she risks everything to steal back her horses and rescue her brother’s fiancée, sisters, and mother. But danger is never far behind—especially from Jeff Lawson, a rejected suitor bent on revenge. Darrick McDonald returns to Texas as promised, but now wears Union blue and carries a mission from General Grant: stop Lawson and his renegades before they reach ...

Acclaimed archeologist and historian Karolyn Smardz Frost painstakingly resurrects Thornton and Lucie Blackburn's perilous 1830s journey from Kentucky slavery to Canadian freedom.

The African sun beats down on Salisbury as Livy Johnston, an up-and-coming artist, steps into a world of colonial propriety and unspoken rules. After a shipboard romance with wealthy widower Crispin Dane, she is forced to face the reality of her hastily arranged future with Jeremy Crookshank, a struggling farm assistant with dreams of his own tobacco fields.

A wartime train station encounter changes a lifetime... After losing her fiancé in WW1, Margaret Parker settled into a quiet, lonely life as the town librarian in North Platte, NE. After the US enters WW2, Margaret volunteers as the historian for the Servicemen’s Canteen organized by the women of North Platte. When Captain Tom Carver strolls into the Canteen, he’s immediately drawn to Maggie and works hard to woo her, via letters, as he heads off to war. While reluctantly falling in love long-distance, Maggie also opens her heart to the teenaged girl she supervises and the townswomen ...

Larkin Bennett has always known her place, whether it's surrounded by her loving family in the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest, or riding on a dusty convoy in Afghanistan. But all that changed the day tragedy struck her unit and took away everything she held dear. Soon after, Larkin discovers an unexpected treasure: the diary of Emily Wilson, a young woman who disguised herself as a man to fight for the Union in the Civil War. As Larkin struggles to heal, she finds herself drawn deep into Emily's life and the secrets she kept.

It is 1940 and Staff Nurse Polly Brown has been granted a posting at Cliffehaven Memorial Hospital to be near her badly injured husband, Adam. But her decision has meant that she has had to part with their five-year-old daughter, Alice, who is travelling to safety in Canada. Polly's heart is torn in two as she says goodbye to Alice and heads to the Beach View boarding house, where she throws herself into her work. But as she confronts the fact that Adam may not survive his injuries, a shocking telegram arrives at Beach View.

In Victorian-era Louisville, the Home for Friendless Women is run by benevolent benefactors with one mission: to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives through religious lessons and hard work. For Ruth, a college student who’s expelled after a campus sexual assault, the Home is a purgatory to endure before she can get her life back. For Belle, a queer sex worker who exchanged her bed at a brothel for one in the Home, it’s a safe place to rest her feet until she can track down her missing lover.

Hunger. Unemployment. Homelessness: realities of life during the Great Depression. Thrust into these realities, all Maggie Ehlke wants is a home and family of her own. Instead, she’s sent to her sister’s home in Dubuque to earn her keep by helping with her sister’s twins. But circumstances soon send Maggie to the widower Iverson’s farm to keep house and raise his younger three daughters. Iverson’s grown son, the agonizingly shy Romy, dreams of life on the road. But the death of his mother cuts his dreams short while bringing the spirited “Miss Maggie” into his world. Amidst ...

Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author's grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed "perhaps the 20th century's most discriminating publisher" by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.

Nate Long has always watched over his identical twin brother, Aaron, even when it put him on the wrong side of the law. When Aaron is wounded in a shootout, the brothers are taken to Settler's Fort to recover. As Nate works to make reparations for their past, he marvels at the nursing Aaron receives under the care of a woman with all the reason in the world to resent him.

Award-winning Florida novelist Patrick Smith's first novel, The River Is Home, revolves around a Mississippi family's struggle to cope with changes in their rural environment. Poor in material possessions, Skeeter's kinfolk are rich in their appreciation of their beautiful natural surroundings. The river on which they live—with its food supply, steamboats, and floods—figures strongly in their lives as the source of life, change, and death. Though their life is a simple one, it's filled with friendship, loyalty, love, and compassion.

1940. It's been a month since rector's daughter Billie Harkness left her rural village to make a fresh start in the northern city of Hull. Now she has a new home and an exciting new job as one of only two female police constables in the whole city. But Hull still feels like a foreign country, and some people are less than impressed by the idea of a woman doing a "man's job". But determined to do her bit for the war effort, Billie throws herself into her work. The chance to prove her worth comes during a search for a missing air raid shelter inspector, when Billie makes a shocking discovery.

Ten-year-old Pearl Spence is a daydreamer, playing make-believe to escape life in Oklahoma's Dust Bowl in 1935. The Spences have their share of misfortune, but as the sheriff's family, they've got more than most in this dry, desolate place. They're who the town turns to when there's a crisis or a need. Pearl is proud of her loving, strong family, though she often wearies of tracking down her mentally impaired older sister or wrestling with her grandmother's unshakable belief in a God. Then a mysterious man bent on revenge tramps into her town of Red River.

Once a wistful romantic, Opal Martin now simply aspires to scrub the remnants of the War Between the States from her tattered life. But when a nearly drowned soldier appears and asks if he can die on her porch, she must guard against the sudden revival of her heart’s hope for love. Haunted by the war, Tristan Stuart just wants to escape the pain. But when he wakes up at a house that looks too much like home, with a woman determined to mend him, he may discover a new life worth fighting for.

The luck of a gambling hand had changed his fate and now the young cowboy was ready to start a new life. Bud After serving time in the Louisiana State Prison, Bud Downey spent many months winning a small fortune as a gambler. Feeling confident that he had won enough money, he packed up his stake to begin his journey to Limason, Texas—Home. After his last winning hand at the gambling table, a couple of disgruntled cowboys were angry that they had lost all their money to the smooth-talking young man. As Bud traveled near the border of Lafayette, Louisiana, he was ambushed, shot and left for...

Sarah Lester's mother is missing, and the Indian uprising holds her father captive. The police want to question her, and even the church is demanding its pound of flesh. Her return to The Old Curiosity Shop raises more questions than answers. Waiting in the shadows is a vengeful Richard Grey. After discovering Sarah’s ability to travel through time, nothing will stop him from restoring his name to its former glory. Not even time. Can Sarah reunite her scattered family before Grey closes the doorway to the past?

Can the worst of enemies find friendship or even love? Newly-hired companion April Stringham steps off the train in 1890s Los Angeles expecting to find wild Indians, cattle drives, cowboys, saloon girls, bandits and shootouts on every corner, just as her dime novels guaranteed. A confirmed old maid, April has nowhere to go should her new job be less than imagined. There would be no turning back. Successful attorney Noah Chandler is about to marry the girl of his dreams. His youthful fiancé might be beautiful and rich, but it’s her family’s business contacts that make her a prize beyond...

At 97 years old, Winnifred Ellis knows she doesn’t have much time left, and it is almost a relief to realize that once she is gone, the truth about her shameful past will die with her. But when her great-grandson Jamie, the spitting image of her dear late husband, asks about his family tree, Winnifred can’t lie any longer, even if it means breaking a promise she made so long ago....

It had taken four long, difficult years to tame the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. Looking back through all the heartache and the body-breaking labor, Ingeborg Bjorklund knew that God had been with them every step of the way. Dreams that had turned into veritable nightmares had been reshaped with the promise of a new day rising, and her marriage to Haaken had been its sure sign.