Historical Sagas

Having survived the cataclysmic battle of Sekigahara, which established the mighty Tokugawa Shogunate, young Musashi Miyamoto travels through Japan determined to proclaim his revolutionary epiphany that the “way of the samurai,” the ancient code that binds warriors to their masters, needs to be abolished.

Even the most glamorous stately homes hide secrets and lies from the past... When Flora receives a shocking telegram about her father’s sudden death in a riding accident, she rushes back to her childhood home, Cleeve Abbey. Once a governess to young Eddy, Viscount Trent, and daughter of the Earl’s trusted butler, Flora finds the house steeped in unease. Her plans to lay her father to rest beside her mother, Lily, are upended when mystery surrounds Lily’s final resting place.

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister” to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves.

In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years.

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.

In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche Indians. This is the story of how she grew up with them, mastered their ways, married one of their leaders, and became, in every way, a Comanche woman. It is also the story of a proud and innocent people whose lives pulsed with the very heartbeat of the land. It is the story of a way of life that is gone forever.

In this new adventure, Hornblower is overjoyed to discover his next task is to serve aboard the mighty HMS Renown. After witnessing some unsettling scenes however, he soon finds himself struggling to serve under the captain, James Sawyer, whose unsound mind leads him to treat his crew with extreme suspicion and contempt.

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is clearly seen in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle, all of them fully realized and equally memorable.

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.

The middle daughter of struggling California fruit farmers, Alice Bush is accustomed to feeling inferior and destitute. But when her elder sister’s husband strikes a vein of gold in the Yukon Territory, Alice finally seizes control of her destiny by joining a wave of white settlers making the dangerous trek to the Klondike. What follows is an awakening of ambition for the quietly opportunistic Alice.

Joseph Armagh was 13 when he first saw America through a dirty porthole on the steerage deck of The Irish Queen. It was the early 1850s, and he was a penniless orphan cast on a hostile shore to make a home for himself and his younger brother and infant sister. Some 70 years later, from his deathbed, Joseph Armagh last glimpsed his adopted land from the gleaming windows of a palatial estate. A multimillionaire, one of the most powerful and feared men, Joseph Armagh had indeed found a home.

Nothing bad can happen at the Ritz; inside its gilded walls, every woman looks beautiful, every man appears witty. Favored guests walk through its famous doors to be welcomed and pampered by Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the hotel’s director. Until June 1940, when the German army sweeps into Paris, setting up headquarters at the Ritz. Suddenly, with the likes of Hermann Goëring moving into suites once occupied by royalty, Blanche and Claude must navigate a terrifying new reality. One that entails even more secrets.

Shanghai, 1912. Violet Minturn is the privileged daughter of the American madam of the city's most exclusive courtesan house. But when the Ching dynasty is overturned, Violet is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a "virgin courtesan." Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet grapples with her place in the worlds of East and West - until she is able to merge her two halves, empowering her to become a shrewd courtesan who excels in the business of seduction and illusion, though she still struggles to understand who she is.

Mistborn: Secret History is a companion story to the original Mistborn trilogy. As such, it contains huge spoilers for the books Mistborn (The Final Empire), The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages. It also contains very minor spoilers for the book The Bands of Mourning. Mistborn: Secret History builds upon the characterisation, events and worldbuilding of the original trilogy. Listening to it without that background will be a confusing process at best.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of people with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes listeners into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history.

Die große Ostfriesland-Saga geht weiter: Die bewegende Geschichte einer starken Frau, das Geheimnis ihrer Herkunft und die große Liebe im 18. Jahrhundert. Borkum, 1780: Sventje hat sich als Seifensiederin einen Namen gemacht. Ihre duftenden Kreationen sichern das Überleben ihrer Familie, doch ihr wachsender Erfolg weckt Neid und Missgunst unter ihren Nachbarn. Der Bader der Insel, der um seine Stellung fürchtet, hetzt die Dorfgemeinschaft gegen sie auf. Auch der einflussreiche Gutsherr Valentin von Halversberg hält sich von ihr fern, trotz der unterschwelligen Anziehung zwischen ihnen.

The year is 881. Ten years have passed since 15-year-old Ceridwen set out from her Priory home to make her own life. She has known love and loss, triumph and heartbreak. Yet the Circle which has moved about her is largely intact, although the counterpoint has changed, bringing with it the hope of renewed love. Ceridwen and Sidroc build their new lives together on the Baltic island of Gotland, where they are free and unknown. The bond between them, always strong even when years and wars separated them, deepens quickly.

Bestselling, award-winning author of The Stiger Chronicles, Marc Alan Edelheit, delivers the third action-packed book in his fantasy epic, The Karus Saga. One of history's greatest mysteries, the disappearance of ancient Rome's Ninth Imperial Legion, is now revealed in this untold story. If you enjoy an original story, honorable heroes, mind-blowing twists, and pause-resisting action that puts you right in the middle of gritty battles, then you will love The Karus Saga.

When Hazel is given the chance to parachute into Nazi-occupied France, she seizes the opportunity to do more for the British war effort than file paperwork. Alongside her childhood friend, French-born Rose, she quickly rises up the ranks of the freedom fighters. For Rose, the Resistance is a link to her late husband, and a way to move forward without him. What starts out as helping downed airmen becomes a bigger cause when they meet Sophia, a German escapee and fierce critic of Hitler who is wanted by the Gestapo.

Greed took her family. Grief awakened her gift. Now she’s running for her life—and her freedom. Cassandra Wolfe was born with a gift she was told to hide - until tragedy forces her to embrace it. When gold is discovered on her family’s land, a wave of greed and violence shatters everything she holds dear. Widowed, hunted, and furious, she finally stops hiding. She fights back. Her escape to San Francisco is meant to be a new beginning - but fate has other plans. Dalton Rivers has a mission to complete and a family legacy to protect. But when he meets Cassandra, that mission shifts. ...