Historical Women

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

In late 1926, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard take an ocean voyage to America for their honeymoon. Daisy and Alec are accompanied by Daisy's childhood friend, Phillip Petrie; his wife, Gloria; and Gloria's father, American millionaire industrialist Caleb P. Arbuckle, and all are looking forward to a pleasant, uneventful trip. But at the last minute they are joined by Arbuckle's new friend, Yorkshire millionaire Jethro Gotobed, and his new wife, Wanda.

When Lisa Najeeb Halaby was 26, her father introduced her to King Hussein of Jordan. Within a year, she became his fourth wife. Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. King Hussein was not only the head of state in Jordan but also considered the spiritual leader of all Muslims. This memoir provides a vital perspective on 30 years of turbulent world history from the Arab point of view.

It's February, 1852, and all around Chicago, Maggie sees postings soliciting "eligible women" to travel to the gold mines of Goosetown. A young seamstress with a small daughter, she has nothing to lose. She joins 43 other women and two pious reverends on the dangerous 2,000-mile journey west. None are prepared for the hardships they face on the trek or for the strengths they didn't know they possessed. Maggie discovers she’s not the only one looking to leave dark secrets behind.

Elsie and her two best friends made a childhood vow to never marry. But when Elsie begins her first season in London, her mother presents her with an irresistible bargain: If she says yes to each and every man's invitations and still remains unattached by the end of the season, she will receive her inheritance and become a free woman. She's thrown into the spotlight by increasing attention in the newspaper gossip articles. Keeping her end of the bargain seems impossible - especially when her best friend's tyrant of a brother begins to make advances that Elsie literally cannot refuse.

Sandra Dallas, best-selling author of The Persian Pickle Club, weaves an intricate and sophisticated tale in New Mercies. Nora Bondurant is divorced— unfathomable for a woman in 1933—and has inherited a house from a dead aunt she never even knew existed. But when she travels to Mississippi to claim her inheritance, she finds her eccentric neighbors would rather help her acquire a new husband than reveal the secrets surrounding her aunt’s death.

Lorraine Kindred's most cherished memories are of the Surf Ballroom, the place where youth lost themselves to the brassy sounds and magnetic energy of the big band swing, where boys spent their last nights before shipping off to war-and where Lorraine herself was swept away by a star-crossed romance. Returning to the ballroom for the first time in decades, Lorraine enters a dazzling world she thought long vanished.

In the early days of 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, are given an urgent task by his brother, Mycroft: find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy's name? It is one Holmes knows from his sojourn in India long ago, and one Russell knows from a book. It is Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him - Kim....

She keeps house for Inspector Witherspoon...and keeps him on his toes. Everyone's awed by his Scotland Yard successes - but they don't know about his secret weapon. No matter how messy the murder or how dirty the deed, Mrs. Jeffries' polished detection skills are up to the task...proving that behind every great man there's a woman - and that a crimesolver's work is never done.

Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control....

A young woman begs Sherlock Holmes to help find her missing fiancé, but the great detective makes an uncharacteristic mistake. Then Sherlock’s daughter, Lucy James, takes on a missing-person case of her own, but she must also keep a vicious criminal away from Becky, Lucy’s 10-year-old sister-in-law. Little Becky soon becomes dangerously involved in both cases. No one foresees the devastating news that Sherlock Holmes has been murdered.

It all begins in July 1926 when, for the first time in years, the earl has planned a family weekend. As the family members come together, secrets, problems, joys, and sorrows are revealed. As old enemies come out of the shadows, and the Swanns' loyalty to the Inghams gets tested in ways none of them could have predicted, it's up to the Cavendon women to band together and bring their family into a new decade, and a new way of life.

When Iola Anne Poole, an old-timer on Hatteras Island, passes away in her bed at ninety-one, the struggling young mother in her rental cottage, Tandi Jo Reese, finds herself charged with the task of cleaning out the rambling Victorian house. Running from a messy, dangerous past, Tandi never expects to find more than a temporary hiding place within Iola's walls, but everything changes with the discovery of eighty-one carefully decorated prayer boxes, one for each year, dating from Iola's youth to her last days.

The inimitable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher seem to get a reprieve from their sleuthing duties when they are invited to the wedding of their friend, Lucy Fotheringay. Lucy's grandfather is hosting the ceremony at his beautiful estate and so it promises to be a typical affair with hordes of gossipy aunts and other colorful, but not necessarily pleasant, relatives. Daisy meets all these characters and observes the ensuing familial fraternization with a certain kind of amusing nonchalance.

With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London. When the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends new and old—a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her.

Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin, two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family, but a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family's French ancestry.

Jesse Peterson is nothing but trouble. He’s got a reputation around town and, being honest, it’s about as filthy as that old truck he drives. His tendency to let his fists do the talking might have a little something to do with that. I couldn’t remember ever hearing anything good about him. In fact, had I not gotten a flat tire outside his house one blistering afternoon, I might not have known he had another side. A side that made me wonder whether the good in him outweighed the bad. It didn’t take long to see he was kind and funny and maybe even sweet. But … I’m not allowed to ...

A runaway bride meets the cowboy of her dreams, but she's afraid to take a leap of faith on love in this sweet and clean historical romance. Tennyson Barra, a claim jumper turned rancher, is ready to settle down with a wife and family of his own. He figures the easiest way to find the perfect woman is to let the Boomtown Mail Order Brides Company do the searching for him. He never counted on his prospective bride being kidnapped by highwaymen on her journey west. Or being the man sent to rescue her, only to discover she never intended to follow through with their marriage contract in the ...

Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's unique biography - the first in English in nearly two decades - is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century but a portrait of Lenin the man. Unexpectedly, Lenin was someone who loved nature, hunting, and fishing and could identify hundreds of species of plants, a despotic ruler whose closest ties and friendships were with women.

The Paris Wife meets PBS’s Victoria in this enthralling novel of the life and loves of one of history’s most remarkable women: Winston Churchill’s scandalous American mother, Jennie Jerome.