New England Historical Fiction

Miss Marigold Manners may be steeped in the etiquette of her old-money Boston family, but she is also an accomplished, modern woman and an avid student of archaeology who can handle any situation with poise. When the death of her parents leaves her too destitute to pursue her academic career and she receives a letter from a distant relative on Great Misery Island, Marigold decides she must do what any person of superior sense and greater-than-average curiosity would: she mounts her trusty bicycle and heads up the craggy, fog-shrouded coast of New England for a date with fate.

In stories that are more personal than any that she's written before, Alice Munro transforms her family's history into gloriously imagined fiction.

In an era where the void of science is filled with superstition, some believe the “Night Waster” preys upon the blood of the living to keep the dead alive. Thomas Sullivan, a cabinetmaker’s apprentice in northeastern Connecticut, helps the Shaffer family confront the ravages of the Night Waster while dealing with his own father’s rejection of him. The lung disease, consumption, and the economic Panic of 1837 are making life a trial for his master’s family as well as stirring the town’s paranoia. The mystery deepens when a family Bible reveals two Spanish doubloons. With the ...

Miss Georgiana Hartwell may be the richest heiress in London, but her family's fortune—built on revolutionary steam-powered furnaces that transformed England's metalworking industry—can't buy her acceptance among the ton. Educated in business rather than needlepoint, Georgiana harbors ambitions to expand her late father's manufacturing empire, even as society expects her to simply marry well and relinquish control to a husband. Viscount James Westbury, with his impeccable lineage and notorious charm, appears to be the perfect aristocrat—until one ventures inside his empty coffers. ...

Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth; and the defiant Hester Prynne, who, unwilling to name her partner in adultery, is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" on the breast of her gown for the remainder of her life.

The year is 1691. Fifteen years have passed since the inconceivable events of King Philip's War. The Reverend Israel Brewster and his family have returned to Middleborough. Brewster has found a new faith, a new pulpit, and a wonderful life as father and husband. Meanwhile Linto, captured in the waning days of the war and sold off into slavery, toils away in bondage. He is serving the cunning sugar baron, Elijah MacTavish, on the island of Bermuda. It is, however, unlike any servitude he could have imagined.

Enthralled with a lavish wedding, the town gossips flourish until the specter of a long-deceased spirit intervenes. Based loosely on a true crime story from the turn of the nineteenth century in New England, this novel uncovers a simple truth of humanity—from the well-off to the working class, everyone falls victim to the transience of joy and the struggles of human nature.

Guthrie Allen has it all—a Model T truck, and a dream to travel cross-country footloose and fancy free. Trouble is, he hasn’t made it more than 350 miles from the family farm. Something keeps holding him back. When a heavy spring snowstorm strands him at a remote hill farm with a bunch of secretive strangers, Guthrie believes it’s meant to be - part of God’s plan for all of them. Zira Rutherford is stranded as well. She came to Stone Hill Farm as companion to her one-time friend, Maddie Fletcher, but she’s stuck between two worlds: the Rom culture of her childhood, and Maddie’s ...

Spring - 1917. War is raging in Europe and America has just cast its lot against the German war machine. Back home, the nation is reeling with social strife: workers marching for their rights, immigrants demanding fair treatment, suffragettes clamoring for the vote. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Jack Bernard has a new job at one of the city’s largest textile mills, hoping to save money for college. Meanwhile, his friend, Tom Wellington, appears to have taken control of his demons and set himself on a new course. Soon the lives of both young men, their families and friends,...

Attracted by the heavenly vistas, cool summer breezes, and affable residents, professional spiritual channelers Clement and Jessica Bradford relocate their family to the coastal island of Manisses to raise their two eccentric daughters in a storybook New England atmosphere -- and talk to the dead. But a foolish mistake from their past haunts them, and when a local girl goes missing, it takes the whole family, including a peculiar doll named Otto, to stop history from repeating itself. Manisses is a rollicking adventure told through a thousand years of history, where you'll meet a brave ...

September, 1917. The nation has entered the Great War, the War to End All Wars. While young Americans by the hundreds of thousands march into battle in Europe, back home the nation's social fabric is torn asunder by patriotic fervor and xenophobia. When two German-American classmates are taunted in the schoolyard, 14-year-old Claire Bernard rushes to their defense. Her noble intentions soon plunge her into a dark world of international conspiracy where prejudice and suspicion blur distinctions between friend and foe, good and evil, where she could well become the next victim. Noah's Raven, ...

The Kindred sisters - Ezra and Cinthy - grew up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbours, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful New England village perched high up on coastal bluffs. But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbours, including Ezra's best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way.

Not all love stories have a happily ever after.... All Lydia de Lisle Edwards wants from her new marriage is to love and be loved by the handsome man who rescued her from the embarrassing, and potentially life shattering, ramifications of conceiving a child out of wedlock. However, as Lydia gets to know Isaac Edwards, along with the strange woman who serves as a mother-figure to her new husband, and the terrifying doctor specializing in women's health--particularly hysteria--Lydia begins to realize this marriage might just be her undoing. An exploration into the struggles of being a woman ...

1549. Katharine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's queens, has been dead for some eight months. Her cousin, Mary Odell, comes to mourn her by the beautiful marble tomb Thomas Seymour has erected at their home, Sudeley Castle. Alone in the peaceful chapel, Mary will never be able to predict the fate of Katharine's resting place in the centuries to come. 1782. Sudeley is a ruin and Katharine's body has lain hidden for decades. But a determined young woman has resolved to find her grave - and pay homage to her legacy.