Southern Historical Fiction

After reading a passage in II Corinthians, the Reverend Castle Marlowe laid his Bible down and wept. He knew firsthand about afflictions, distresses, and chastening. The past three years had been the most difficult of his life. His woes began the day his wife left him and their five children. Needing a mother for his children, he married a 16-year-old and was blissfully happy—for a season. With beautiful, sweet Rebekah by his side, Cass felt he could withstand anything Satan threw his way. But could he? Learning to deal with a teen-age daughter’s defiance, Rebekah’s hidden secret, his...

A historical adventure book set in southern Africa during the late 19th century (1880s). Dive into the enthralling expedition of Allan Quatermain, a seasoned hunter and trader, who with diverse companions, transverses the uncharted African interior. The narrative springs to life with Quatermain explaining his initial reluctance and eventual decision to embark on this dangerous journey. The Adventure Filled with twists and turns, the story takes off with Quatermain meeting Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good on a ship bound for Natal. They confide in Quatermain about their mission to find Sir ...

Skinny, nine-year-old orphaned Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks a girl who changes everything. Graça, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron, is clever, well-fed, pretty, and thrillingly ill-behaved. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over shared mischief and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music will become their shared passion, the source of their partnership and their rivalry....

Lady Maximilian is the daughter of the powerful Duke Croyso, but she is rarely allowed outside her family’s sprawling castle for fear that her stutter will tarnish their noble name. When she is forced to marry Sir Riftan, a lowborn knight caught in one of her father’s schemes, Maxi doesn’t dare hope for happiness, let alone love. Her stumbling communication and his gruff manner sour their relationship before it can begin, and Riftan leaves without a word the morning after their vows are exchanged.

Ludie Graham Alexander didn’t want to believe the terrible things the landlord said about the man she married less than twelve hours earlier. However, when the facts became indisputable, Ludie realized she should’ve listened to her adoptive parents when they warned her against marrying someone she barely knew. Garth and Gracie Graham had disapproved from the start, but nothing or no one was going to stop her from being with the only man she’d ever loved. No one, that is, until the owner of a rooming house told her more about Schooner Alexander than she ever wanted to know. The awful ...

Present Day: Julia Baxter’s wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on a train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning of her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil’s good luck isn’t enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head.

Convertido en emperador de Brasil a los veintitrés años, Pedro I marcó con su huella la historia de dos continentes. Desmedido y contradictorio, las mujeres fueron su salvación y su perdición: mientras su esposa, la virtuosa Leopoldina de Austria, lo llevó a la cumbre, su amante, la ardiente Domitila de Castro, lo arrastró a la decadencia. Cuando el inmenso Brasil se le hizo pequeño y el poder dejó de interesarle, puso su vida en juego por aquello que creía justo. Y alcanzó la gloria.

It’s 1900 and work is scarce. Enticed by promises of work with good pay, people flock to textile mills in the South. Many leave their beloved mountains for what they hope is a step up from their grinding poverty. It’s guaranteed pay and housing. Being the sighted sister of the Hooper/Watson family, Lottie is grieved by a dream that sorrow will come to her home. Yet, she leaves Cocke County, Tennessee, with Beck Radford, her new husband, and her four children from a previous, abusive marriage, and goes to Clifton, South Carolina. Lottie is a stranger to village life and close neighbors. ...

The Mockingbird family has always lived peacefully in Jubilee, Kentucky, despite the divisions that mark their small town. Until the tense summer of 1963, when their youngest child, Isaac, falls gravely ill. Middle sister Grace, nearly fourteen, is determined to do whatever it takes to save her little brother. With her father and mother away at the hospital, Grace is left under the loving but inexperienced eye of her aunt June, with little to do but wait and worry. Inspired by a young teacher’s mission for change, she begins to flirt with danger—and with a gifted boy named Golden.

The Powell brothers - Muir and Moody - are as different as Cain and Abel. Muir is an innocent, a shy young man with big dreams. Moody, the older and wilder brother - embittered by the death of his father, by years of fighting his mother, and by his jealousy of Muir's place in the family - takes to moonshine and gambling and turns his anger on his brother. Muir escapes by wandering, making his way around the country in attempts to find something - an occupation, a calling - to match his ambition.

When 15-year-old Marigold becomes pregnant amid the Great Depression, she is rejected by her family and forced to fend for herself. And when she loses her baby in the forest, her whole world turns upside down. She’s even more distraught upon discovering she has an inexplicable power that makes her both beautiful and terrifying - and something of a local legend. Meanwhile, migrant workers Vern and Paul discover a violet-eyed baby and take it upon themselves to care for her.

The Mariposa Mineby Harper Stanwick, Sr. is a romantic mystery set in New York and the remote corners of South America during the 1920s. Arnold returns to New York after years of constructing railways in the most remote parts of the world. The bustling city, filled with familiar faces and old haunts, is a stark contrast to his adventurous past. As he reconnects with his cousin Michelle, he is unexpectedly captivated by a mysterious woman he meets at an opera—Lisa Howe, a beauty adorned with silver butterflies. Lisa’s family’s fortunes have crumbled, yet she maintains an air of grace ...

In a world of pageantry and show, the Montgomery family accepts the way of life that has been Antebellum Charleston for over 100 years. Two cousins, the handsome and debonair Wade Montgomery and the bold and brooding Cullen Smythe, were born to be brothers. Raised as Southern gentlemen, their character could never be questioned - loyalty, honor, duty to one's country, God, and family. It was the tie that binds until their bond is threatened, not only by the cry for secession but by a woman.

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where Black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver. There's Aibileen, raising her 17th white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue and white Miss Skeeter, home from college, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another.

For years, it was called a "deteriorating situation." Now it is war. All over South Africa, mobs of fugitive white people scramble to board departing flights. But Bam and Maureen Smales have no such option. They take up their servant July's suggestion and seek refuge in his remote home village, forever altering the relationship of servant and master. Now it is the Smales who are dependent on their host, their savior - their keeper. Nadine Gordimer is the winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Julie Capshaw and Robby Montagna are victims of the historical divide between coal miners and those who owned and ran the mines. Set in a candidly depicted rural West Virginia coal mining community in 1955, this story tells of their attempt to cross that divide. “Jo Huddleston’s characters come to life, as does this sweet and wonderful mid-century love story about two young people who come from different spectrums of society. This author writes with colorful detail, setting us body and soul into the story.” –Sharlene MacLaren, author of the historical series “Tennessee Dreams.” ...

In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina. Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted 1940 Ford coupe.

13-year-old Mildred is the youngest of three siblings and decidedly the most average - until her parents decide to turn the family home into a funeral parlor in the midst of a yellow fever outbreak, and she discovers that she can communicate with the restless spirits of their deceased patrons. Not to mention, the ghost of her cat won’t leave, and her estranged aunt on an extended visit is boarding in her bedroom. Set against a Southern backdrop in the early 20th century, "Memento Mortale," is a strange and funny story of a summer in the life of a girl whose world has been turned upside ...

Maia, an orphan, can't wait to reach her distant relatives a thousand miles up the Amazon. She imagines a loving family with whom she will share great adventures. Instead she finds two spiteful cousins who see the jungle as the enemy and refuse to go outdoors.

In a town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, Rachel Smith has found a new life tending a lush apple orchard. She’s safe within its grove. If her dreams are haunted by memories of her violent husband, that pain is soothed by fresh mountain air and apples that taste as sweet as honey. But Rachel wasn’t meant to live in the shadows. The orchard drew her to Morgan’s Gap to fulfill a purpose and a tight-knit community of wisewomen who honor the old mountain traditions are ready to teach her. A world of magic awaits Rachel, one filled with new friendships and possibly new love