Historical Family Saga

Is there a secret terrible enough that it should never be revealed, not even if it was tearing a family apart? For more than five decades, Emma Bauer has kept one - carefully guarding it with all her strength, and for more than five decades, that choice has haunted her life and also the lives of her daughters and granddaughter. Is it too late for wrongs to be righted? Does Emma even have the strength to let the healing power of truth work in her family?

Abandoned by her father and neglected by her self-centered, unstable mother, Sheila McGee cannot wait to escape the drudgery of her mill village life in Northern Ireland. Her classic Irish beauty helps her win the 1941 Linen Queen competition, and the prize money that goes with it finally gives her the opportunity she's been dreaming of. But Sheila does not count on the impact of the Belfast blitz which brings World War II to her doorstep. Now even her good looks are useless in the face of travel restrictions, and her earlier resolve is eroded by her ma's fear of being left alone.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

Lauren Francis-Sharma's 'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in a seaside village in the north of Trinidad where young Marcia Garcia, a gifted and smart-mouthed 16-year-old seamstress, lives alone, raising two small boys and guarding a family secret. When she meets Farouk Karam, an ambitious young policeman, the risks and rewards in Marcia's life amplify forever.

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Celebrated actress Lavinia Hargraves performs her most challenging role offstage. Although born in 1872 to Daniel Taylor, a white man and wealthy landowner in Southern California, Lavinia's mother, Lori, is a Negro and former slave. Lavinia, who appears white, is desperate to hide her Negro ancestry as well as pursue her dream of becoming the world's greatest actress.

Elegant, secretive Sabina may be empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband, Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly secret: Vix's beautiful son, Antinous, has become the emperor's latest obsession.

In a small town in upstate New York in 1928, four-year-old Evelyn Wilson goes missing. Instantly, old prejudices claw to the surface. As a frenzy of panic and bloodlust overwhelms all reason, the community turns on the Schatzman family. A terrible witch hunt follows. The Schatzmans' young son is accused of horrifying crimes. As their life in America falls apart, leaving nothing but anguish and devastation, some of the Schatzmans decide to return home to Berlin. But Germany in the 1930s is no safe harbor.

Light-skinned Selina Standish lives a life of emotional pain and torment. In 1906, at the age of eight, she is convinced by her mother, actress Lavinia Standish, the daughter of a slave, to pass as white. Although Selina yields to her mother's insistence to pass, she refuses to cut ties completely with her Negro relatives, including her twin brother, a child her mother deems too dark. However, at age 17, in the year 1915, Selina meets wealthy Southerner Jack Cosgrove, the man of her dreams. Keeping her ancestry a secret, Selina is conflicted by Jack's negative attitude toward her race.

Peter Smith is at his breaking point. He is an impoverished boy who must overcome his humble beginnings, abduction, and mistreatment to find his path. Raised in poverty and hopelessness on the streets of Portsmouth, England, Peter is forced into a life of crime just to survive, he is snatched by an uncaring Naval officer against his will and pressed into service aboard a British warship. Young Peter, scarred by his abuse, struggles to find the will to live. As the winds of war sweep across the American colonies, Peter finds himself drawn into the fight on the side of the Americans. Fate ...

A national best seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first book of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.

Dilly is devastated: with her husband unable to work and four children already at home, they cannot afford to feed their new-born baby. Heartbroken, she delivers her baby girl to the Farthing family, who have just lost their own daughter to measles. This act of desperation will change the lives of both families irrevocably. But when the chance for true love finally comes, will Dilly choose family over her own happiness?

Family is a stunning, often painfully graphic re-creation of the realities of slavery: black women raped by white masters; black children sold to sustain failing plantations - or to satisfy the whims of a petulant mistress; strong men humiliated, whipped, and beaten because of the color of their skin. But it is also the triumphant story of a mother whose loving spirit transcends the barriers of death and time, allowing her to watch over her children and her children’s children.

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was just a kid, her mom died when she was 17, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she's laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother - and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, "He always loved her."

A powerful WWII spy novel inspired by the real female SOE agents in France—filled with revenge, redemption, and the quiet power of resilience. Scotland, 1940. Sable Montgomery was once a Highland socialite. Now, she’s on the run—from her past, from a broken future, and from a world that never made space for her truth. When she’s offered a place at a Swiss finishing school, she meets other young women destined for resistance—Lili, Océane, Esther, Anna, and Edda. Bonds form. Tensions rise. But Sable doesn’t expect to be recruited. Back in London, a chance encounter with secret ...

In 1846 a baby girl is born to a young Irish fisherman and his wife. It is the second year of the Great Hunger and the young couple choose to remain in Ireland, while family and friends are leaving. Their story takes place in the fishing village of Blackrock, Dundalk, but with the cities of Liverpool and Sunderland playing a critical part in their lives. Is their love for each other and their homeland enough to sustain them, or will they be forced to join the one and a half million who emigrate?

High up on a mountain, young Clay-Boy Spencer joins his father and eight uncles to hunt the mythical white deer. What he finds on the mountainside changes his life - and marks him for a special destiny. Years later, Clay-Boy is the first in his family to get the chance to go to college; but success as an adult is much more complicated and bittersweet than the legendary success of Clay-Boy’s childhood quest.

As the war rages on in the summer of 1943, causing massive destruction and widespread fear, the King and Queen choose to quietly send their youngest daughter, Princess Charlotte, to live with a trusted noble family in the country. Despite her fiery, headstrong nature, the princess' fragile health poses far too great a risk for her to remain in war-torn London.

Daughter of a French courtesan to frontier wife to friend of Martha Washington- In the early 1700's Christiane flees France with her renegade father. In the Canadian wilderness, she survives the shock of leaving a life of wealth and privilege. To escape frontier violence, she moves southward only to become involved in the burgeoning American Revolution. Daughter of a French courtesan to frontier wife to companion of Martha Washington--circumstances move Christiane into the very heart of the American rebel elite. But one man in her life can never be forgotten. John Eastham, who’d also left...

On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.