Книги жанра историческая литература
Успели посмотреть фильм «Гоголь. Вий»? Теперь самое время прочитать книгу. Зачем? Потому что в ней версия о том, что события легендарной повести имели место в жизни классика, изложена куда полнее и объективнее. Леденящий душу ужас здесь соседствует с реальными историческими изысканиями, посвященными тому, как именно Гоголь встретился с Вием, кто он был в действительности такой и какая череда жутки…
‘A love story told in exquisitely poetic letters’ DAILY MAILTorn apart by war, their letters meant everything…‘My love. I am writing to you without knowing where you are but I will find you after all these long months…’3rd September 1938. Martin Preston is in his second year of Oxford when his world is split in two by a beautiful redhead, Nancy Whelan. A whirlwind romance blossoms in the Buckingha…
Set in the Jewish homeland of … Alaska, this is a brilliantly original novel from Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’.What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska – and not Israel – had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon’s Yiddish-speaking ‘Alyeska’, Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee br…
The Edge of the Crowd is the gripping story of early days of photography and the search for lost love in Victorian London . RUNNER UP OF THE 2002 ENCORE PRIZE.London, 1851. Among the teeming crowds visiting the Great Exhibition is the newspaper columnist Henry Hilditch, whose sensational exposés of the lives and deprivations of the working class are the talk of bourgeois London.But Hilditch has an…
I asked the sailor what an Elephant looked like; he replied that it was like nothing on earth.In the middle of the 18th century, a ship docks at Bristol with an extraordinary cargo: two young elephants. Bought by a wealthy landowner, they are taken to his estate in the English countryside. A stable boy, Tom Page, is given the task of caring for them.The Elephant Keeper is Tom’s account of his life…
Perfect for fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and Empress Orchid – ‘The Embers of Heaven’ is a magical epic, with delightful characters, an intriguing scenario and a real feeling of place and history. It has a wonderful combination of character, romantic lives, and spiritual quest, set against a credible historical background.In ‘The Secrets of Jin-Shei,’ eight women pledge themselves as sisters in the …
‘The Emperor Waltz’ is a single novel with three narrative strands: fourth-century Rome, 1920s Germany, and 1980s London. In each place, a small coterie is closely connected and separated from the larger world. In each story, the larger world regards the small coterie and its passionately-held beliefs and secrets with suspicion and hostility.It is the story of eccentricity, its struggle, its trium…
The first, intimate portrait of the Orange Order.If there is any more controversial body of men (and, with the exception of Ruth Dudley Edwards, who has been admitted to an honorary position in her very own lodge, they are all men) in the British Isles, it is hard to think who they might be. To most outsiders, grown men parading in bowler hats, white gloves, coloured sashes or collarettes, rolled …
‘Addictive, charming and gleaming with Jazz Age glitz’ The LadyThe fabulous new novel from the author of The Girl Who Came HomeDolly Lane is a dreamer; a downtrodden maid who longs to dance on the London stage, but the outbreak of war takes everything from her: Teddy, the man she loves – and her hopes of a better life.When she secures employment as a chambermaid at London’s grandest hotel, The Sav…
The first book in a brand new trilogy from the author of Prospero’s Children.Bartlemy Goodman, is one of the Gifted. An albino of Greek parentage, he was born in Byzantium amidst the decline of the Roman Empire. He now resides at Thornyhill house, England, with his dog, Hoover.One warm evening, a young homeless woman holding a baby turns up on Bartlemy's doorstep, and sensing destiny at work, he l…
For the first time, Jane beheld King Henry VIII of England.He was broad chested and strong voiced, jewelled and befurred, a powerfully dominant presence… Lady-in-waiting Jane Sweetwater’s resistance to the legendary attractions of Henry VIII may have saved her pretty neck, but her reward is a forced and unhappy marriage to a much older man.Jane’s only consolation is that she still lives upon her b…