His Secret Mistress

His Secret Mistress

Cathy Maxwell

Historical Fiction / Romance

At the Logical Men's Society—an exclusive bachelor's club—brandy flows like water, bawdy stories abound, and a gentleman tempted to marry is always persuaded to reconsider . . .Brandon Balfour made the mistake of trusting his heart to the exquisite, strong-willed actress, Kate Addison, with whom he shared one intimate night before fate intervened. Now a decade later, Brandon is a leading member of the Logical Men's Society—for no woman since Kate has managed to captivate him.To Kate, the memory of that night still burns strongly, because it was followed by a stunning betrayal. A chance encounter may have brought Brandon back into her life, but that doesn't mean Kate will ever forgive him. She's vowed to make him pay—even as she realizes the promises of the young love they once shared are still etched upon her heart . . . Loving her exiled him. Trusting him ruined her. And now, a clash of passions threatens everything...
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The Deerslayer

The Deerslayer

James Fenimore Cooper

Fiction / Historical Fiction / Politics

The Deerslayer, or The First Warpath (1841) was the last of James Fenimore Cooper\'s Leatherstocking tales to be written. Its 1740-1745 time period makes it the first installment chronologically and in the lifetime of the hero of the Leatherstocking tales, Natty Bumppo. The novel\'s setting on Otsego Lake in central, upstate New York, is the same as that of The Pioneers, the first of the Leatherstocking tales to be published (1823). The Deerslayer is considered to be the prequel to the rest of the Leatherstocking tales. Fenimore Cooper begins his work by relating the astonishing advance of civilization in New York State, which is the setting of four of his five Leatherstocking tales.
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Escape to Whispering Creek

Escape to Whispering Creek

Barbara M. Britton

Christian / Romance / Historical Fiction

Emma Uranova enjoys her office job until her boss disappears with the investors' money. To avoid the media storm and false accusations, Emma flees to Whispering Creek, Tennessee to live on her best friend' s secluded property. When a temporary position opens up in Nashville, Emma leaves small-town anonymity to pad her depleted bank account. With a handsome new boss and a steady income, Emma believes life is looking up... until she discovers she has transported the scandal in her backpack. Where is God when her life is falling apart?Wade Donoven is recuperating from a crash that sidelined him from the family electrical business. Worse yet, his prodigal younger brother is getting the glory for Wade' s accomplishments. Desperation, and physical setbacks, have him agreeing to let Emma help him manage the business office. But when trouble follows her to his doorstep, Wade must make some difficult choices. Sending Emma back to Whispering Creek may unknowingly place the woman he's...
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Reborn

Reborn

Blaze Ward

Science Fiction / Fantasy / Historical Fiction

Captain Daring has her team. And a mission to save the world. They will make her better than she was before. Will it be enough? A high level general's actions threaten to bring down everything if she can't stop him in time. Reborn, the culmination of the Captain Daring cyberpunk trilogy, where nothing is what it seems and Joie Daring faces the most impossible odds. But she is Captain Daring. Be sure to start with Revoked and Returned.
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Boone's Lick

Boone's Lick

Larry McMurtry

Literature & Fiction / Historical Fiction

Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else. Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels. At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster. Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers). The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail. Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.
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Faithless

Faithless

Alice Nelson

Fiction / Historical Fiction

'Sometimes, Max, I imagine that I see you in her. Not in the sense of any physical inheritance, but a fleeting essence. Something wary and remote. Haunted, you might say. Though her ghosts are not yours.''Simply divine.'THE AUSTRALIAN'Faithless is a triumph, using a perfectly paced first-person narrative to unravel an obsessively complex love story with elegiac fluency.'THE CANBERRA TIMES'With a good chunk of the year still remaining, is it too early to say that I've found my favourite book of 2022? After reading the third novel by West Australian author Alice Nelson, it's difficult to avoid the temptation towards superlatives.'THE WEST AUSTRALIAN'A superb literary achievement.'ABR'It is maddening how deeply I have fallen for this story.'READINGSSet between India and England, Faithless is the story of Cressida, a writer and translator, and her consuming love for Max, an enigmatic older writer – and married...
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The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

The Last Adventure of Dr. Yngve Hogalum

D. L. Mackenzie

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Historical Fiction / Steampunk

In this first novelette of the Magnetron Chronicles series, eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor Phineas J. Magnetron reveals his association with the secretive Hogalum Society. When his mentor and Society founder Dr. Hogalum dies, Phineas embarks on a daring and improbable caper to bring the good doctor's greatest dream to fruition posthumously, thus unearthing a haunting and compelling mystery.Phineas Magnetron is an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor and former Union soldier whose war injury has unaccountably bestowed upon him a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. No stranger to peril and derring-do, Phineas is asked to join a secret organization of crime fighting adventurers by none other than Society founder, Dr. Yngve Hogalum.Traveling the globe in their Luftigel electric airship, Phineas Magnetron and his Hogalum brothers encounter mistrustful policemen, mentally ill criminals, wood-craving aliens, a witch doctor, a mad oracle, and a cross-dressing female matador, among many others. However, this "steam dream team" always manages to triumph over impossible odds and improbable obstacles as they preserve order in a disorderly world—with all the Steam Age weird science they can muster.The Magnetron Chronicles is a serialized steampunk tale re-envisioning the future of generations past with all the breathless melodrama and tumult of that Victorian-era pulp fiction staple, the "penny dreadful." The narrative harks back to the grandiose style of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, but gently satirized with a sprinkling of purposeful anachronisms, double entendres, tongue-in-cheek inventions, and droll Twainian humor. Adapted from "The Secret Journals of Phineas J. Magnetron," a web serial characterized by short chapters with cliffhanger endings, the story builds chapter by chapter, volume by volume, as quirky new characters join the fray and perplexing new mysteries and situations arise.The Magnetron Chronicles is a planned 12-volume series of novelette-length volumes. In this first novelette of the series The Magnetron Chronicles, we are introduced to Phineas J. Magnetron, an eccentric Nineteenth Century inventor blessed with a strange gift he doesn't completely understand. As a former soldier and current member of the Hogalum Society, an inscrutable secret organization of crime fighting adventurers, Phineas is no stranger to peril and derring-do. But when the Society founder dies, Phineas embarks on a daring and improbable caper to bring the good doctor's greatest dream to fruition posthumously. In the process, he not only horrifies his Society brothers, but unearths a haunting and compelling mystery.
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The Marquess and the Maiden

The Marquess and the Maiden

Robyn DeHart

Romance / Historical Fiction

Harriet Wheatley is the mastermind behind the Ladies of Virtue's quest to rehabilitate the gentlemen of the ton. So when it comes to selecting her own target, she knows who to choose: Oliver Weeks, Marquess of Davenport—the most extravagant wastrel in all of London.Known for his opulent lifestyle, Oliver isn't surprised by Harriet's confrontation. It's obvious Harriet longs for any way to take him down a notch. She says she'll help him find a bride, but he knows it's only because it gives her the excuse to chastise his indulgent ways. Oliver has good reason for his flagrant overspending, but Harriet will hear nothing of it. So he has no choice but to teach the lady a lesson, even if it means risking his heart to the hard-headed and fiery woman.Each book in the Lords of Vice series is STANDALONE:* The Scoundrel and the Lady* The Marquess and the Maiden
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A Lady of True Distinction

A Lady of True Distinction

Grace Burrowes

Romance / Historical Fiction

Hawthorne Dorning either finds a way to turn his family's vast botanical resources into a successful commercial venture, or the estate the Dornings have called home for centuries could be broken up. He loves the land and he's never shied away from hard work, but he knows nothing about creating perfumes or fragrances. Margaret Summerfield has put aside her passion for scent-making to tend to the serious business of raising her little nieces. She's no longer the girl who wandered the countryside by the hour, lost in the pleasures of nature, nor does she want to be. Hawthorne needs her help, but what does he have that could possibly tempt to Margaret to entangle herself with his dreams?
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The Betrothed

The Betrothed

Alessandro Manzoni

Historical Fiction / Poetry

Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters – the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister 'Unnamed' – in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed's exploration of love, power and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels.
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Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

Heather Graham

Mystery & Thrillers / Romance / Historical Fiction

New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham brings her unique brand of suspense to Harlequin Intrigue with two thrilling stories of love and danger in one book!TANGLED THREATA body hanging from the infamous History Tree had unraveled their teenage love. Now, twelve years later, Maura Antrim is again tangled up with Brock McGovern, and they're back where that devastating murder occurred. With two women missing, and Brock now an FBI agent, Maura is determined to help. Together they'll have to confront a threat that never died, and see if their passion has withstood the test of time. SUSPICIOUSBig-city lawyer Lorena Fortier's suspicions about her father's death have brought her to a small town nestled in the Everglades. But when a killer claims more victims, Lorena knows she's in over her head. Hardened cop Jesse Crane only complicates matters. As they face danger more menacing...
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A Silken Thread

A Silken Thread

Kim Vogel Sawyer

Christian Fiction / Historical / Historical Fiction

For readers who love a heartwarming romance and a rich historical setting comes a tale of a young woman with a heavy burden, the International Cotton Exposition, and the pursuit of true love.Eighteen-year-old Laurel Millard, youngest of seven children, is expected to stay home and "take care of Mama" by her older siblings, but Laurel has dreams of starting her own family. Operating a silk loom at the Atlanta Exposition will give her the chance to capture the heart of a man wealthy enough to take care of Laurel and any children she might bear, as well as her mother.Brendan Rochester's parents have given him an ultimatum: settle down with a wife or lose his family inheritance. At the Exposition, Brendan meets Laurel. Marrying her would satisfy his parents's command, she would look lovely on his arm for social events, and in her besotted state, he believes she would overlook him continuing pursuing rowdy adventures with his unmarried buddies. Brendan decides to woo...
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