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  Flower in the River - A family...

  Natalie Zett

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  Martha Pfeiffer, age 19, was one of 844 persons who perished when a ship chartered for the Western Electric annual picnic capsized in Chicago in 1915. Martha's surviving family members never recovered from their grief. The Eastland Disaster has been mostly overlooked in recent years. 
  In 1997, Pearl Pospisil, a retired Chicago writer, and third-generation Pfeiffer, composed a family history and delivered it to her niece, Zara Vrabel, in St. Paul, who was completely unfamiliar with its contents. Pearl had one request: "Do something with this." 
  Zara, also a journalist, was cut off from her family and had no interest in genealogy. However, learning of her great-aunt's death on the Eastland Disaster made Zara's heart sink. 
  Zara's life unravels as she becomes entangled in the plot and realizes that she and her great-aunt shared more than blood. After discovering that the accident was preventable, Zara initially seeks redress. And the release of another Titanic movie poured salt on a fresh wound. So why was the Eastland consigned to oblivion while the Titanic got all the glory? 
  Flower in the River interweaves the past and present of four generations of an Eastern-European immigrant family. It suggests that even an unknown trauma can affect a family for generations.

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  The King of Eridu - Novels of...

  Jesse Hudson

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  Ammon-shur and his Gutian allies are determined to rid the land of Canaan of the invading Mesopotamian armies once and for all, but Ammon’s aspirations don’t end there. He senses an opportunity to eliminate the threat from the shadowy conspiracy that has been dogging his steps for decades once and for all. With his usual flair for combining the divine with the mundane, Ammon takes advantage of his growing reputation to gather a mighty host to retake the cities of Sumeria from the followers of the dark god of chaos, but success brings its own set of challenges. Even as Ammon fights as never before to end tyranny across the lands of Sumeria, he finds it ever more difficult to maintain order and deal with dissidents in the lands that fall before his army. Taking advantage of the disorder, Ammon’s enemies rally and raise a mighty army beneath the banner of a leader so powerful and terrifying that men whisper that he is not a man at all, but something far worse.

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  Dance of the Jakaranda

  Peter Kimani

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  “This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice 
   
  Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation. 
   
  The novel traces the lives and loves of three men—preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim—whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson Rajan—who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction—accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past. 
   
  With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa. 
   
  “Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.” —The Gazette 
   
   
   
  “A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune 
   
  “Kimani’s novel has an impressive breadth and scope.” —Los Angeles Review of Books 
   
  “Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “Lyrical and powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews

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  Meet Tommy Atkins

  Peter Gill

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  Written and performed by Peter Gill, this made for radio audio recording of the play 'Meet Tommy Atkins' takes the audience not just through Tommy's war, but also his life back home in Britain post war. We learn of his experiences in the trenches - fighting on the Somme, at Passchendaele and Loos; and also of the boredom, the loss and indeed the comradeship. Returning to Britain, Tommy shows us how a generation of returning men were maltreated but how ultimately it was his generation that forced through the foundations of the Welfare State.  From the beginning of the Great War to the end of the Second, Private Tommy Atkins was there. This is his story.

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  A Time for Swords - A gripping...

  Matthew Harffy

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  When the Vikings attack, a novice monk's life is changed forever in Matthew Harffy's new historical adventure.Lindisfarne, AD793. There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site. It is 8th June AD 793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun. While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible.“Harffy's writing just gets better and better ... He is really proving himself the rightful heir to Gemmell's crown” - JEMAHL EVANS

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  The Orphanage Girls

  Mary Wood

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  The Orphanage Girls is a gritty and moving historical saga set in London’s East End, from the bestselling author of The Jam Factory Girls, Mary Wood.Children deserve a family to call their own . . . Ruth dares to dream of another life – far away from the horrors within the walls of Bethnal Green’s infamous orphanage. Luckily she has her friends, Amy and Ellen – but she can’t keep them safe, and the suffering is only getting worse. Surely there must be a way out of here?But when Ruth breaks free from the shackles of confinement and sets out into East London, hoping to make a new life for herself, she finds that, for a girl with nowhere to turn, life can be just as tough on the outside.Bett keeps order in this unruly part of the East End – and takes Ruth under her wing alongside orphanage escapee Robbie. But it is Rebekah, a kindly woman, who offers Ruth and Robbie a home – something neither have ever known. Yet even these two stalwart women cannot protect them when the police learn of an orphan on the run. It is then that Ruth must do everything in her power to hide.Her life – and those of the friends she left behind at the orphanage – depend on it.Continue the emotional series with The Orphanage Girls Reunited.

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