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  The Old Wives' Tale

  Arnold Bennett

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  The Old Wives' Tale is a novel by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1908. It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It is regarded as one of Bennett's finest works. The story covers a period of about 70 years from roughly 1840 to 1905, and is set in Burslem and Paris. The book is broken up into four parts, Mrs Baines, Constance, Sophia and What Life Is. The first section, "Mrs Baines" details the adolescence of both Sophia and Constance, and their life in their father's shop and house. The father is ill and bedridden, and the main adult in their life is Mrs Baines, their mother. Sophia eventually elopes with a travelling salesman, and Constance marries Mr Povey, who works in the shop.

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  A Royal Likeness

  Christine Trent

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  As heiress to the famous Laurent Fashion Dolls business, Marguerite Ashby's future seems secure. But France still seethes with violence in the wake of the Revolution. And when Marguerite's husband is killed during a riot, the young widow travels to Edinburgh and becomes apprentice to her old friend, Marie Tussaud, who has established a wax exhibition. When Prime Minister William Pitt commissions a wax figure of Admiral Nelson, Marguerite becomes immersed in a dangerous adventure - and earns the admiration of two very different men. And as Britain battles to overthrow Napoleon, Marguerite will find her loyalties under fire from all sides. With a masterful eye for details, Christine Trent brings one of history's most fascinating eras to life in of a story of desire, ambition, treachery, and courage. 
  A Royal Likeness is the second book in the Royal Trades series.

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  Come Rack! Come Rope!

  Robert Hugh Benson

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  Come Rack! Come Rope! is a historical novel by the English priest and writer Robert Hugh Benson, a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism.  Set in Derbyshire at the time of the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics, when being or harboring a priest was considered treason and was punishable with death, it tells the story of two young lovers who give up their chance of happiness together, choosing instead to face imprisonment and martyrdom, so that "God's will" may be done. The book was written nearly nine years after Benson's reception into the Catholic Church. The inspiration for the story comes from Dom Bede Camm's account of the recusant Fitzherbert family in Forgotten Shrines (1910), and from Benson's own visit in 1911 to Padley, home of the Fitzherberts, and scene of part of the novel, in order to preach at the annual pilgrimage there. The title of the book is taken from a letter of Saint Edmund Campion in which, after torture, he assured Catholics that he had revealed "no things of secret, nor would he, come rack, come rope."  Most of the characters in the book are historical people; only the hero and heroine, their parents, and some minor characters are fictional.  (Summary adapted from Wikipedia)

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  The Wind Chime - Timeshift...

  Alexandra Walsh

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  A timeshift mystery. Perfect for fans of Sarah Burton, Stacey Halls, Jessie Burton and Kate Mosse.Every family has their secrets…Windsor, England, 2019Amelia Prentice is recovering from the worst two years of her life. First her daughter and then her parents have died, leaving her without any surviving relatives. As she gets ready to put the family home, a vast Victorian house in Windsor, on the market, she fulfils her mother's last request to clear out the attic, and she discovers a strange box of Victorian photographs.The photographs are of a large estate in Pembrokeshire called Cliffside, and they feature the Attwater family. When Amelia uncovers the diaries of Osyth Attwater, she realises the family had tragedies of their own…Pembrokeshire, Wales, 1883Every summer the Attwater family gather at Cliffside to tell each other stories. The youngest in the house is Osyth, a dreamer and writer who waits eagerly every year for the wind chime in the garden to signal the arrival of her relatives. But her happiness is shattered when she overhears a conversation that tears her world apart.Raised by her grandparents, she believed her mother, Eudora, had died. But it seems that may not be the case. Desperate to find out the truth, Osyth decides to unravel her family's secrets. But what she discovers will shock her to her core…What did Amelia's mother want her to find out about the Attwater family? Who is Eudora, and what really happened to her?And how is Amelia connected to it all…?THE WIND CHIME is an enthralling timeshift novel set between the Victorian era and the modern day: past and present entwine to create a thrilling page-turning historical mystery.‘Silver chimes and coral shells haunting past and present in this beautifully written novel containing echoes of Welsh fairy lore along with Victorian asylums, and a travelling circus. It's gripping with unforgettable characters.' – Carol McGrathTHE TIMESHIFT VICTORIAN MYSTERY SERIES:BOOK ONE: The Wind ChimeBOOK TWO: The Music Makers

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  Three Weeks in December

  Audrey Schulman

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  “Two Americans have life-altering experiences in Africa a century apart in this environmentalist adventure novel” by the author of Theory of Bastards (Kirkus Reviews).   In 1899, Jeremy, a young engineer, leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across British East Africa. In charge of hundreds of Indian laborers, he becomes the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men in nightly attacks. Plagued by fear and alienated by a secret he can tell no one, Jeremy takes increasing solace in the company of his African scout.   In 2000, Max, an American ethnobotanist, travels to Rwanda where she searches for an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. Stationed in the mountains, she shadows a family of gorillas—the last of their group to survive the local poachers. But their precarious freedom is threatened as a violent rebel group from the nearby Congo draws close.   Told in alternating perspectives that interweave the two characters and their fates, Audrey Schulman’s novel deftly confronts the struggle between progress and preservation, idiosyncrasy and acceptance.

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  The Novels of Iris Murdoch...

  Iris Murdoch

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  Three unforgettable novels from the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, the Sea and “consummate storyteller” (The Independent).   “One of the most significant novelists of her generation” (The Guardian), the “prodigiously inventive” British author Iris Murdoch grappled with questions of morality as well as the nature of love in novels that are every bit as entertaining as they are thought provoking (The New York Times). Over the span of her career, she was the recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Literary Award, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.  The Flight from the Enchanter: In 1950s London, when the enigmatic and charismatic businessman Mischa Fox turns his entrepreneurial gaze on a small feminist magazine, his intoxicating influence begins to affect the lives of those involved: the fragile editor, Hunter; his sister, Rosa, who splits her time and affections between her brother and two other men; innocent Annette, whose journey from school to the real world ends up being more fraught than she could have foreseen; as well as their circle of friends and acquaintances, all of whom find themselves both seduced and repulsed by Fox.   “Brilliant, witty, and original.” —The Sunday Times  The Red and the Green: In 1916, as World War I rages across Europe, Andrew Chase-White, lieutenant in the British army, travels to Ireland to see his extended family. Though he was raised in England by Protestant parents, many of his relations on the Emerald Isle are Catholic and nationalist. His arrival in Dublin ignites old resentments, new passions, political tensions, and religious crises, sending the family into a torrent of fights and alliances, affairs and betrayals. And as the historic gunfire begins at the General Post Office on the day of the Easter Rebellion, the lives of Andrew and his kin will be changed forever.   “[Murdoch is] prodigiously inventive.” —The New York Times  The Time of the Angels: In a crumbling London rectory after the Second World War, a priest descends into a spiritual crisis and madness. Carel Fisher was once a bastion of faith, a shining example of Anglican goodness and Christian values. But time and circumstance have worn him down as surely as the bombs of the Blitz have broken apart the very walls around him. His convictions have vanished, as has his belief in mankind. As relationships and desires, resentments and retributions, begin to crowd the small church, secrets are revealed that will shatter the lives of all involved.   “Excites and delights.” —The New York Times

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