Description Details
Can You Forgive Her? is the first in a series of six Trollope novels dealing broadly with 19th Century English political scene. It introduces the reader to Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser, as they court, marry, and as Plantagenet sets out on his political career, which is carried on in the foreground or background throughout the series. Each novel has a focus on other particular characters, as well. In this one, it is the delimma of Alice Vavasor, who is a young woman choosing between two suitors: one who has all the best qualities, but who prefers a retiring private life, and another, whose qualities are doubtful, but who is ambitious for public office. There is also a comic subplot involving a widowed aunt, who also must choose between two suitors: Mr. Cheeseacre, a dull but stable farmer, and Capt. Bellfield, a charming but somewhat erratic retired military man....

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Historical Fiction

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The Gold Sickle; or, Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen. A Tale of Druid Gaul is the first part of Eugène Sue's The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages, in which he intended to produce a comprehensive universal history, dating from the beginning of the present era down to his own days. Sue's own socialist leanings made this history that of the successive struggles of the successively ruled with the successively ruling classes. In the first volume we meet the Gallic chief Joel, whose descendants will typify the oppressed throughout the suite of novels. Joel and his son invite a traveller to share their supper one evening, curious as they are to hear his stories. When he refuses, they capture him; the exchange of stories around the hearth turns into a debate about freedom and what freedom is worth. (Summary by Petra, partly adapted from the Translator's Preface)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country. Having lost both parents and his home in northern Vermont, orphan Willie Brower is taken in by Eben Holden, Uncle Eb who transports him westward to save him from being sent to an orphanage. Through the Adirondacks and into the St. Lawrence valley they travel. Eben is kind, happy, and loves to tell stories to the youngster, many of which were to shape the life and ideals of Willie during his life. This story follows Willie as a young orphan, later as a journalist, and finally as a soldier who enlists in the army at the outset of the American Civil War. The book was immensely popular when it was published in 1900 and the years to follow, as the characters were all drawn from people who the author had known himself. (Summary by Roger Melin)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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This story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of from 500 to 1,500 unarmed Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by Hawkeye, the last two Mohicans, and others. Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of Jane McCrea in July 1777 near Fort Edward, New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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Oliver Twist is an 1838 novel by Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial. Like most of Dickens' work, the book is used to call the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. The novel is full of sarcasm and dark humour, even as it treats its serious subject, revealing the hypocrisies of the time. It has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and the basis for a highly successful British musical, Oliver!. (Summary from wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction

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Viena, 1942. Luego de haber sido traicionado y su familia desmembrada por el entorno de oficiales de las SS, el Mayor Max Edwin Von Hagen es puesto a salvo por una casi disuelta Hermandad de Asesinos, a través de ellos se enterará que sus conspiradores pertenecían a la Nueva Orden de Caballeros Teutónicos y que andaban en la búsqueda de una antigua reliquia forjada en la antigüedad con la capacidad de doblegar las mentes débiles, por lo que se unirá a la fraternidad para tomar revancha del daño que le ocasionaron y así evitar que los caballeros teutónicos concreten sus ambiciones....

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“Soy el Mayor Max Edwin Von Hagen, soy un Asesino y no descansaré hasta que mitigue el terrible daño que me causaron e iré hasta el último confín para acabar con los que me perjudicaron”...

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What was in Hitler's personal file kept by the Nazi Party's own intelligence agency, the SD? Israel Sarid Roth, only son of two survivors of the Holocaust is about to find out, as a routine assignment in Jerusalem plunges him into the center of a deadly nightmare....

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Stewart Edward White wrote fiction and non-fiction about adventure and travel, with an emphasis on natural history and outdoor living. White's books were popular at a time when America was losing its vanishing wilderness and many are based on his experiences in mining and lumber camps. The Blazed Trail is the story of early lumbermen in the northern woods of Michigan. The novel portrays the challenges faced by the workers focusing on one, Harry Thorpe, as he endeavors to be successful though completely unskilled when he enters the woods. The author mixes the splendor of nature with suspense, danger, and romance and provides glimpses into corrupt practices in the lumber industry at the time. (Summary by Tom Weiss)...

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Nature, Romance

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volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Indian Corn Planter by E. Pauline Johnson. This was the Weekly Poetry project for April 29, 2012. But in the writings of one poet alone I came upon a new note—the note of the Red Man's Canada. This was the poet that most interested me—Pauline Johnson. I quoted her lovely canoe song In the Shadows, which will be found in this volume. I at once sat down and wrote a long article, which could have been ten times as long, upon a subject so suggestive as that of Canadian poetry. (From the Introduction to Flint and Feather, Collected Verse BY E. Pauline Johnson; written by Theodore Watts-Dunton, The Pines, Putney Hill. 20th August, 1913....

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Instruction, Nature, Poetry

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Set during the Napoleonic Wars, this story features two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud. Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out struggle over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. At the beginning, Feraud is the one who jealously guards his honor and repeatedly demands satisfaction anew when a duelling encounter ends inconclusively; he aggressively pursues every opportunity to locate and duel his foe. As the story progresses, D'Hubert also finds himself caught up in the contest, unable to back down or walk away. This Conrad short story evidently has its genesis in the real duels that two French Hussar officers fought in the Napoleonic era. Their names were Dupont and Fournier, which Conrad disguised slightly, changing Dupont into D'Hubert and Fournier into Feraud. In 1977, it was turned into a movie, The Duellists, starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. (summary adapted from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Short stories, Historical Fiction

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Doom Castle is the story of young Count Victor's journey to Scotland after the Jacobite Rebellion, searching for a traitor to the Jacobite cause as well as a mysterious man under the name of Drimdarroch, whom he swore revenge. After a perilious journey, Count Victor arrives at Doom Castle as a guest of the enigmatic Baron of Doom, his two strange servitors and his beautiful daughter... (Summary by Carolin)...

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Historical Fiction, Romance, Mystery

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This novel is sometimes thought of as [Fielding's] first because he almost certainly began composing it before he wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews. It is a satire of Walpole that draws a parallel between Walpole and Jonathan Wild, the infamous gang leader and highwayman. He implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves being run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a Great Man (a common epithet for Walpole) should culminate only in the antithesis of greatness: being hanged....

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Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literature, Satire

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A story about the Irish, just before the onset of the famine of 1847, with all the color and dialogue of a man who lived it. (Summary by JCarson)

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, History

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Zaragoza es la sexta novela de la primera serie de los Episodios Nacionales de Benito Pérez Galdós. En Napoleón en Chamartín dejamos a Gabriel de Araceli preso en manos de los franceses, después de haber fracasado en su intento de liberar a su amada Inés de sus parientes. La columna de presos, maniatados, se dirige hacia Francia, pero... (Resumen de Tux)...

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Fiction, Historical Fiction

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The Log of a Cowboy is an account of a five-month drive of 3,000 cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to Montana in 1882 along the Great Western Cattle Trail. Although the book is fiction, it is firmly based on Adams's own experiences on the trail, and it is considered by many to be the best account of cowboy life in literature. Adams was disgusted by the unrealistic cowboy fiction being published in his day; The Log of a Cowboy was his response. It is still in print, and even modern reviewers consider it a compelling classic. The Chicago Herald said: As a narrative of cowboy life, Andy Adams' book is clearly the real thing. It carries its own certificate of authentic first-hand experience on every page....

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Adventure, Historical Fiction, Westerns

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Fiction, Historical Fiction

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Canadian journalist William Jarvis' gently fictionalized work recounts many of the countless fascinating tales of the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon. (Introduction by Cathy Barratt)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, History

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In seinem historischen Roman Die Gottesfreundin erzählt der Literaturnobelpreisträger Karl Gjellerup die Geschichte einer Liebe zwischen Häresie und Inquisition. (Zusammenfassung von Hokuspokus)...

Excerpt Details
Historical Fiction, Romance

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The Lusiads (Os Lusíadas) is a Portuguese epic poem, written in the 16th century by Luis Vaz de Camões. The poem tells the tale of the Portuguese discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries, specially the voyage to India by Vasco da Gama. Modelled after the classic epic tradition, Camões' Lusiads are considered not only the first literary text in Modern Portuguese, but also a national epic of the same level as Vergil's Aeneid. In the 19th century, Sir Richard Francis Burton translated Camões' Lusiads, in what he considered the most pleasing literary labour of his life. (Summary by Leni)...

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Historical Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Travel

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volunteers bring you 13 recordings of The Spell of the Yukon by Robert W. Service. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for December 27th, 2009.

Excerpt Details
Adventure, Historical Fiction, Nature, Poetry