Showing titles in Historical

It's 1946, and the dust of World War Two has just begun to settle. When famous archaeologist Rufus Denby returns to London, his life and reputation are as devastated as the city around him. He's used to the most glamorous of excavations, but can't turn down the offer of a job in rural Sussex. It's a refuge, and the only means left to him of scraping a living. With nothing but his satchel and a mongrel dog he's rescued from a bomb site, he sets out to investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton.

Brought to you by Penguin. The masterful second novel in Pat Barker's classic 'Regeneration' trilogy - from the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls WINNER OF THE 1993 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in...

Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize 2026 A Finalist in the Nota Bene Prize 2026 ‘Casually magisterial’ Guardian 'Endlessly intriguing' Observer ‘A marvel of a novel’ Ali Smith ‘Jane Eyre by way of Patricia Highsmith’ BBC Radio 4 ‘Puts Stevens in the class of Sarah Waters’...

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings—Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy—arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start. After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.

In 1860s Montana Territory, Kate Beecher, a young woman from Boston, faces the hardships and hard choices of life on the frontier. Just 18 and quietly struggling against the social constraints of the era, Kate meets a woman who fires first her imagination and then her dreams. Jessie Forbes, a fiercely independent rancher, finds in Kate the passion she never knew she had been missing. This is the story of their struggle to love in a land, and time, as cruel as it was beautiful.

Originally published in 1982 as the first of Edmund White's trilogy of autobiographical novels, A Boy's Own Story became an instant classic for its pioneering portrayal of homosexuality. The audiobook's unnamed narrator, growing up during the 1950s, is beset by aloof parents, a cruel sister, and relentless mocking from his peers, compelling him to seek out works of art and literature as solace-and to uncover new relationships in the struggle to embrace his own sexuality.

“Luke” Hamilton has been living as a husband and father for the past 17 years. No one but her wife, Nora, knows she is not the man she appears to be. They have raised their daughters to become honest and hard-working young women, but even with their loving foundation, Amy and Nattie are hiding their own secrets. Just as Luke sets out on a dangerous trip to Fort Boise, a newcomer arrives on the ranch - Rika Aaldenberg, who traveled to Oregon as a mail-order bride, hiding that she’s not the woman in the letters.

Young, bookish Sylvia Beach knows there is no greater city in the world than Paris. But when she opens an English-language bookshop on the bohemian Left Bank, Sylvia can't yet know she is making history. Many leading writers of the day, from Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein, consider Shakespeare and Company a second home. Here some of the most profound literary friendships blossom - and none more so than between James Joyce and Sylvia herself.

Meet Orlando: a young nobleman in Elizabethan England, poet, lover, adventurer—and, after a transformational sleep, a woman. Spanning over 300 years of British history, Orlando bends the rules of time, gender, and narrative as its protagonist navigates shifting societies, identities, and expectations, all while seeking something elusive: the truth of the self. Playful, profound, and radically ahead of its time, Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking novel is part love letter, part satire, and part meditation on the fluid nature of existence.

Lodging-house keeper Clem Talleyfer prefers a quiet life. He's happy with his hobbies, his work - and especially with his lodger Rowley Green, who becomes a friend over their long fireside evenings together. If only neat, precise, irresistible Mr. Green were interested in more than friendship. Rowley just wants to be left alone - at least until he meets Clem, with his odd, charming ways and his glorious eyes. Two quiet men, lodging in the same house, coming to an understanding...it could be perfect.

Full-cast dramatisations of three insightful novels by Christopher Isherwood, plus a bonus interview Novelist and playwright Christopher Isherwood is best known for The Berlin Stories of pre-Hitler Germany, which inspired the musical Cabaret. Many of his works have been adapted for stage and...

A BBC TWO BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK (BOOKER PRIZE GEMS) London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves - fingersmiths - under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her 'family'. But from the moment she draws breath, Sue's fate is linked to that of...

Brought to you by Penguin. *Shortlist, Debut Fiction, 2023 Nero Book Awards * London, 1894. John and Henry have a vision for a new way of life. But as the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for could be under threat. After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John...

Bloomsbury presents Saltblood by Francesca De Tores, read by Dakota Blue Richards. **WINNER OF THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE ** 'A gripping tale of one woman's extraordinary adventures ... Saltblood is a triumph of the imagination' ELODIE HARPER, author of 'The Wolf Den' trilogy 'A...

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Sparrow comes another spellbinding historical epic set in the last days of a dying Roman empire . . . Sparrow has flown from the confines of the Roman brothel where he was raised. Now older and smarter, and having learned the arts of deception and...

Bloomsbury presents The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley, read by Jot Davies. A SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022 The Times Historical Fiction Book of the Month The truth must come out. In 1963, in a Siberian gulag, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to...

Bloomsbury presents A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago, read by Sarah Durham. Longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award A GUARDIAN SUMMER READING PICK ‘Sumptuous … If you’re feeling bereft after finishing The Mirror and the Light, let Jago transport you to the Jacobean...

London. 1928. For centuries, the establishment has suppressed public knowledge of lesbian love. Now, a celebrated writer is set to fight back. Award-winning author, Radclyffe Hall, hopes her new novel, The Well of Loneliness, will transform attitudes to same-sex relationships. It soon comes...

Bloomsbury presents The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, read by Thomas Judd. WINNER OF A BETTY TRASK AWARD 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2016 FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2016 An International Bestseller / A Guardian Summer Read / An...

Strangers might remember a trip to see a girl hang, but who would spare a thought for the who’s and how’s and whys? 'At thirteen, Mary, the daughter of a poor seamstress, longs for fine clothes as her neighbours hunger for food and warmth. For the love of a gorgeous red ribbon she finds herself seduced into a life on the cold, dangerous streets of late 1700s London. Her saviour is Doll, a gaudy young woman who takes her under her wing.