Showing results for "Vicious" in Historical Fiction

The Evil ... It was an obscene evil that could not be quenched with blood or sated with the flesh of its defiled victims. The Terror ... It wormed its way into the human brain, devouring the mind, controlling the body and turning its prey into savage creatures lusting for destruction. The Metamorphosis ... Its only outward sign was the grotesque metamorphosis of its victim's hand into a gnarled four-fingered claw -- a claw whose razor-sharp nails dealt death with the precision of a stiletto.

A unique story in the Austenesque catalogue—a Viking era variation of Pride and Prejudice. Set in the late 800s when King Alfred the Great ruled in Wessex and Harold Fairhair united tribal Norway into one kingdom. Elizabeth’s courage had risen when faced with the fierce Viking, but what will she do when she finds herself as a stowaway on a Viking ship, heading for a major sea battle?

As eager as Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, is to meet her husband’s newly discovered illegitimate half sister, she does not want it to happen like this: in the keeper's house at Newgate. Yes, that Newgate, the abject prison filled with squalor and misery to which Verity Lark has been consigned for murder. Found standing over the slain corpse of an old tormentor with a still-warm pistol in her hand, she is obviously guilty. It is an open-and-shut case with little for an unduly curious duchess to investigate. Except it all seems a little too simple and straightforward.

When aspiring author Margaux Andrews receives a curious acceptance letter from a literary agency that seems too good—and too mysterious—to be true, she’s pulled into a world where the lines between truth, memory, and fiction blur. As she prepares to meet the elusive M. Des Jardins at the famed Algonquin Round Table, Margaux is drawn back into the tangled legacy of her childhood: a family marked by silence, a tragic disappearance, and a shared magical realism they all try to deny.