Historical Fiction, House as a Character or Theme
Top 10 Historical Fiction, House as a Character or Theme
: The Thirteenth Tale, The Complete Anne of Green Gables Boxed Set, To the Lighthouse, The House on the Cliff, In This House of Brede, The Darling Buds of May, The House of the Seven Gables, The Shelters of Stone, Ashenden, Good Behaviour
| Author | Diane Setterfield |
| ISBN | 0743298020 |
All children mythologize their birth...So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.
The enigmatic Winter has spent...
The Complete Anne of Green Gables Boxed Set
| Author | L.M. Montgomery |
| ISBN | 0553609416 |
Favorites for nearly 100 years, these classic novels follow the adventures of the spirited redhead Anne Shirley, who comes to stay at Green Gables and wins the hearts of everyone she meets.
Includes Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House...
The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and...
| Author | D.E. Stevenson |
| ISBN | 0441343953 |
When Elfrida Jane Ware inherits the House on the Cliff, she is determined to settle down to a quiet life and forget the man she once loved. But Devonshire is vastly different from the world she had known as a struggling young actress. Ignorant of local customs and attitudes, Elfrida unwittingly gets herself...
| Author | Rumer Godden |
| ISBN | 0829421289 |
I re-read this book every year or so. The opening scene where the highly successful businesswoman Philippa is giving away treasured possessions which she will no longer need at Brede abbey, draws you right into this story. The community of Benedictine nuns are a fascinating bunch. Flawed yet likeable,...
| Author | H.E. Bates |
| ISBN | 0140016023 |
The Darling Buds of May, which came out in 1958, was the first of five Larkin novels and in it readers witness the transformation of Mr. Charlton from a undernourished and timid tax clerk to ‘Charlie’, a fully-converted member of the Larkin way of life: an easygoing celebration of nature, food, drink,...
The House of the Seven Gables
| Author | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| ISBN | 0393924769 |
The sins of one generation are visited upon another in a haunted New England mansion until the arrival of a young woman from the country breathes new air into mouldering lives and rooms. Written shortly after The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables re-addresses the theme of human guilt in a style...
| Author | Jean M. Auel |
| ISBN | 0553382616 |
The Shelters of Stone opens as Ayla and Jondalar, along with their animal friends, Wolf, Whinney, and Racer, complete their epic journey across Europe and are greeted by Jondalar's people: the Zelandonii. The people of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii fascinate Ayla. Their clothes, customs, artifacts,...
A novel about people, a country estate, and living history...
"The house contains time. Its walls hold stories. Births and deaths, comings and goings, people and events passing through... For now, however, it lies suspended in a kind of emptiness, as if it has fallen asleep or someone has...
| Author | Molly Keane |
| ISBN | 1844083241 |
I do know how to behave - believe me, because I know. I have always known...'
Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy...
| Author | Lauren Willig |
| ISBN | 1250014506 |
2009: When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it's a joke. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to...
| Author | Jean M. Auel |
| ISBN | 0553381644 |
Once again Jean M. Auel opens the door of a time long past to reveal an age of wonder and danger at the dawn of the modern human race. With all the consummate storytelling artistry and vivid authenticity she brought to The Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequel, The Valley of Horses, Jean M. Auel continues the...
| Author | Edith Anna Oenone Somerville |
| ISBN | 0349101469 |
"Major Sinclair Yeates leaves England to work as an Irish Resident Magistrate convinced that two and two make four. But as he passes judgment on a range of cases and characters that would have driven Solomon to drink he learns that in Ireland two and two are just as likely to make five, or three, or even nothing...
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
| Author | Robin Sloan |
| ISBN | 0374214913 |
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, but after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are...
| Author | Norah Lofts |
| ISBN | 0449230953 |
The old Suffolk country house of Nethergate provided a welcome refuge for young Isabella de Savigny, fleeing from the terror of revolutionary France. But she was treated with subtle cruelty by Lady Rosaleen Franklin and despised by Martha Pratt, the lady's maid, when she allowed herself to be seduced...
| Author | Lucinda Riley |
| ISBN | 1451655789 |
For fans of The House at Riverton and Rebecca—a debut spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from a magnificent estate in war-torn England to Thailand, this sweeping novel tells the tale of a concert pianist, Julia, and the prominent Crawford family whose shocking secrets are revealed,...
| Author | Susan Howatch |
| ISBN | 0751535354 |
There were two subjects which lonely widower Edward de Salis never discussed: his dead wife and his family home in Ireland, 'matchless Cashelmara'. So when he meets Marguerite, a bright young American with whom he can talk freely about both, he is able to love again and takes her back to Ireland as his...
| Author | Penelope Lively |
| ISBN | 0749707909 |
Clare, her hands in the pockets of her school coat, her face stinging from the cold, moved slowly round the church, staring at one inscription after another, giving her attention to the whole chronicle of wood merchants, burghers and benefactors of the poor, of husbands and fathers, wives, mothers...
| Author | Charles Dickens |
| ISBN | 0141439963 |
A novel of serendipity, of fortunes won and lost, and of the spectre of imprisonment that hangs over all aspects of Victorian society, Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit is edited with an introduction by Stephen Wall in Penguin Classics.
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years...
| Author | Jessica Shattuck |
| ISBN | 0062563661 |
Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold
Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined an affecting, shocking, and ultimately...
The Land of Painted Caves
| Author | Jean M. Auel |
| ISBN | 0517580519 |
In The land of Painted Caves, Jean M. Auel brings the ice-age epic Earth's Children series to an extraordinary conclusion. Ayla, one of the most remarkable and beloved heroines in contemporary fiction, continues to explore the world and the people around her with curiosity, insight, and above all,...
The Girl in the Gatehouse
| Author | Julie Klassen |
| ISBN | 0764207083 |
Miss Mariah Aubrey, banished after a scandal, hides herself away in a long-abandoned gatehouse on the far edge of a distant relative's estate. There, she supports herself and her loyal servant the only way she knows how--by writing novels in secret.Captain Matthew Bryant, returning to England successful...
| Author | Héctor Tobar |
| ISBN | 0374108994 |
The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves—a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity
With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis...
The Tale of Hawthorn House
| Author | Susan Wittig Albert |
| ISBN | 0425216551 |
A brand-new mystery in the endearing Beatrix Potter series from a national bestselling author. During Sawrey's annual summer fête, Miss Beatrix Potter receives an unexpected visitor in the form of Baby Flora, left in a basket on her doorstep with a note, a sprig of hawthorn, and a scarab ring. All Beatrix...
| Author | Ruby Ferguson |
| ISBN | 1903155436 |
Sometimes the introduction (or foreword) to a book is a pointless bore, but it can also illuminate a book in a particular way that makes the reading experience more enjoyable. Candia McWilliam provides the foreword to this one and I highly recommend that you read it first, as it does set you up for what...
| Author | Beverley Nichols |
| ISBN | 0881927287 |
Beverley Nichols fans, armchair gardeners, and literature enthusiasts will delight in this reprint of the second book in his Allways trilogy, with facsimile reproductions of Rex Whistler's original graceful illustrations and a new foreword by Roy C. Dicks. Nichols's humorous ruminations on life...
