Josephine Bailey
21) Empress
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In a family torn apart by poverty and violence, Hekat is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen. It is a path that will take her from stinking back alleys to the house of her God, from blood-drenched battlefields to the glittering palaces of Mijak.This is the story of Hekat, slave to no man.
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Emma Hamilton was England's first superstar. She fought her way out of dire poverty to become a fashion icon, an Ambassador's wife, a confidante of both Queen Marie Antoinette and the Queen of Naples, and the mistress of Lord Nelson, England's greatest military hero. Drawing on hundreds of previously undiscovered letters, England's Mistress follows Emma's dramatic journey from the slums of Northern England to the Royal Court of Naples, and from the...
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Eleanor is the daughter of a strict puritan and Roundhead major and lives in a medieval manor on the bleak wetlands of Somerset. Her longing for color and brightness leads to an obsession with butterflies as well as to an illicit passion for charismatic but troubled Richard Glanville. Richard, the son of an exiled Cavalier, embodies all that Eleanor had been taught to despise and distrust, but he also holds for her all the allure of the forbidden....
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The New York Times best-selling author of The Bookseller of Kabul paints a stunning and intimate portrait of Baghdad under siegeFrom January until April 2003-for one hundred and one days-Asne Seierstad worked as a reporter in Bagdad for Scandinavian, German, and Dutch media. Through her articles and live television coverage she reported on the events in Iraq before, during, and after the attacks by the American and British forces.But Seierstad was...
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This haunting love story-the magnificent new historical novel by the author of the national bestseller The Fig Eater-makes unforgettably real the ravages of love and war. Spring 1915. On a sprawling country estate not far from London, a young woman mourns her husband, fallen on a distant battlefield. The eerie stillness in which she grieves is abruptly shattered as her home is transformed into a bustling military hospital. Recoiling from the chaos,...
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Ethrea is an island in the center of the most important shipping route in the world. For four hundred years, it has been a land of peace and impregnable security, a perfect trading hub-and keeper of secrets.The King of Ethrea is dying. His only surviving heir is the princess Rhian. But if her enemies have their way, Ethrea will not be ruled by a woman.Dexterity Jones is a toymaker. To protect Princess Rhian and his country, he must place his trust...
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Like its predecessor, The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox's The Glass of Time is an engrossing period mystery about identity, the nature of secrets, and what happens when past obsessions impose themselves on an unwilling present. In the autumn of 1876, nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at the great country house of Evenwood to become a lady's maid to the twenty-sixth Baroness Tansor. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been...
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A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today. In her illuminating study, award-winning biographer Janet Browne delves into the long genesis of Darwin's theories, from his readings as a university student and his five-year voyage...
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Dubbed the "pirate queen" by the Vatican and Spain's Philip II, Elizabeth I was feared and admired by her enemies. Extravagant, whimsical, and hot-tempered, Elizabeth was the epitome of power. Her visionary accomplishments were made possible by her daring merchants, gifted rapscallion adventurers, astronomer philosophers, and her stalwart Privy Council, including Sir William Cecil, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Sir Nicholas Bacon. All these men contributed...
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Established "Dear America" author Kristiana Gregory kicks off "The Royal Diaries" with the captivating story of a young Cleopatra's life.While her father is in hiding after attempts on his life, twelve-year-old Cleopatra records in her diary how she fears for her own safety and hopes to survive to become Queen of Egypt some day.
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Few writers have attempted to explore the natural history of a particular animal by adopting the animal's own sensibility. But Verlyn Klinkenborg-with his deeply empathetic relation to the world around him-has done just that, and done it brilliantly, in Timothy; or Notes of an Abject Reptile.This is the story of a tortoise whose real life was observed by the eighteenth-century English curate Gilbert White, author of The Natural History of Selborne....
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Elizabeth Staveley sits in the Bodleian library, holding in her trembling hands a fragment of ancient paper. It is the key to a story that has been locked away for four centuries-the story of a British sea captain's daughter held captive in the sultan's harem.Constantinople, 1599. There are rumors and strange stirrings in the sultan's palace. The chief black eunuch has been poisoned by a taste of a beautiful ship made of spun sugar. The sultan's mother...
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At the beginning of World War II, twelve-year-old Nora Lynch is one of thousands of London children sent away to the safety of the English countryside. Her surrogate family, Reverend and Mrs. Rivers and their daughter, Grace, are like no one she has ever met, offering shelter, affection, and the sister she never had. But Nora is too young and too naive to understand the cracks beneath the surface of her idyllic new life at the rectory or the disappointments...
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Welcome to the bizarre court of Henry VIII, where even a princess fears losing her head like her mother. Elizabeth hides her tenacious personality from everyone, especially her father. Your 21st-century kid will enjoy Elizabeth's "treasonous thoughts" and glimpse the daily life of a young woman who ascended the throne at 25 and went on to rule her country for 45 years.
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Mary Lennox is born in India. She is a sickly, sallow child, whose parents hide her away with her Ayah. After her parents die in a cholera outbreak she is sent to live in Yorkshire with her uncle. She is, once more, left mostly to herself. Her uncle still mourns his beautiful wife ten years after her death, and seeks to escape his grief by traveling. When a chambermaid tells Mary about her mistress's garden, which her master locked up on her death,
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With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre.A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage...
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William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age, and a new collection of stories from him is always a cause for celebration. These twelve stories include:The waiter who divulges his shocking life of crime to his ex-wife. A woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy.The schoolgirl who regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her. A middle-aged couple meet in a theatre bar for a squalid blind date.The...
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Walter Hartright's mysterious midnight encounter with the woman in white draws him into a vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, & international intrigue. In this new edition, John Sutherland examines Collins's contribution to Victorian fiction, traces his practices as a creator of plot, & provides a chronology of the novel's complicated events.
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2007
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A witty philosophical murder mystery with a charming twist: the crack detectives are sheep determined to discover who killed their beloved shepherd. On a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George has cared for the sheep, reading them a plethora of books every night. The daily exposure to literature has made them far savvier...
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2007
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Set against the backdrop of the turbulent thirteenth century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily. From a cultured childhood in Provence, each sister was propelled into a world marked by shifting alliances, intrigue, and subterfuge. Marguerite, the eldest, whose resolution...