From the moment she's struck by lightening as a baby, it is clear that Mary Anning is marked for greatness. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, she learns that she has "the eye"-and finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight.

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness. When she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils in the cliffs near her home, she sets the scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation and stimulating debate over our origins. In an arena dominated by men, however, Mary is soon reduced to a serving role, facing prejudice from the academic community, vicious gossip from neighbours, and the heartbreak of forbidden love.

Against the backdrop of a city anxious over the bloody French revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, whose family have moved from Dorset, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield.

A poor family moves to 18th-century London, where the father has been offered a job as a carpenter for a circus. His children befriend a young girl who introduces them to the great city. Their neighbor is none other than the real-life poet, William Blake.

January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria's death, two families visit neighouring graves in a London cemetery. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions; the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, however, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones.

This is the compelling story of two women, born centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner tries hard to fit into the small, close-knit community of the French town that she has moved to. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high-school French. However, isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, with heart-wrenching results.

January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria's death. Two families visit neighbouring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other with an elaborate urn. The Waterhouses revere the late Queen and cling to Victorian traditions, while the Colemans look forward to a more modern society. To their mutual distaste, the families are inextricably linked when their daughters become friends behind the tombstones. And worse still, befriend the gravedigger's muddy son.

Griet, the young daughter of a tile maker in 17th-century Holland, obtains her first job, as a servant in Vermeer's household. Tracy Chevalier shows us through Griet's eyes the complicated family, the society of the small town of Delft, and life with an obsessive genius. Griet loves being drawn into his artistic life, and leaving her former drudgery, but the cost to her own survival may be high.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries. Beautiful, intricate, and expertly made, they are also mysterious in their origin and meaning.

Bewitching art experts and enthusiasts alike for centuries, the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries hang today in the Cluny Museum in Paris.