Colonial Women

The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary's long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son's satellite.

Author Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in 17th-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society and attempts to answer the question why some women were vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession.

Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the 20 who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders.

In the first volume in the Penguin History of the United States series, edited by Eric Foner, Alan Taylor challenges the traditional story of colonial history by examining the many cultures that helped make America, from the native inhabitants from millennia past through the decades of Western colonization and conquest and across the entire continent, all the way to the Pacific coast.

2025 National Indie Excellence Award - Finalist for Historical Fiction 2025 NYC Big Book Awards - Distinguished Favorite for Historical Fiction The Diary of Essie Lassiter was an authentic read, with a strong female narrator blazing a fiery path in a harsh new world. Her voice was as captivating as her journey, and the world created around her was vibrant with the sights, sounds and smells of colonial life. – Reedsy Discovery In the runup to the Revolutionary War, a young English midwife is unsuspectingly thrown into the London Debtor’s Prison. With no prospect of retiring her debt, she...

Alice Morse Earle’s writings, beginning in 1890, focused on small sociological details rather than grand details, and thus are invaluable for modern social historians.

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, was an eyewitness to America's founding, and helped guide the new nation through her observations and advice to her famously prickly husband, who cherished her. In The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman "Not Apt to Be Intimidated," writer and researcher John L. Smith, Jr. draws on more than two thousand letters of Abigail's spanning from the 1760s to her death in 1818, interweaving Abigail's colorful correspondence with a contextual narrative.

The legendary Marquis de Lafayette, A forgotten Moravian woman who became his nurse, And a bookmark with a secret... 1777. After being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine, the Marquis de Lafayette is taken to the isolated religious community of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he is cared for by a Moravian Single Sister named Liesl Boeckel who has little patience with the arrogant Frenchman and his unwelcome curiosity about her life. 2005. When Abbey Prescott inherits her grandmother’s house in Bethlehem, she discovers an eighteenth-century bookmark, which may reveal a romance between Liesl...

Paranormal Women’s Fiction from #1 Amazon bestseller, J.R. Rain, and New York Times bestseller, H.P. Mallory! Things seem always to go downhill whenever it comes to me and relationships… Even though I’m in a relationship with Roy, he’s been avoiding me lately, claiming he’s just been super busy with work. It’s an excuse I’ve heard many times before. I’m not really sure what’s going on between the two of us, but I’m worried he’s lost interest in me and the relationship. But as much as it pains me, I know I’ll survive. After all, I’ve survived my myriad breakups ...

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed 27 men, women, and children, and took 13 captives, including 39-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant. After witnessing her infant's murder, Duston resolved to get even.

“This collection succeeds in emphasizing that many unsung women left their mark well before the suffrage movement.” —Publishers Weekly Fans of #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts, also a celebrated journalist for ABC and NPR, will love this stunning nonfiction picture book...

In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches.

In Liberty’s Wake follows Arabella, her family, and their household slaves as they face tumultuous change on the eve of the American Revolution. Living a life of privilege on a Virginia plantation, Arabella’s world is upended as tensions escalate between American colonists and Great Britain. It’s 1763, Virginia is the wealthiest colony in British America. As the French and Indian War draws to a close colonists look forward to peace and prosperity. Loyal to their king they are proud to be British, unaware that revolution looms on the horizon and will soon tear their world apart. As ...

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023 NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, TIME, ESQUIRE, VOGUE, LA TIMES, SLATE, HARPER'S BAZAAR and others “Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is...

The True Story of Pocahontas is the first public publication of the Powhatan perspective that has been maintained and passed down from generation to generation within the Mattaponi Tribe, and the first written history of Pocahontas by her own people.

When Tiffany and Rosie travel to a colonial-themed town, they suspect the business manager might be engaging in some unethical practices... ... but they stumble into a murder instead. Who could've killed the much-disliked "town governor"? As secrets are unveiled, tensions rise, and the duo find themselves scrambling to uncover the truth before the killer strikes again... Praise for A.R. Winters: "The perfect balance of being lighthearted, but still a serious page-turning mystery." - Jaycie D, Amazon.com "A fun cozy mystery with engaging and entertaining characters" - lq, Amazon.com "For ...

Hamburg 1888: After thirty prosperous years, coffee importer Peter Hansen & Sons faces hard times - and certain bankruptcy - unless three brothers can make savvy moves to save the faltering business after their father’s untimely death. For Robert Hansen, that means meeting changing demands by following the future from Vienna to Africa. He relocates his family to the German colony of Cameroon and takes ownership of a cocoa plantation. With a spirit as adventurous as her father’s, Robert’s fifteen-year-old daughter Luise discovers an exciting new world.

This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden - and not always stoic - face of the "goodwives" of colonial America. In this book, we encounter the awesome burdens - and the considerable power - of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising - and, all too often, mourning - her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTELLER Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize A Heather's Pick A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year One of Indigo’s Most Anticipated Books One of the CBC’s Best Canadian Fiction of 2024 A Winnipeg Free Press Best Fiction Book of 2024 From one of...

After freeing himself from his former slave masters, Riel becomes a pirate after striking a deal with the infamous Captain Glass. In exchange for learning English, how to sail, and how to be a fearsome pirate, Riel will give Captain Glass seventy percent of his bounty for five years. Five years later, Captain Glass is unwilling to release Riel from his debt. Under threat of being resold as a slave, Riel feels trapped in a life he doesn’t want. Darlene Smith has always been a tomboy. She favors trousers and swords over dresses and knitting. Wanting her to act like the high class lady she ...