Inspirational Historical Fiction

Is there a secret terrible enough that it should never be revealed, not even if it was tearing a family apart? For more than five decades, Emma Bauer has kept one - carefully guarding it with all her strength, and for more than five decades, that choice has haunted her life and also the lives of her daughters and granddaughter. Is it too late for wrongs to be righted? Does Emma even have the strength to let the healing power of truth work in her family?

Six-time Christy Award winner Lynn Austin has won a loyal following for her inspiring historical fiction. In Wonderland Creek, young Chicago-area librarian Alice Grace Ripley is left heartbroken when her fiancé breaks up with her just as the Great Depression forces her out of a job. To escape the local gossip, Alice volunteers to deliver donated books to a library in rural Kentucky. There she discovers that God still has a plan for her after all.

Already well-versed in the natural healing properties of herbs and oils, Jennie Pickett longs to become a doctor. But the Oregon frontier of the 1870s doesn't approve of such innovations as women attending medical school. To leave grief and guilt behind, as well as support herself and her challenging young son, Jennie cares for an elderly woman using skills she's developed on her own. When her patient dies, Jennie discovers that her heart has become entangled with the woman's widowed husband, a man many years her senior.

The ideal of a new Germany swept up Sophie Scholl in a maelstrom of patriotic fervor - that is, until she realized the truth behind Hitler's machinations for the fatherland. Now she and other students in Munich, the cradle of the Nazi government, have banded together to form a group to fight for the truth: the White Rose. Risking everything to print and distribute leaflets calling for Germans to rise up against the evil permeating their country, the White Rose treads a knife's edge of discovery by the Gestapo.

In 1844, two years before the Donner Party, the Stevens-Murphy company left Missouri to be the first wagons into California through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mostly Irish Catholics, the party sought religious freedom and education in the mission-dominated land and enjoyed a safe journey - until October, when a heavy snowstorm forced difficult decisions. The first of many for young Mary Sullivan, newlywed Sarah Montgomery, the widow Ellen Murphy, and her pregnant sister-in-law Maolisa.

Judith Gladstone came to San Francisco after her parents died to find her last living relative, an aunt she has never met. Instead she has fallen head over heels in love with Caleb Coulter, her friend's brother. Caleb has promised to help Judith find her aunt, but she can tell he thinks of her only as a friend, and she struggles to hide her feelings. When Caleb traces Judith's aunt to the wealthy Whitley family, Judith is reunited with her long-lost relatives. The truths she learns about her past and her parents are shocking and overwhelming, however, and the more she gets to know her new family, the more danger she uncovers.

This thrilling adventure takes listeners into the most compelling frontier: the human heart. By 1866, Dr. Cheney Duvall has had her fill of places where people distrust her skills simply because she is a woman. So she and her assistant, Shiloh Irons, return to Cheney's home in New York City, where Cheney can set up practice among "respectable" folks. But an outbreak of cholera has Cheney questioning her decision and looking to God to find out how she can best use her talents.

Thomas Johnson and Charles Spurgeon lived worlds apart: Johnson, an American slave, born into captivity and longing for freedom and Spurgeon, an Englishman born into relative ease and comfort but, longing, too, for a freedom of his own. Their respective journeys led to an unlikely meeting and an even more unlikely friendship, forged by fate and mutual love for the mission of Christ. Steal Away Home tells a previously untold story set in the 1800s of the relationship between an African-American missionary and one of the greatest preachers to ever live.

John Knox, the Thundering Scott, lives a life of adventure and danger in turbulent, corrupt 16th-century Scotland. Finding himself a wanted man, Knox is besieged in a castle by French soldiers, seized, and made a galley slave. Yet he is unflinching in his stand for the gospel, even in the face of assassins and death, and even when his fiery preaching makes him an enemy of Mary, Queen of Scots. Told from the perspective of a young student resolved to protect Knox at any cost, Douglas Bond's thrilling biographical novel provides a look at the harrowing life story of a giant of the faith.

A spinster teacher...a grieving widower...a marriage of convenience and a second chance with the man she's always loved. When Samuel Walker proposes a marriage of convenience to Rose Hatfieldso soon after the death of his wife, she knows he doesn't love her. She's loved him since their school days. Those long-suppressed feelings spring to life as she marries him. She must sell her childhood home, quit her teaching job, and move to a new city. Marrying Rose is harder than Samuel expected, especially with the shadow of his deceased wife everywhere in his life. And he has two young children to...

Union army officer Cameron Scott is used to being obeyed, but nothing about this journey to Lake Tahoe has gone as expected. He's come to fetch his daughter and nephew and seek revenge on the people who killed his brother. Instead he finds himself trapped by a blizzard with two children who are terrified of him and stubborn but beautiful Gwen Harkness, who he worries may be trying to keep the children. When danger descends on the cabin where they're huddled, Cam is hurt trying to protect everyone and now finds Gwen caring for him, too. He soon realizes why the kids love her so much.

The Civil War rages around her, yet Brigid McGinnis has her life planned out. That was, until she stumbles across an unconscious Confederate soldier on her father’s property. A blow to the head stole Dominic Warner’s memory. The beautiful Fraulein who nurses him back to health steals something even more important - his heart. Follow Brigid and Dominic from the battlefields surrounding Atlanta, along slave escape routes, to Little Rock, and eventually to the plains of Eastern Texas, as they learn to trust, forgive, love, and surrender to a plan greater than their own.

The king's sudden death leaves his son Manasseh as the new ruler. Overcome with sorrow, Manasseh is angry toward God and begins a reign of terror that shocks the kingdom. His own insecurity prompts the death of his closest advisors, dividing the faithful in two. Barely escaping the carnage, his best friend Joshua suffers the excruciating loss of his family and plans revenge.

Raina Bretton is a rag woman in London's East End when a handsome stranger appears in a dank alley and offers her a glittering smile and a chance for adventure. Rothburne Abbey has a unique position for her, one that will take her away from her hardscrabble life and give her a chance to be a lady. Things she could only dream of might be coming true. But some dreams turn out to be nightmares. Though Raina has traded squalor for silk and satin, something about the abbey is deeply unsettling.

In the course of their investigation into Leonardo da Vinci, Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince found clues about his strangely passionate belief in the importance of John the Baptist. Here, along with a reassessment of the significance of Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine, the authors reveal that Da Vinci’s apparently peculiar religion was shared by the Knights Templar. And their profoundly heretical belief that the Baptist was superior to Jesus himself still has the power to pose a threat to the very foundations of the Christian Church….

Master Hugh, Kate, and their children attend the Midsummer’s Eve fire. Early next morning, Hugh hears the passing bell ring from the Church of St. Beornwald and moments later is summoned. Tenants collecting the ashes to spread upon their fields have found burned bones. Master Hugh learns of several men of Bampton and nearby villages who have gone missing recently. Most are soon found, some alive, some dead. Master Hugh eventually learns that the bones are those of a bailiff from a nearby manor. Someone has slain him and placed his body in the fire to destroy evidence of murder.

It had taken four long, difficult years to tame the virgin prairie of Dakota Territory. Looking back through all the heartache and the body-breaking labor, Ingeborg Bjorklund knew that God had been with them every step of the way. Dreams that had turned into veritable nightmares had been reshaped with the promise of a new day rising, and her marriage to Haaken had been its sure sign.

The best-selling author of over 60 books, Tracie Peterson pens soaring works of faith and simple virtue. An addition to her popular Heirs of Montana series, The Coming Storm takes place in the year 1870.

King Solomon was wealthy and wise beyond measure. He could - and did - have anything he wanted, including many women from many lands. But for all his wisdom, did he or the women in his life ever find what they searched for all of their lives? In this engrossing novel, you'll find yourself whisked away to ancient Israel, where you'll meet Solomon and four of the women he loved: Naamah the desert princess, Abishag the shepherdess, Siti, the daughter of a pharaoh, and Nicaula, the queen of Sheba. Did Solomon's wisdom ultimately benefit him and those he loved...or did it betray them?

Seeking to fulfill the promise she made to her dying father, 18-year-old Jesselynn Highwood determines to take her little brother and the family's remaining thoroughbreds from the Twin Oaks plantation in Kentucky to her uncle's farm in Missouri, where they will be safe for the remainder of the Civil War.