The Historical Fiction category has 5,886 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 31,971 ratings. The most-rated is The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
The Other Miss Bridgerton
Summary
She was in the wrong place.... Fiercely independent and adventurous, Poppy Bridgerton will only wed a suitor whose keen intellect and interests match her own. Sadly, none of the fools from her London season qualify. While visiting a friend on the Dorset coast, Poppy is pleasantly surprised to discover a smugglers’ hideaway tucked inside a cave. But her delight turns to dismay when two pirates kidnap her and take her aboard a ship, leaving her bound and gagged on the captain’s bed.... He found her at the wrong time.... Known to society as a rascal and reckless privateer, Captain Andrew James Rokesby actually transports essential goods and documents for the British government. Setting sail on a time-sensitive voyage to Portugal, he’s stunned to find a woman waiting for him in his cabin. Surely, his imagination is getting the better of him. But no, she is very real - and his duty to the Crown means he's stuck with her. Can two wrongs make the most perfect right? When Andrew learns that she is a Bridgerton, he knows he will likely have to wed her to avert a scandal - though Poppy has no idea that he is the son of an earl and neighbor to her aristocratic cousins in Kent. On the high seas, their war of words soon gives way to an intoxicating passion. But when Andrew’s secret is revealed, will his declaration of love be enough to capture her heart...?
©2018 Julie Cotler Pottinger (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
New York
Summary
The best-selling master of historical fiction weaves a grand, sweeping drama of New York from the city's founding to the present day.
Rutherfurd celebrates America's greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga that showcases his extraordinary ability to combine impeccable historical research and storytelling flair. As in his earlier, best-selling novels, he illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families.
As he recounts the intertwining fates of characters rich and poor, black and white, native born and immigrant, Rutherfurd brings to life the momentous events that shaped New York and America: the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the explosion of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the trials of World War II, the near-demise of New York in the 1970s and its roaring rebirth in the '90s, and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Sprinkled throughout are captivating cameo appearances by historical figures ranging from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth.
New York is the book that millions of Rutherfurd's American fans have been waiting for. A brilliant mix of romance, war, family drama, and personal triumphs, it gloriously captures the search for freedom and prosperity at the heart of our nation's history.
©2009 Edward Rutherford (P)2009 Random House
Bachelor Girl
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Orphan #8 comes a fresh and intimate novel about the destructive power of secrets and the redemptive power of love - inspired by the true story of Jacob Ruppert, the millionaire owner of the New York Yankees, and his mysterious bequest in 1939 to an unknown actress, Helen Winthrope Weyant. When the owner of the New York Yankees baseball team, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, takes Helen Winthrope, a young actress, under his wing, she thinks it's because of his guilt over her father's accidental death - and so does Albert Kramer, Ruppert's handsome personal secretary. Helen and Albert develop a deepening bond the closer they become to Ruppert, an eccentric millionaire who demands their loyalty in return for his lavish generosity. New York in the Jazz Age is filled with possibilities, especially for the young and single. Yet even as Helen embraces being a "bachelor girl" - a working woman living on her own terms - she finds herself falling in love with Albert, even after he confesses his darkest secret. When Ruppert dies, rumors swirl about his connection to Helen after the stunning revelation that he has left her the bulk of his fortune, which includes Yankee Stadium. But it is only when Ruppert's own secrets are finally revealed that Helen and Albert will be forced to confront the truth about their relationship to him - and to each other. Inspired by factual events that gripped New York City in its heyday, Bachelor Girl is a hidden history gem about family, identity, and love in all its shapes and colors.
©2018 Kim Van Alkemade (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
The Polished Hoe
Summary
Winner of both the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Polished Hoe is acclaimed author Austin Clarke's masterpiece. On a Caribbean island in the 1950s, elderly Mary Gertrude Mathilda commits murder. As she explains herself to police, her story exposes the ugly underbelly of life on Caribbean plantations, with its slavery and brutality. When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women of the island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados) calls the police to confess to the crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the island's African past and the tragic legacy of colonialism in one epic sweep. Set in the West Indies in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe - an Essence best seller and a Washington Post Book World Most Worthy Book of 2003 - unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery.
©2003 Austin Clarke (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
In Bed with a Highlander
Summary
Ewan McCabe, the eldest, is a warrior determined to vanquish his enemy. Now, with the time ripe for battle, his men are ready and Ewan is poised to take back what is his-until a blue-eyed, raven-haired temptress is thrust upon him. Mairin may be the salvation of Ewan's clan, but for a man who dreams only of revenge, matters of the heart are strange territory to conquer. The illegitimate daughter of the king, Mairin possesses prized property that has made her a pawn-and wary of love. Her worst fears are realized when she is rescued from peril only to be forced into marriage by her charismatic and commanding savior, Ewan McCabe. But her attraction to her ruggedly powerful new husband makes her crave his surprisingly tender touch; her body comes alive under his sensual mastery. And as war draws near, Mairin's strength, spirit, and passion challenge Ewan to conquer his demons-and embrace a love that means more than revenge or land.
©2011 Maya Banks (P)2012 Tantor
The Burning Shore
Summary
The deck bucked under her feet, and she was hurtled backwards on to the bunk again, and the blast of a massive explosion ripped through the ship. 'What is happening?' she screamed. Love in a time of war. Hope in a time of danger. One of the greatest fighter pilots of the Great War, Michael Courtney is saved by the French noblewoman Centaine de Thiry when he crashes near her home. Soon after, Centaine finds herself alone and carrying Michael's child and must travel across the ocean to join his family in South Africa. But no journey is ever simple, and a pregnant Centaine finds herself shipwrecked in shark-infested waters off Africa's notorious Skeleton Coast, a deadly swim away from the sun-bleached desert that will see her defenceless and alone. When hope arrives, she has no way of knowing if she will be saved - or left in greater danger than ever before....
©2018 Wilbur Smith (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
The Sapphire Brooch
Summary
A Union soldier risks everything to save the life of Abraham Lincoln, while a Confederate surgeon races through time to preserve Lincoln's legacy. Reenactor Dr. Charlotte Mallory has spent years perfecting the portrayal of her ancestor, Civil War Confederate surgeon Major Carlton Mallory. In the middle of the 150th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek, she is hurled back in time and lands in the middle of the battle itself, and from there is catapulted into dangers that threaten her life and shatter her heart. Charlotte is captured by Union soldiers during the battle and hauled before General Sheridan. The General only sees a Confederate surgeon who can solve a challenging problem for him, so he threatens Charlotte with the destruction of her 200-year-old ancestral home unless "he" agrees to rescue a Union spy from a Confederate hospital. To save her home and possibly her own life, she reluctantly agrees. After a harrowing journey to Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, she finds her target, a handsome, green-eyed spy with a Minie ball in his gut and is now at death's door. Without a thought for long-term consequences, she returns with him to the future, where she has the technology to save his life. While recovering from his gunshot wound in Charlotte's ancestral home, the spy, Major Michael Abraham "Braham" McCabe learns the man he works for, President Lincoln, was assassinated. Now Braham is determined to return to his century to prevent the assassination. When Charlotte refuses to help him, because it will change the future, he finds another way to get back to his own time.
©2014 Katherine Lowry Logan (P)2015 Katherine Lowry Logan
North and South
Summary
Two strangers, young men from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, meet on the way to West Point.... Thus begins this brilliant novel of antebellum America, spanning three generations and chronicling the lives and loves of two great family dynasties. The Hazards and the Mains are brought together in bonds of friendship and affection that neither jealousy nor violence can shatter - until a storm of events sunders the nation and brings the cataclysm of war!
©1982 John Jakes (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
In the Midst of Winter
Summary
New York Times and worldwide best-selling author Isabel Allende returns with a sweeping novel that journeys from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil that offers “a timely message about immigration and the meaning of home” (People). During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his 60s, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, and what at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice. As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love. Allende returns here to themes that have propelled some of her finest work: political injustice, the art of survival, and the essential nature of — and our need for — love.
©2017 Isabel Allende (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Crossing
Summary
In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy fulfills the promise of All the Pretty Horses and at the same time gives us a work that is darker and more visionary, a novel with the unstoppable momentum of a classic Western and the elegaic power of a lost American myth. In the late 1930s, 16-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing he begins an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat lightning - a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there". An essential novel by any measure, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once.
©1994 Cormac McCarthy (P)2016 Recorded Books
TheTiger's Prey
Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Desert God and Pharaoh adds another chapter to his popular historical saga featuring the seafaring Tom Courtney, the hero of Monsoon and Blue Horizon, with this magnificent swashbuckling saga set in the 18th century and packed with action, violence, romance, and rousing adventure. Tom Courtney, one of four sons of master mariner Sir Hal Courtney, once again sets sail on a treacherous journey that will take him across the vast reaches of the ocean and pit him against dangerous enemies in exotic destinations. But just as the winds propel his sails, passion drives his heart. Turning his ship toward the unknown, Tom Courtney will ultimately find his destiny - and lay the future for the Courtney family. Wilbur Smith, the world's greatest storyteller, once again recreates all the drama, uncertainty, and courage of a bygone era in this thrilling saga of the sea.
©2017 Orion Mintaka (UK) Ltd. (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The German Girl
Summary
A stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel, perfect for fans of The Nightingale, Schindler's List, and All the Light We Cannot See, about 12-year-old Hannah Rosenthal's harrowing experience fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany with her family and best friend, only to discover that the overseas asylum they had been promised is an illusion. Before everything changed, young Hannah Rosenthal lived a charmed life. But now, in 1939, the streets of Berlin are draped with red, white, and black flags; her family's fine possessions are hauled away; and they are no longer welcome in the places that once felt like home. Hannah and her best friend, Leo Martin, make a pact: whatever the future has in store for them, they'll meet it together. Hope appears in the form of the SS St. Louis, a transatlantic liner offering Jews safe passage out of Germany. After a frantic search to obtain visas, the Rosenthals and the Martins depart on the luxurious ship bound for Havana. Life on board the St. Louis is like a surreal holiday for the refugees, with masquerade balls, exquisite meals, and polite, respectful service. But soon ominous rumors from Cuba undermine the passengers' fragile sense of safety. From one day to the next, impossible choices are offered, unthinkable sacrifices are made, and the ship that once was their salvation seems likely to become their doom. Seven decades later in New York City, on her 12th birthday, Anna Rosen receives a strange package from an unknown relative in Cuba, her great-aunt Hannah. Its contents will inspire Anna and her mother to travel to Havana to learn the truth about their family's mysterious and tragic past, a quest that will help Anna understand her place and her purpose in the world. The German Girl sweeps from Berlin at the brink of the Second World War to Cuba on the cusp of revolution, to New York in the wake of September 11, before reaching its deeply moving conclusion in the tumult of present-day Havana. Based on a true story, this masterful novel gives voice to the joys and sorrows of generations of exiles, forever seeking a place called home.
©2016 Armando Lucas Correa. All rights reserved. (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Sarum
Summary
In Sarum, Edward Rutherfurd weaves a compelling saga of five English families whose fates become intertwined over the course of centuries. While each family has its own distinct characteristics, the successive generations reflect the changing character of Britain. We become drawn not only into the fortunes of the individual family members, but also the larger destinies of each family line. Meticulously researched and epic in scope, Sarum covers the entire sweep of English civilization: from the early hunters and farmers, the creation of Stonehenge, the dawn of Christianity, and the Black Death; through the Reformation, the wars in America, the Industrial Age, and the Victorian social reforms; up through the World War II invasion of Normandy and the modern-day concerns of a once-preeminent empire.
©1987 Edward Rutherfurd (P)1994 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Shape of Family
Summary
From the international best-selling author of Secret Daughter and The Golden Son comes a poignant, unforgettable novel about a family's growing apart and coming back together in the wake of tragedy. The Olanders embody a modern family in a globalized world. Jaya, the cultured daughter of an Indian diplomat and Keith, an ambitious banker from middle-class Philadelphia, meet in a London pub in 1988 and make a life together in suburban California. Their strong marriage is built on shared beliefs and love for their two children: headstrong teenager Karina and young son Prem, the light of their home. But love and prosperity cannot protect them from sudden, unspeakable tragedy, and the family’s foundation cracks as each member struggles to seek a way forward. Jaya finds solace in spirituality. Keith wagers on his high-powered career. Karina focuses relentlessly on her future and independence. And Prem watches helplessly as his once close-knit family drifts apart. When Karina heads off to college for a fresh start, her search for identity and belonging leads her down a dark path, forcing her and her family to reckon with the past, the secrets they’ve held and the weight of their choices. The Shape of Family is an intimate portrayal of four individuals as they grapple with what it means to be a family and how to move from a painful past into a hopeful future. It is a profoundly moving exploration of the ways we all seek belonging - in our families, our communities, and ultimately, within ourselves.
©2020 Shilpi Somaya Gowda (P)2020 HarperAudio
To the Far Blue Mountains
Summary
In To the Far Blue Mountains, Louis L’Amour weaves the unforgettable tale of a man who, after returning to his homeland, discovers that finding his way back to America may be impossible. Barnabas Sackett was leaving England to make his fortune in the New World. But as he settled his affairs, he learned that a royal warrant had been sworn out against him and that men were searching for him in every port. At issue were some rare gold coins Sackett had sold to finance his first trip to the Americas - coins believed to be part of a great treasure lost by King John years before. Believing that Sackett possesses the rest of the treasure, Queen Bess will stop at nothing to find him. If he’s caught, not only will his dream of a life in America be lost, but he will be brutally tortured and put to death on the gallows.
©1976 Louis L'Amour Enterprises, Inc. (P)1999 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Summary
From the internationally best-selling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy's quest for wealth and love. His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world's pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation - and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man's journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia". It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.
©2013 Mohsin Hamid (P)2013 Penguin Audiobooks
Sharpe's Revenge: The Peace of 1814
Summary
Richard Sharpe triumphs in the last battle of the war, only to find himself in worse peril when charged to recover Napoleon's treasure. It is 1814. There are rumours that Napoleon is dead, or has run away, but Sharpe has one last battle to fight before he can lay down his sword. It is the battle for Toulouse. Little does he know it will be one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war. But Sharpe's war is not only the battle. Accused of stealing Napoleon's treasure, Sharpe must discover the unknown enemy who has tried to frame him - and his revenge is ingenious and devastating. Soldier, hero, rogue - Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears. Please Note: The historical note is NOT included in this audiobook.
©1989 Bernard Cornwell (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Blackout
Summary
In her first novel since 2002, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Connie Willis returns with a stunning, enormously entertaining novel of time travel, war, and the deeds - great and small - of ordinary people who shape history. Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place. Scores of time-traveling historians are being sent into the past, to destinations including the American Civil War and the attack on the World Trade Center. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser, Mr. Dunworthy, into letting her go to VE Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz. And 17-year-old Colin Templer, who has a major crush on Polly, is determined to go to the Crusades so that he can catch up to her in age. But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments for no apparent reason and switching around everyones schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, unexploded bombs, dive-bombing Stukas, rationing, shrapnel, V-1s, and two of the most incorrigible children in all of history to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past. BONUS AUDIO: In an exclusive introduction, author Connie Willis discusses her fascination with WWII and the historic context of Blackout. IMPORTANT NOTE: Blackout is the first volume of a two-part novel. To find out what happens to the time-traveling historians from Oxford, we invite you to download the concluding volume, All Clear.
©2010 Connie Willis (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Solomon's Song
Summary
Here is the story of two families, branches of the Solomons, transported to an alien land. Both branches eventually grow rich and powerful. But through three generations, the families never, for one moment, relinquish their hatred for each other. This novel is also the story of Australia, from its beginnings to its coming of age as a nation.
©2013 Christine Courtenay (P)2014 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Outside Boy
Summary
The Outside Boy is a poignant coming-of-age novel about an Irish gypsy boy’s childhood in the 1950s from Jeanine Cummins, the national best-selling author of A Rip in Heaven and American Dirt. Ireland, 1959: Young Christopher Hurley is a tinker, a Pavee gypsy, who roams with his father and extended family from town to town, carrying all their worldly possessions in their wagons. Christy carries with him a burden of guilt as well, haunted by the story of his mother's death in childbirth. The wandering life is the only one Christy has ever known, but when his grandfather dies, everything changes. His father decides to settle briefly, in a town, where Christy and his cousin can receive proper schooling and prepare for their first communions. But still, always, they are treated as outsiders. As Christy struggles to find his way amid the more conventional lives of his new classmates, he starts to question who he is and where he belongs. But then the discovery of an old newspaper photograph, and a long-buried secret from his mother's mysterious past, changes his life forever.... A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
©2010 Jeanine Cummins (P)2020 Macmillan Audio