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 Lonely Men
Summary
In The Lonely Men, Louis L’Amour spins the tale of a man who must elude an Apache trap - only to discover that his greatest enemy might be very close to home. Tell Sackett had fought his share of Indians and managed to take something of value from his battles: a deep and abiding respect. But that respect is lost when Apache braves kidnap his nephew, forcing Tell to cross the border into the Sierra Madres to bring the boy back. What troubles Tell more, though, is the boy’s mother: Could she possibly be inventing a rescue mission to deliver her husband’s brother into an ambush? Tell knows that the only things he can depend on are his wits and cold steel. But against such adversaries, even these formidable weapons may not be enough.
©1969 Louis and Katherine L'Amour Trust (P)2002 Random House Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
The Great St. Mary's Day Out
Summary
Everyone deserves to get away for a bit. Even the miscreants at St Mary's. Astonishingly, Dr. Bairstow has declared a holiday. Even more astonishingly - he's paying for it. Needless to say, there are strings attached. They have to record the 1601 performance of Hamlet, with Shakespeare himself in the role of the Ghost. It doesn't go well, of course. With Dr Bairstow and Mrs Mack turning a simple visit to a street market into a public brawl, Professor Rapson inadvertently stowing away on a vessel bound for the New World, and Shakespeare himself going up in flames, it would seem that Max, of all people, is the only one actually completing the assignment.
©2016 Jodi Taylor (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
The Angry Tide
Summary
The Angry Tide is the seventh novel in Winston Graham's sweeping series of Cornwall, Poldark. Cornwall, towards the end of the 18th century. Ross Poldark sits for the borough of Truro as Member of Parliament - his time divided between London and Cornwall, his heart divided about his wife, Demelza. His old feud with George Warleggan still flares, as does the illicit love between Morwenna and Drake, Demelza's brother. Before the new century dawns, George and Ross will be drawn together by a loss greater than their rivalry and Morwenna and Drake by a tragedy that brings them hope....
©2016 Macmillan Digital Audio (P)2016 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Son
Summary
Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2014 Soon to be a TV Series on AMC starring Pierce Brosnan and co-written by Philipp Meyer. The critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling epic, a saga of land, blood, and power that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century. Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching examination of the bloody price of power, The Son is a gripping and utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American west with rare emotional acuity, even as it presents an intimate portrait of one family across two centuries. Eli McCullough is just twelve-years-old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his Texas homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him as a captive. Despite their torture and cruelty, Eli—against all odds—adapts to life with the Comanche, learning their ways, their language, taking on a new name, finding a place as the adopted son of the chief of the band, and fighting their wars against not only other Indians, but white men, too-complicating his sense of loyalty, his promised vengeance, and his very understanding of self. But when disease, starvation, and westward expansion finally decimate the Comanche, Eli is left alone in a world in which he belongs nowhere, neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild. Deftly interweaving Eli's story with those of his son, Peter, and his great-granddaughter, JA, The Son deftly explores the legacy of Eli's ruthlessness, his drive to power, and his life-long status as an outsider, even as the McCullough family rises to become one of the richest in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Harrowing, panoramic, and deeply evocative, The Son is a fully realized masterwork in the greatest tradition of the American canon-an unforgettable novel that combines the narrative prowess of Larry McMurtry with the knife edge sharpness of Cormac McCarthy.
©2013 Philipp Meyer (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
Summary
With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century---he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan was not the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard's fertile imagination. He was...a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a touch of the ancient philosopher, and more than a touch of the pagan.... A hunger in his soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all wrongs, protect all weaker things.... Wayward and restless as the wind, he was consistent in only one respect---he was true to his ideals of justice and right. Such was Solomon Kane. Collected in this volume are all of the stories that make up the thrilling saga of the dour and deadly Puritan: "Skulls in the Stars," "The Right Hand of Doom," "Red Shadows," "Rattle of Bones," "The Castle of the Devil," "Death's Black Riders," "The Moon of Skulls," "The One Black Stain," "The Blue Flame of Vengeance," "The Hills of the Dead," "Hawk of Basti," "The Return of Sir Richard Grenville," "Wings in the Night," "The Footfalls Within," "The Children of Asshur," and "Solomon Kane's Homecoming."
©1998 Solomon Kane LLC (P)2010 Tantor
Men of Men
Summary
Following on from the events begun in A Falcon Flies, Men of Men continues Wilbur Smith's epic story of the Ballantynes. It is the age of empire, of blood and conquest, of boundless excitement and possibility. Striding in the footsteps of the pioneers is Zouga Ballantyne. His dream begins in the danger and drudgery of the diamond pits and ends up on the rich grasslands of Matabeleland - but not before a king and a proud warrior nation have paid the price of history.... Men of Men is followed by The Angels Weep and The Leopard Hunts in the Darkness.
©1981 Wilbur Smith (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
Boy Swallows Universe
Summary
An utterly wonderful debut novel of love, crime, magic, fate, and a boy’s coming of age, set in 1980s Australia and infused with the originality, charm, pathos, and heart of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The mind can take you anywhere you want to go. Eli Bell’s life is complicated. His father is lost, his mother is in jail, and his stepdad is a heroin dealer. The most steadfast adult in Eli’s life is Slim - a notorious felon and national record holder for successful prison escapes - who watches over Eli and August, his silent genius of an older brother. Exiled far from the rest of the world in Darra, a seedy suburb populated by Polish and Vietnamese refugees, this 12-year-old boy with an old soul and an adult mind is just trying to follow his heart, learn what it takes to be a good man, and train for a glamorous career in journalism. Life, however, insists on throwing obstacles in Eli’s path - most notably Tytus Broz, Brisbane’s legendary drug dealer. But the real trouble lies ahead. Eli is about to fall in love, face off against truly bad guys, and fight to save his mother from a certain doom - all before starting high school. A story of brotherhood, true love, family, and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe is the tale of an adolescent boy on the cusp of discovering the man he will be. Powerful and kinetic, Trent Dalton’s debut is sure to be one of the most heartbreaking, joyous, and exhilarating novels you will experience.
©2019 Trent Dalton (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers
Claimed by a Highlander
Summary
The Douglas Legacy The Douglas sisters, beauties all, are valuable pawns in their family's bitter struggle to control the Scottish Crown. But when their enemies strike, each Douglas lass will find she's been left to face them alone. Claimed by a Highlander Lady Sybil Douglas's fall from court favorite to royal enemy is swift after her brothers are charged with treason and flee Scotland. When a huge Highland warrior appears claiming they are bound by a marriage contract, she's desperate enough to ride off with him. She'll worry later about how to escape the wedding. The last thing Rory MacKenzie needs is a pampered Lowlander wife. He traveled to Edinburgh in the hope of dissolving the ill-begotten marriage contract. But now that the Douglas men have abandoned his would-be bride, he's honor-bound to protect her. Sybil and Rory fight scorching passion on their perilous journey to the MacKenzie castle, where murder and intrigue await. When everything is at risk, will they rely on each other and claim their unexpected love before it's too late?
©2016 Margaret Mallory (P)2016 Margaret Mallory
Gun Island
Summary
From the award-winning author of the best-selling epic Ibis trilogy comes a globetrotting, folkloric adventure novel about family and heritage. “With sweeping exuberant style and extraordinary linguistic facility, Ghosh takes us into a world where desperate refugees trickle through borders like water from melting ice, but where massing animals find no escapes. Old legends and ancient myths take on new meaning. The difficulties of characters in the Sundarbans begin to appear the world over as the climate becomes a forcing element. Our ordinary lives with air travel, cell phones, friends in distant places, smart-mouth teenagers, life insurance, money and investment concerns intersect with forest fire, flooding, storms. This important novel is an account of our current world, the one few writers have had the courage to face.” (Annie Proulx, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction) Bundook. Gun. A common word, but one which turns Deen Datta's world upside down. A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood, and about the world around him. Gun Island is a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
©2019 Amitav Ghosh (P)2019 Penguin Random House Canada
The Kommandant's Girl
Summary
In her luminous and groundbreaking debut, New York Times best-selling author Pam Jenoff shows the unimaginable sacrifices one woman must make in a time of war. Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days, Emma’s husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city’s decrepit Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob’s Catholic aunt Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile. Emma’s already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety - and her marriage vows - in order to help Jacob’s cause. As the atrocities of war intensify, Emma must make choices that will force her to risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves.
©2016 Pam Jenoff (P)2019 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
The Lieutenants
Summary
They were the young ones, the bright ones, the ones with the dreams. From the Nazi-prowled wastes of North Africa to the bloody corridors of Europe, they honorably answered the call. War - it was their duty, their job, their life. They marched off as boys and they came back - those who made it - as soldiers and professionals forged in the heat of battle....
©1986 W.E.B. Griffin (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Rage
Summary
Shasa closed his mouth slowly. The very foundations of his political beliefs and principles were shaken and the walls cracked through. They had led him up into a high place and shown him the prize that was his for the taking. The future of a country. The end of a family. Shasa Courtney, heir to the Courtney fortunes, dreams only of uniting his divided, beloved country. Against all his principles, he allows his half brother Manfred to persuade him to join South Africa's right-wing National Party, hoping to moderate from within their dangerous policies of apartheid. But Shasa's wife is working against everything he's working for while Manfred has deadly secrets he cannot afford to be revealed, either to his family or the public who are on the brink of war. In the terrible struggle for the future of South Africa, the Courtney family will be torn apart - and many will have to pay a terrible price.... A Courtney Series adventure - book 3 in the Burning Shore sequence.
©2018 Wilbur Smith (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
The Far Pavilions
Summary
When The Far Pavilions was first published 19 years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind." From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M. M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich, and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction. The Far Pavilions is itself a Himalayan achievement, a book we hate to see come to an end. it is a passionate, triumphant story that excites us, fills us with joy, move us to tears, satisfies us deeply, and helps us remember just what it is we want most from a novel.
©1978 M.M. Kaye (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Lord of Scoundrels
Summary
< i>They call him many names, but angelic isn't one of them. Sebastian Ballister, the notorious Marquess of Dain, is big, bad, and dangerous to know. No respectable woman would have anything to do with the "Bane and Blight of the Ballisters", and he wants nothing to do with respectable women. He's determined to continue doing what he does best - sin and sin again - and all's going swimmingly…until the day a shop door opens and she walks in. She's too intelligent to fall for the worst man in the world. Jessica Trent is a determined young woman, and she's going to drag her imbecile brother off the road to ruin, no matter what it takes. If saving him - and with him her family and future - means taking on the devil himself, she won't back down. The trouble is, the devil in question is so shockingly irresistible that the person who needs saving most is Jessica herself.
©1995 Loretta Chekani (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
The Winter Crown
Summary
Eleanor of Aquitaine A loving mother. A betrayed wife. A queen beyond compare. 1154 Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in Europe, is crowned queen of England beside her young husband Henry II. While Henry battles their enemies and lays his plans, Eleanor is an adept acting ruler and mother to their growing brood of children. But she yearns for more than this - if only Henry would listen. Instead, Henry pushes Eleanor to the sidelines, involving himself with a young mistress and denying Eleanor her rightful authority. As matters reach a crisis, Eleanor becomes caught up in a family rebellion. And even a queen must face the consequences of treason.... Award-winning author Elizabeth Chadwick continues the fascinating story of a queen fighting for her rightful place in a world of divided loyalties and passionate betrayals.
©2014 Elizabeth Chadwick (P)2014 Isis Publishing
![Cover art for Como agua para chocolate [Like Water for Chocolate]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514tiDnW6-L._SL500_.jpg)
Como agua para chocolate [Like Water for Chocolate]
Summary
Escucha el best seller que encandiló al mundo. Una novela que sabe a clásico. No siempre tenemos a mano los ingredientes de la felicidad. Tita lo había aprendido desde pequeña, cuando crecía en la cocina con Nacha y se le negaba toda posibilidad de vida propia desde su nacimiento. Pero lo que también es que los ingredientes no son lo más importante para cocinar un buen plato, sino todo el amor con que seas capaz de hacerlo. Pero Tita se dio cuenta de que sus platos no solo tenían el poder de deslumbrar por sus sabores y texturas. Su tristeza, su alegría, su deseo o su dolor a la hora de prepararlos se contagiaban irremediablemente a todo aquel que los probaba. A través de esta alegoría que vincula con maestría los sentimientos y los elementos culinarios, Laura Esquivel conquistó el parnaso de la literatura hace veinticinco años construyendo un relato que se asienta en la tradición del realismo mágico, se recrea en la cultura mexicana y que traspasa todo lo anterior para convertirse en una novela universal. Y así como un poeta juega con las palabras, así ella jugaba a su antojo con los ingredientes y con las cantidades, obteniendo resultados fenomenales. Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2008 Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S. A. U. (P)2015 Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S. A. U.
The Cat's Table
Summary
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the “cat’s table” - as far from the Captain’s Table as can be - with a ragtag group of “insignificant” adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator’s elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself “with a distant eye” for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat’s Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy’s adult years, it tells a spellbinding story - by turns poignant and electrifying - about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage. From the Hardcover edition.
©2011 Michael Ondaatje (P)2011 Random House Audio
The Boston Girl: A Novel
Summary
2016 Audie Award Finalist for Best Female Narrator From the New York Times best-selling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early 20th century. Addie Baum is "The Boston Girl", born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her 22-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today?" She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant’s previous novels best sellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman's complicated life in 20th-century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.
©2014 Anita Diamant. All rights reserved. (P)2014 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
People of the Book
Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated prayer book through centuries of war, destruction, theft, loss, and love. Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called "a tour de force"by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in 15th-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding - an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair - only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
©2008 Geraldine Brooks (P)2008 Penguin Audio
Josephine Baker's Last Dance
Summary
Discover the fascinating and singular life story of Josephine Baker - actress, singer, dancer, Civil Rights activist, member of the French Resistance during WWII, and a woman dedicated to erasing prejudice and creating a more equitable world - in Josephine Baker's Last Dance. In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine's early years in servitude and poverty in America to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses. From 1920s Paris to 1960s Washington to her final, triumphant performance, one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century comes to stunning life on the page. With intimate prose and comprehensive research, Sherry Jones brings this remarkable and compelling public figure into focus for the first time in a joyous celebration of a life lived in technicolor, a powerful woman who continues to inspire today.
©2018 Sherry Jones (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books