Time period: 19th century

Something dark and twisted has taken root at the Bender Inn. At first the townspeople of Cherryvale welcome the rising medium Kate Bender and her family. Kate's messages from the Beyond give their tedious dreams hope and her mother's potions cure their little ills - for a price. No one knows abou...

Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man's guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus college fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to ac...

Georgian England had a large and distinctive Black community. Yet all of them, prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Their dramatic, often moving story is told in this book.

George Elliot was a self-made Victorian entrepreneur who became one of the biggest coal owners in the world. His aptitude in engineering led to him being deeply involved in the manufacture and laying of the first Trans-Atlantic cable. He became an MP and was created a Baronet by Queen Victoria. H...

The festive season is fast approaching, and Dr Crowe and his young apprentice Scuff are busy, as always, tending London's sick and wounded. This year, however, Crowe is increasingly distracted by memories of a former patient, Eliza Hollister, for whom he cared deeply. When Crowe sees Ellie being ...

Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But ...

To marry is madness. To escape is impossible. Noel O'Reilly returns with a gripping historical novel about a woman locked in a Victorian asylum against her will.

In early-nineteenth century Prussia, Hanne and her Lutheran family escape religious persecution by securing passage to the new colony of South Australia. Sharing the diabolical conditions of shipboard life is Hanne's friend, Thea. By journey's end, a bond has been forged that is so strong, nothin...

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate ...

During the mid-1800s rural England underwent its own revolution. This book looks at how things changed, using as a prime example the small Sussex town of Battle. Because of the importance of the urban industrial revolution little has been written about the enormous changes that also hit market to...

Isolated from society, Emily Bronte and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily th...

Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow,...

From glossy costume dramas to gripping reads, the glamorous world of Regency London's Bon Ton is synonymous with romance - a place where dashing heroes and independently minded heroines flirt, fight and side-step scandal, all while in pursuit of the perfect match. But who were the real women who ...

Haworth 1847 - Anne and Emily Bronte have had their books accepted for publication, while Charlotte's has been rejected everywhere, creating a strained atmosphere at the parsonage. At the same time, a shocking court case has recently concluded, acquitting a workhouse master of murdering his wife ...

Sheffield, 1867. It's the height of a long-running and violent campaign known as the Outrages, where murderous acts are carried out on behalf of a rogue union leader. Louisa Leigh, a former maid-of-all-work, is trapped into prostitution and desperate for money to escape. She befriends Ginny Hinch...

By the end of the Victorian era, the world had changed irrevocably. The speed of the technological development brought about between 1800 and 1900 was completely unprecedented in human history. And as the Victorians looked to the skies and beyond as the next frontier to be explored and conquered,...

Bristol, 1896. Used to scraping a living as the young assistant to an ageing con artist, Cecily Marsden's life is turned upside down when her master suddenly dies. Believing herself to blame, could young Cec somehow have powers she little understands? Meanwhile Eadie Carleton, a pioneering early ...

Hazel Sinnett is alone. She's half-convinced the events of the year before - the immortality, Beecham's vial - were a figment of her imagination. She doesn't even know if Jack is alive or dead. All she can really do is run her free clinic, helping people and maintaining Hawthornden Castle as it s...

'In Search of Mary Seacole' is a revealing biography that explores her remarkable achievements and unique status as an icon of the 19th century, but also corrects some of the myths that have grown around her life and career. Having been raised in Jamaica and worked in Panama, Mary Seacole came to...

In 1859, deep in the forests of Canada, an elderly woman sits behind bars. She came to Dunmore via the Underground Railroad to escape enslavement, but an American bounty hunter tracked her down. Now she's in jail for killing him, and the fragile peace of Dunmore, a town settled by people fleeing ...