Her ​Dark Curiosity

Elizabeth Massie - King ​Takes Queen
Dissent ​rises in the kingdom of King Henry VIII of England. The king's ongoing dispute with the papacy over a desire for annulment is about to incite the Reformation, and his next step is to appoint a new archbishop in order to obtain his long-awaited marriage to Anne Boleyn. All crests that once bore the initials "H & K" are promptly replaced with an intertwining "H & A," the first of many significant changes to come. The birth of the new royal couple's first child, Princess Elizabeth, is followed by the death of Katherine of Aragon. New legislation decrees that any who dare commit an act against the king - or the kingdom's newfound beliefs - will face extreme consequences. With her husband growing increasingly impatient, it becomes apparent that the only crime Anne could commit against her king would be to deny him a male heir. As pressures rise in the kingdom, those who once found themselves in the king's good graces foresee a somber end to their reign. This rich novelization of season two of The Tudors follows the complicated relationship between Henry and Anne through to its historically significant and dramatic conclusion.

Laura Joh Rowland - The ​Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria
The ​scene is the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, where prostitution is legal and all kinds of entertainment are available for a price. Handsome young Lord Mitsuyoshi, heir to the shogun, lies stabbed to death in the bed of Lady Wisteria, one of Yoshiwara's most beautiful, popular courtesans. Lady Wisteria is the only apparent witness to the crime, but she has mysteriously disappeared. Detective Sano Ichiro, his wife Lady Reiko, and his chief retainer Hirata must solve the murder case before their enemies can destroy them.

Laura Joh Rowland - The ​Concubine's Tattoo
Samurai ​detective Sano Ichiro tackles his most challenging case yet when the shogun's favorite concubine, Lady Harume, dies of a poison tattoo on a very private part of her body. While Sano's worst enemy, the corrupt Chamberlain Yanagisawa, plots against him, Sano investigates Lady Harume's lovers, rivals, and troubled history in a quest to identify her killer before political tensions erupt in a bloody purge of potential culprits. An added complication is Sano's arranged marriage to Lady Reiko, who is not the traditional, obedient wife Sano expects, but an intelligent, headstrong, aspiring detective bent on helping him solve the mystery of The Concubine's Tattoo.

Juliet Grey - Days ​of Splendor, Days of Sorrow
A ​captivating novel of rich spectacle and royal scandal, Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow spans fifteen years in the fateful reign of Marie Antoinette, France’s most legendary and notorious queen. Paris, 1774. At the tender age of eighteen, Marie Antoinette ascends to the French throne alongside her husband, Louis XVI. But behind the extravagance of the young queen’s elaborate silk gowns and dizzyingly high coiffures, she harbors deeper fears for her future and that of the Bourbon dynasty. From the early growing pains of marriage to the joy of conceiving a child, from her passion for Swedish military attaché Axel von Fersen to the devastating Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Marie Antoinette tries to rise above the gossip and rivalries that encircle her. But as revolution blossoms in America, a much larger threat looms beyond the gilded gates of Versailles - one that could sweep away the French monarchy forever.

John Farman - The ​Very Bloody History of Britain
This ​is a potted history of life in Britain from the dawn of time to the years of World War II - with the aid of cartoons as an entertaining way to grasp the chronology of events.

Francine Rivers - Redeeming ​Love
“Redeeming ​Love” by Francine Rivers tells the story of Sarah, a girl born to a single mother as the result of an affair with a married man. From the start, Sarah’s father did not want her; she had even overheard him say that he wished she was aborted. Sarah’s mother fights poverty and finally resorts to prostitution to support herself and her girl. She dies when Sarah is only eight, and the girl ends up sold into prostitution by her mother’s boyfriend. Duke, Sarah’s new “owner,” does horrible things to her. No wonder that Sarah grows up hating men, herself, and the world. Prostitution being the only way to make a living Sarah knows, that’s what she does. Now eighteen, with her name changed to Angel, she works at a brothel in California. One day when Angel walks the streets, a Christian man named Michael Hosea sees her. Michael has been praying for a wife, and he suddenly feels that God is pointing out this woman to him and telling him to marry her. Michael is very serious about God and His commands, so he obeys. He goes to the brothel and pays the required price to be with Angel, but instead of having sex with her he tries to talk. Needless to say, when Angel hears that he wants to marry her, she thinks the man is crazy. Although she hates what she does, she cannot believe that anything good can happen to her and change her lifestyle. The concepts of love and marriage are absolutely foreign to Angel. Despite her refusal, Michael persists. One day, after Angel is severely beaten in the brothel, she agrees to marry Michael just to get away from the place. His love and kindness slowly begin to make their way into Angel’s shut-up heart, but she cannot just drop all her life-long defenses. When she realizes that she is developing feelings for Michael, she feels ashamed and unworthy of him, so she runs away and goes back to prostitution. Michael finds her and brings her back, more than once. As if Angel’s own feelings of guilt are not enough to deal with, there’s Paul, Michael’s brother-in-law who had used her “services” as a prostitute. He hates Angel and does all he can to drive her away. He succeeds one more time. When Angel is gone again, Michael decides not to chase her this time and see whether the unwavering love he had shown her will make her come back on her own.

Barbara Lazar - The ​Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai
In ​the rich, dazzling, brutal world of twelfth century Japan, one young girl begins her epic journey, from the warmth of family to the Village of Outcasts. Marked out by an auspicious omen, she is trained in the ancient warrior arts of the samurai. But it is through the power of storytelling that she learns to fight her fate, twisting her life onto a path even she could not have imagined..

J. Sydney Jones - Requiem ​in Vienna
Lawyer-turned-private ​investigator Karl Werthen is back in this sequel to the execellent mystery novel The Empty Mirror. It’s 1899 in Vienna, and the renowned composer Johann Strauss has just died. The country is mourning his loss when a soprano singer practicing at the Court Opera is killed by a falling fire curtain. Though her death is deemed an accident, Alma Schindler believes that it was murder, and that the target was famed composer Gustav Mahler. She seeks out Werthen in order to determine who was behind the attack and to protect Mahler.

Luther Blissett - Q
Set ​in Reformation Europe, _Q_ begins with Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg and traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters, an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects, the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer, as they travel across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional historical novel, Q is the stuff of which cults are made.

Jean M. Auel - The ​Land of Painted Caves
THE ​LAND OF PAINTED CAVES concludes the story of Ayla, her mate Jondalar, and their little daughter, Jonayla, taking readers on a journey of discovery and adventure as Ayla struggles to find a balance between her duties as a new mother and her training to become a Zelandoni -- one of the Ninth Cave community's spiritual leaders and healers. Once again, Jean Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived thousands of years ago, rendering the terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity and daily lives of Ice Age Europeans as real to the reader as today's news.

Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo ​Vadis? (angol)
IN ​the trilogy “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” and “Pan Michael,” Sienkiewicz has given pictures of a great and decisive epoch in modern history. The results of the struggle begun under Bogdan Hmelnitski have been felt for more than two centuries, and they are growing daily in importance. The Russia which rose out of that struggle has become a power not only of European but of world-wide significance, and, to all human seeming, she is yet in an early stage of her career. In “Quo Vadis” the author gives us pictures of opening scenes in the conflict of moral ideas with the Roman Empire,—a conflict from which Christianity issued as the leading force in history. The Slays are not so well known to Western Europe or to us as they are sure to be in the near future; hence the trilogy, with all its popularity and merit, is not appreciated yet as it will be. The conflict described in “Quo Vadis” is of supreme interest to a vast number of persons reading English; and this book will rouse, I think, more attention at first than anything written by Sienkiewicz hitherto.

Michelle Moran - Madame ​Tussaud (angol)
The ​world knows Madame Tussaud as a wax artist extraordinaire…but who was this woman and how did she become one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous story comes to life as only Michelle Moran could tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin… Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American Ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie’s museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, even politics. Her customers hail from every walk of life, and when word arrives that the royals themselves are coming to see their likenesses, Marie never dreams that the king’s sister will request her presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. Yet when a letter with a gold seal is delivered to her home, Marie knows she cannot refuse—even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles. As Marie becomes acquainted with her pupil, Princess Élisabeth, she is taken to meet both Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she’s ever seen, to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into to a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table. Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there’s whispered talk of revolution…Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more importantly, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows? Spanning five years from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom.

Michelle Moran - The ​Heretic Queen
n ​ancient Egypt, a forgotten princess must overcome her family’s past and remake history. The winds of change are blowing through Thebes. A devastating palace fire has killed the Eighteenth Dynasty’s royal family—all with the exception of Nefertari, the niece of the reviled former queen, Nefertiti. The girl’s deceased family has been branded as heretical, and no one in Egypt will speak their names. A relic of a previous reign, Nefertari is pushed aside, an unimportant princess left to run wild in the palace. But this changes when she is taken under the wing of the Pharaoh’s aunt, then brought to the Temple of Hathor, where she is educated in a manner befitting a future queen. Soon Nefertari catches the eye of the Crown Prince, and despite her family’s history, they fall in love and wish to marry. Yet all of Egypt opposes this union between the rising star of a new dynasty and the fading star of an old, heretical one. While political adversity sets the country on edge, Nefertari becomes the wife of Ramesses the Great. Destined to be the most powerful Pharaoh in Egypt, he is also the man who must confront the most famous exodus in history. Sweeping in scope and meticulous in detail, The Heretic Queen is a novel of passion and power, heartbreak and redemption.

Diane Haeger - The ​Secret Bride
Mary ​Tudor, the headstrong younger sister of the ruthless King Henry VII, has always been her brother's favorite-but now she is also an important political bargaining chip. When she is promised to the elderly, ailing King Louis of France, a heartbroken Mary accepts her fate, but not before extracting a promise from her brother: When the old king dies, her next marriage shall be solely of her choosing. For Mary has a forbidden passion, and is determined, through her own cunning, courage, and boldness, to forge her own destiny. The Secret Bride is the triumphant tale of one extraordinary woman who meant to stay true to her heart and live her life just as her royal brother did-by her own rules...

Diane Haeger - The ​Queen's Mistake
When ​the young and beautiful Catherine Howard becomes the fifth wife of the fifty-year-old King Henry VIII, she seems to be on top of the world. Yet her reign is destined to be brief and heartbreaking, as she is forced to do battle with enemies far more powerful and calculating than she could have ever anticipated in a court where one wrong move could mean her undoing. Wanting only love, Catherine is compelled to deny her heart's desire in favor of her family's ambition. But in so doing, she unwittingly gives those who sought to bring her down a most effective weapon - her own romantic past. The Queen's Mistake is the tragic tale of one passionate and idealistic woman who struggles to negotiate the intrigue of the court and the yearnings of her heart.

Michelle Moran - Nefertiti ​(angol)
The ​sweeping story of a powerful Egyptian family, Nefertiti: A Novel tells the tale of two sisters, the first of whom is destined to rule as one of history’s most fascinating queens. Beautiful Nefertiti and her sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised far from the court of their aunt, the Queen of Egypt. But when the Pharaoh of Egypt dies, their father’s power play makes Nefertiti wife to the new and impetuous king. It is hoped she will temper King Amunhotep’s desire to overturn Egypt’s religion, but the ambitious Nefertiti encourages Amunhotep’s outrageous plans instead, winning the adoration of the people while making powerful enemies at court. Younger yet more prudent, Mutnodjmet is her sister’s sole confidant, and only she knows to what lengths Nefertiti will go for a child to replace the son of Amunhotep’s first wife. As King Amunhotep’s commands become more extravagant, he and Nefertiti ostracize the army, clergy, and Egypt’s most powerful allies. Then, when Mutnodjmet begins a dangerous affair with a general, she sees how tenuous her situation is at her own sister’s court. An epic story that resurrects ancient Egypt in vivid detail.

Diane Haeger - The ​Ruby Ring
Rome, ​1520. The Eternal City is in mourning. Raphael Sanzio, beloved painter and national hero, has died suddenly at the height of his fame. His body lies in state at the splendid marble Pantheon. At the nearby convent of Sant’Apollonia, a young woman comes to the Mother Superior, seeking refuge. She is Margherita Luti, a baker’s daughter from a humble neighborhood on the Tiber, now an outcast from Roman society, persecuted by powerful enemies within the Vatican. Margherita was Raphael’s beloved and appeared as the Madonna in many of his paintings. Theirs was a love for the ages. But now that Raphael is gone, the convent is her only hope of finding an honest and peaceful life. The Mother Superior agrees to admit Margherita to their order. But first, she must give up the ruby ring she wears on her left hand, the ring she had worn in Raphael’s scandalous nude “engagement portrait.” The ring has a storied past, and it must be returned to the Church or Margherita will be cast out into the streets. Behind the quiet walls of the convent, Margherita makes her decision . . . and remembers her life with Raphael—and the love and torment—embodied in that one precious jewel. In The Ruby Ring, Diane Haeger brings to life a love affair so passionate that it remains undimmed by time. Set in the sumptuous world of the Italian Renaissance, it’s the story of the clergymen, artists, rakes, and noblemen who made Raphael and Margherita’s world the most dynamic and decadent era in European history.

Philippa Gregory - The ​Other Boleyn Girl
Mary ​Boleyn catches the eye of Henry VIII when she is a girl of just fourteen. But her joy is cut short when she discovers that she is a pawn in her family's plots. When the capricious king's interest warnes, Mary is ordered to pass on her knowledge of how to please him to her friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Anne soon becomes irresistible to Henry, and Mary must resign herself to being the other Boleyn girl. But beyond the court is a man who dares to challenge the power of her family to offer Mary a life of freedom and passion. If only she has the courage to break away - before the Boleyn enemies turn on the Boleyn girls... (Harper, 2011)

J. R. R. Tolkien - The ​Shaping of Middle-earth
THE ​HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH Poems and prose, maps and chronologies, detours and diversions along the road to Middle-earth . . . Christopher Tolkien has gathered archival materials that his late father, J. R. R. Tolkien, used to create the world and the history behind his classic stories. THE EVOLUTION OF A WORLD This fourth volume of The History of Middle-earth presents early versions of those first tales, from the creation myth to the fall of Morgoth. Writings include a chronology of the events in Beleriand, the first Silmarillion map, and the only known description of the physical nature of Middle-earth's universe. Detailed annotations highlight changes ranging from the spelling of Elvish names to pivotal emendations whose effects reach even to the war of the ring. The Shaping of Middle-earth presents a solid framework by which to trace the development of the early lore of Middle-earth. It is a truly indispensable reference work for those familiar with the history of that endlessly beloved land--and fascinating reading for those just entering that world.

Kazuki Sakuraba - Takeda Hinata - Gosick ​1.
The ​year is 1924, the place, Sauville, a small European country neatly tucked beside the Alps… Kazuya Kujo has been studying abroad at the prestigious Saint Marguerite Academy, where urban legends and horror stories are all the rage. Most Kazuya ignores–but the story of the Queen Berry, a mysterious ghost ship, really gets to him. Of course, his brainy friend Victorique is much more intrigued by true stories, and she uses her unrivaled logic to solve mysteries even the town’s famous detective can’t. Ironically, it’s Victorique’s inquisitive nature that leads the duo to board a ship that matches the Queen Berry’s description to a tee, a ship that might just hold the key to solving a sinister mystery… Kazuki Sakuraba’s modern twist on Holmes and Watson–pairing Victorique, a wizened young girl with doll-like looks and her eager-to-please sidekick Kazuya–make this international bestseller a must-read murder mystery.