In 1703, a war party of French soldiers and Abenaki warriors raided the Puritan village of seven-year-old Esther Wheelwright, killing several men, women and children and taking twenty-two captives. That Esther managed to survive the 200-mile journey by foot through swamps and forests to a Jesuit mission in New France is astonishing. That she was adopted, quite happily, into a family of her Abenaki captors is equally amazing. But for the Wheelwright family, who waited years before receiving...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ARMY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021'A long overdue assertion on the role of women on the battlefield. This book is going straight on my daughter's bookshelf.' - Dan Snow, historian, TV presenter and broadcaster*'Sisters in Arms shows the many faces of women in combat – from the myths of the ancient world to the headline-grabbing conflicts of today – with a scrupulous attention to...

A history of female combatants, from those who joined the military disguised as men to the current role of women in the armed forces.In October 2018, defense secretary Gavin Williamson announced that all roles in the military would now be open to women. Although this marks a historic shift, officially allowing British women into combat roles, the presence of women on the front lines dates back to antiquity. Beginning with the founding myth of the Amazons—in reality...

2011 Retailers Choice Award winner!Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him—with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols fami...

The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for this extraordinary story.A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkab...

The O'Briens follows the family from The Law of Dreams two generations later: Joe O'Brien is coming of age in a new century in remote Pontiac County, Quebec, with his brothers and sisters by his side. Their father has abandoned the family and died in the South African war; their frail mother has remarried the abusive and lecherous Mick Heaney. Joe and his siblings escape the poverty and violence of the Pontiac, but as Joe travels the continent, building an empire and a bright young family ...

" An unforgettable story of love, survival and the power of imagination in the most tragic circumstances. Elegant and poetic." —Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author of ZorroThe ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories—the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild—yet her distant past is miraculous...

Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. She dreams with her best friend, Madeleine, of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman. But in 1669, Laure is sent across the Atlantic to New France with Madeleine as filles du roi. The girls know little of the place they are being sent to, except for stories of ferocious winters and Indians who eat the hearts of Fr...

Solitary, nostalgic Liz Crane returns to her family's now-deserted farmhouse to study the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly.A rich family history - all the anecdotes and blarney of successful Irish immigrants - is now tainted with sadness. Her cousin Amanda, a gifted military strategist, has been killed in Afghanistan, a loss foreshadowed by the earlier disappearance of her charismatic father.Reflecting on the fragility and transcience of human life and relations - ...

The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents wit...

This "ambitious, supernatural coming-of-age story" ( The LA Times) is a sweeping tale of ghosts in the modern world, and one woman's struggle to create her own destiny.There are ghosts on the Black Isle.Ghosts that no one can see.No one...except Cassandra.Uprooted from Shanghai with her father and twin brother, young Cassandra finds the Black Isle's bustling, immigrant-filled seaport, swampy jungle, and grand rubber plantations a sharp ...

A novel about what happens when we view our neighbours as “The Other” and the transformative power of unlikely friendships, Our Daily Bread is inspired by the true story of the Goler Clan of Nova Scotia.The Erskine Clan, long shunned by the people of Gideon, live in secrecy and isolation on North Mountain. For generations, the clan’s children have suffered unspeakable acts of abuse, incest and psychological torture. The intolerant, self-righteous Gideonites decline to inte...