A luxury hotel in 1920s Berlin is a microcosm of modern society in this classic that inspired a hit Broadway musical and the classic film starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John Barrymore.“Prefigures Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs by examining multiple characters from different classes.” —Shelf AwarenessThe luxury Grand Hotel is a revolving door for the stray souls of 1920s Berlin. Among the guests ...

Set in the first decade of the 20th century, this moving book shares the tragic reality of the Dutch invasion of Bali and the mass suicides that ensued.In Love and Death in Bali, renowned author Vicki Baum skillfully intermeshes several different narratives that all culminate in the infamous puputan (the "ending"), the slaughter and mass suicides that brought the old Bali to an end in 1906. Written within living memory of these bloody events, the ...

''Grand Hotel'' by Vicki Baum was first published in the original German in 1929 and then in this very successful English translation by Basil Creighton, published in 1930, and now public domain. A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a microcosm of the modern world in Vicki Baum’s celebrated novel, a Weimar-era best seller that retains all its verve and luster today. Among the guests of the hotel is Doctor Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face has been sliced in ha...

The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers—and perhaps the father of one of her children—is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise.What was once rooted, local, and specif...

**Dance Moms meets Little Fires Everywhere in award winning author Tammy Greenwood’s addictive new novel set in the hyper cutthroat world of ballet girls and their mothers as they compete for a prestigious prize…"The Still Point is a must-read full of love, hope, desire and jealousy – a vivid, compelling and deeply nuanced look at a place where lives are forever shaped and changed.” –Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Just the ...

East Texas, 1972. Sixteen-year-old Leni O’Hare spends her free time drawing and galloping her mare across the chaparral. Horse crazy and rebellious, she fears her dream of becoming an artist will be thwarted by her strict mother, the small-town values of her community, and her family’s meager finances. A desperate bid to save her beloved mare from being sold brings her together with Caleb McGrath, the brainy and gentle scion of the county’s richest rancher, whose dream of becoming a physic...

Theodora: actress, prostitute, mistress, feminist. And Byzantine Empress of the sixth-century Roman world. Stephen: handsome Syrian boy, wizard's apprentice, palace eunuch. And Secretary to the Empress. How does this unlikely pair become such allies that one day Empress Theodora asks Stephen to write her biography?Fortune's Child is "a meticulously researched historical account presented in the form of a thrilling political drama."

**“Agatha Christie meets Downton Abbey…exemplary.” —*PUBLISHERS WEEKLYTo make ends meet, Lady Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, have decided to open up Foxwood Hall to guided public tours. Not everyone is pleased about it—even to the point of committing murder . . .***The lean times following the Great War continue to require creative solutions for England's noble class. But Lady Phoebe’s proposal to open up the Renshaw estate to guided tours for additional ...

From Kirsty Manning, author of The Song of the JadeLily, comes a gripping World War II set historical novel about murder,secrets, and survival.A forgotten manuscript that threatens to unravel thepast…Fresne Prison, 1940: A former maid at a luxury villaon the Riviera, Margot Bisset finds herself in a prison cell with writer andFrench Resistance fighter Joséphine Murant. Together, they are transferred to a

She was the only woman in Venice who knew the secret...and it made her a criminal.The Murano glassmakers of Venice are celebrated and revered. But now three of them are dead, killed for attempting to leave the city that both prizes their work and keeps them prisoners. For in the 17th century, the secret of their craft must, by law, never leave Venetian shores. Yet there is someone who keeps the secret while defying tradition. She is Sophia Fiolario, and she, too, is a glassmaker. H...

A forthright woman disrupts the social order of upper crust New England in this Pulitzer Prize–winning family saga.Tracing their lineage back to its colonial founders, the Pentland family of Durham, Massachusetts, is committed to preserving the "old ways." But time has its own way of moving restlessly forward. Patriarch John Pentland never understood why his niece Sabine married a man so beneath them. Now, after escaping to Europe twenty years ago, the black sheep ...

Greed in the Gilded Age is a Gatsby-esque tale of mystery, money, sex, and scandal.‘Millionaire’ had just entered the American lexicon and Cassie Chadwick was front page news, becoming a media sensation before mass media, even eclipsing President Roosevelt’s inauguration. Using these newspaper articles, Hazelgrove tells the story of one of the greatest cons in American history.Combining the sexuality and helplessness her gender implied, Chadwick conned at least 2 mil...