18 books like A Column of Fire
The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth is a historical novel by Welsh author Ken Follett published in 1989 about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England. Set in the 12th century, the novel covers the time between the sinking of the White Ship and the murder of Thomas Becket, but focuses primarily on the Anarchy. The book traces the development of Gothic architecture out of the…
Shares: Historical Fiction, History
The Dragon and the George
Jim Eckert was a dragon. He hadn't planned it that way, but that's what happened when he set out to rescue his betrothed. Following her through an erratic astral-projection machine, Jim suddenly found himself in a cockeyed world - locked in the body of a talking dragon named Gorbash.
That wouldn't have been so bad if his beloved Angie were also a dragon. But in this magical land, that was not the…
Shares: Middle Ages, Social life and customs
The Power and the Glory
One of Greene’s most powerful novels, the book takes as its theme the era of religious suppression in Mexico during the early 1930’s. An unnamed Catholic priest, an alcoholic with a shameful past in search of either oblivion or redemption, travels through Mexico administering the rites of the church to the poor landless peasants, hunted by a remorseless police officer and always in fear of being…
Shares: Catholics, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, History
Tod und Teufel
In the year 1260, under the supervision of the architect Gerhard Morart, the most ambitious ecclesiastical building in all of Christendom is rising above the merchant city of Cologne: the great cathedral. Far below the soaring spires and flying buttresses, a bitter struggle is underway between the archbishop of Cologne and the ruling merchant families to control the enormous wealth of this…
Shares: Cathedrals, Historical Fiction
Pan Michael An historical novel
The third and final book of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy takes a closer and more intimate look at one of the series’ protagonists: Pan Michael Volodyovski. The Polish Commonwealth has been through intense periods of war, and the peace that follows leaves one of its greatest heroes, Pan Michael, finally free to marry his beloved Panna Anusia. But in a twist of fate, she falls ill and dies, leaving…
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St. George and St. Michael
It was the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers…
Shares: Historical Fiction, History
The daylight gate
Alice Nutter fights for justice when a group of Pendle women are accused of witchcraft during the reign of England's James I, when being Catholic is considered an act of treason and the Latin High Mass is comparable to the satanic Black Mass.
Shares: Catholics, History
Retrato en sepia
Una obra de extraordinaria dimension humana que eleva la narrativa de la autora a cotas de perfeccion literariaNarrada en la voz de una joven mujer, esta es una magnifica novela historica, situada a finales del siglo XIX en Chile, y una portentosa saga familiar en la que reencontramos algunos personajes de Hija de la fortun a y de La casa de los espiritus, novelas cumbre en la obra de Isabel…
Shares: Historia, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, History
Decamerone
Decameron, collection of tales by Giovanni Boccaccio, probably composed between 1349 and 1353. The work is regarded as a masterpiece of classical Italian prose. While romantic in tone and form, it breaks from medieval sensibility in its insistence on the human ability to overcome, even exploit, fortune.
The Decameron comprises a group of stories united by a frame story. As the frame narrative…
Shares: Middle Ages, Historia, History
The Rape of the Lock
A satiric poem about Belinda and the evil Baron who wants to steal a lock of her hair, it is a commentary on the battle of the sexes and the contemporary social world of high society.
Shares: Catholics, Social life and customs
Barnaby Rudge
Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and Protestants clash with Catholics on the streets. And, as London erupts…
Shares: Cathedrals, History
The mystery of Edwin Drood
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final, uncompleted novel by Charles Dickens. John Jasper is a choirmaster who is in love with one of his pupils, Rosa Bud. She is the fiancee of his nephew, Edwin Drood. A hot-tempered man from Ceylon also becomes interested in her and he and Drood take an instant dislike to one another. Later, Drood disappears, and as Dickens never finished the novel, Drood's…
Shares: Cathedrals, Social life and customs
The summer of the Danes
In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England--almost a peace. For several months there has been little actual fighting between the forces of King Stephen and those of Empress Maud, the two royal cousins contending for the throne.
On the whole, Brother Cadfael considers it a blessing to live in these peaceful times. Still, a little excitement--and some time spent outside the…
Shares: Catholics, History
History of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt
Abraham Lincoln raved that this series of historical biographies gave him "just that knowledge of past men and events which I need. I have read them with the greatest interest. To them I am indebted for about all the historical knowledge I have."
Shares: Queens, History
The Buried Giant
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.
Shares: Ficcion, History
Vittorio the Vampire
Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures - a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power.
In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the vampire Ursula, the most beautiful of his supernatural enemies. As he sets out…
Shares: Historia, Historical Fiction, History
Memoirs of a Geisha
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a…
Shares: Historia, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, History
Fall of Giants
It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian…
Shares: Historia, Social life and customs, Historical Fiction, History