18 books like The master of Ballantrae
Envy
Living on a remote island under an assumed name, novelist Parker Evans guards his secrets well. Fascinated by this reclusive genius, publisher Maris Matherly-Reed decides to pursue him. But this new project threatens an old commitment, a commitment at the very center of her life. Envy has all the ingredients of a Sandra Brown beach read bestseller
Shares: Revenge -- Fiction, Revenge
The raiders, being some passages in the life of John Faa, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt
Crockett’s ‘breakthrough’ and most famous novel, first published in 1894, this is part of a loose trilogy of smugglers and gypsies stories featuring the Herons, the Maxwells and the Faas. Stevensonesque in style, it is unique in its descriptions of Galloway’s coast and hills and still thrills a modern audience.
‘'The Raiders ' vibrates with sufficient dramatic action for a dozen ordinary…
Shares: Scotland, Adventure, History
The Bride of Lammermoor
This new edition of The Bride of Lammermoor restores the action to 1703, before the Union of Scotland and England in 1707 rather than after it, which is where Scott's revisions of 1830 placed it. At last the sense of instability and of impermanence which permeates the novel makes sense, for what was to come in the impending revolution.
Love is doomed in this the most famous of Scott's plots.…
Shares: Scotland, Revenge, British and irish fiction, Historical Fiction
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of A Justified Sinner (With A Detail of Curious Traditionary Facts, And Other Evidence, By The Editor)
"This now-famous book was given a hostile reception when it first appeared in 1824. It was not reprinted until the late 1830s, when a heavily bowdlerised version was included in a posthumous edition of Hogg's collected Tales and Sketches published by Blackie & Son of Glasgow. Thereafter Confessions of a Justified Sinner attracted little interest until the 1890s, when the unbowdlerised text was…
Shares: Scotland, Brothers, Psychological fiction, History
Rob Roy
A historical novel first published in 1817, this was one of the first popular novels to attempt the use of regional dialect, in this case both Scottish highland and lowland dialects with a glossary of Scottish words. The story is set immediately before the Jacobite Rising of 1715 and follows the narrator, an English merchant, to Scotland in pursuit of a debt. Here he encounters Rob Roy MacGregor,…
Shares: Scotland, British and irish fiction, Historical Fiction, History
Kidnapped
KIDNAPPED is an adventure story that has become the model for any thriller of escape and suspense.
Set in 1751, the flight of David Balfour and Alan Breck across the Highlands of Scotland is based on real events. Though he wrote the book to make money, while living as an invalid in Bournemouth. Stevenson was proud of it; he inscribed a presentation copy with the couplet. Here is the one sound…
Shares: Scotland, British and irish fiction, Historical Fiction, Adventure
David Balfour
From the book:It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the British Linen Company’s office, must expect his late re-appearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles. Yet, when I remember the days of our explo-rations, I am not without hope. There should be left in our native city some…
Shares: Scotland, British and irish fiction, Historical Fiction, Adventure
The Last Juror
In 1970, one of Mississippi s more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23-year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details,…
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Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since ...
"Edward Waverley is a young, cultured man whose sensibilities lead to his involvement in the Jacobite Rising of 1745. In his journey into Scotland, down to Derby, and back up again he explores the cultural and political geography of Great Britain." "Waverley; or, 'tis Sixty Years Since was Scott's first novel, but like its final chapter, 'A Postscript, which should have been a Preface', it…
Shares: Scotland, British and irish fiction, Historical Fiction, History
Basil
Basil is the second novel written in 1852 by the British author Wilkie Collins, after Antonina.
Shares: Inheritance and succession, Revenge, British and irish fiction
Ante la bandera (Face au drapeau)
In another science-based entry in his Voyages Extraordinaires series, Verne takes us on the journey of Simon Hart, an engineer who poses as a medical attendant to the scientist Thomas Roch. Roch’s invention of a world-conquering weapon has driven him insane. As the paranoid doctor rests in a sanatorium, the vicious pirate Ker Karraje kidnaps both Roch and Hart. Karraje takes them to a secret…
Shares: Revenge -- Fiction, Revenge
Mr. Scarborough's Family
It will be necessary, for the purpose of my story, that I shall go back more than once from the point at which it begins, so that I may explain with the least amount of awkwardness the things as they occurred, which led up to the incidents that I am about to tell; and I may as well say that these first four chapters of the book - though they may be thought to be the most interesting of them all…
Shares: Inheritance and succession, British and irish 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…
Shares: Historical Fiction, History
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
Master of Dragons
Das Parlament der Drachen ist uneins. Die Zwistigkeiten drohen die Weltordnung zum Einsturz zu bringen. In einer verborgenen Burg züchten abtrünnige Drachen eine neue Rasse, welche die Menschheit unterwerfen soll. Doch die Hoffnung für die Menschen liegt in der Stadt Seth mit dem Orden der Priesterinnen. Und bei den Zwillingen der Hohepriesterin Melisande: der eine ist ein menschliches Wesen,…
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Orley Farm
When Joseph Mason of Groby Park, Yorkshire, died, he left his estate to his family. A codicil to his will, however, left Orley Farm (near London) to his much younger second wife and infant son. The will and the codicil were in her handwriting, and there were three witnesses, one of whom was no longer alive. A bitterly fought court case confirmed the codicil.
Twenty years pass. Lady Mason lives…
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Coniston
This book is about a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six presidents had closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras. Certain gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer determination to get on top, arose,—and got on…
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Sons
"Wang Lung lay dying." Thus the action of SONS begins immediately after that of the last chapter of THE GOOD EARTH.
This new novel carries on the saga of the house of Wang, of Pear Blossom and the aging Lotus, of the three sons of Wang Lung, their wives and their children. The chief character is the youngest son, Wang The Tiger, leader of men, who through raids and sieges and pitched battles…
Shares: Inheritance and succession, Brothers, History