Historical Books

Miss Cassandra Belvedere and Miss Louise Sheffield were once debutantes vying for the same gentleman’s attentions. Bitter rivalry turned to passion—but at the end of the Season, Louise chose the earl instead of the girl.

Fifteen years later, Cass strides back into London Society to demand Louise’s help. After all, it’s the least she can do after destroying Cass’s life. Her family’s glove making business is in peril, and the elegant Louise, now the widowed Countess of Atwater, wields enough power to bring Cass’s gloves into fashion.

But Louise didn’t expect the attraction between them to burn stronger than ever, or that society would turn on her for associating with Cass. Bold, brash Cass has the real power—to unravel Louise’s strait-laced life and show her that their passion is worth fighting for.

Nothing could prepare them for the Season of a lifetime—or a second chance to fall in love.

Janeth Castro never expected to be the most prominent bootlegger in Southern California. After growing up in Central Mexico and falling into her role in the business, she’s torn between supporting her family values and living life on her own terms. The last thing she needs is a white woman protesting at her door.

Alice Covington is many things: a pickpocket, a drifter, and now a daughter of the Prohibition movement. Under her mother’s cruel eye, she follows the protests to a mysterious mansion by the sea. Determined to play by her parents’ rules—which include not falling in love with a woman—she is surprised to find the great house host to the most surprising, and attractive, rum smuggler in town.

Janeth and Alice are caught in storms that neither can seem to escape. Obligation, fear, and old guilt claw daily at their hearts, and their chance meeting leads to an unexpected romance that may be just what they need to find safe harbor.

Nancy and Sam have no intention of playing nice. Each aims to win the bid for the abandoned Narragansett Island Lighthouse, and compromise isn’t in the cards. It’s preservation versus profit, but the lighthouse’s dissatisfied governing board insists on better from both women.

Ironically, a battered old book at the lighthouse just might provide the key to success. Inspiring parallels are discovered in the dog-eared pages: the struggles, dreams—and love—between two Danish women braving WWII’s desperate days, guided by a valiant lighthouse they know well. 

The heroic tale could navigate Nancy and Sam to success, if they stop floundering long enough to see love coming to their rescue.

When the Duke of Stanmere’s will reveals a nasty secret, London Society is shocked—and so is his widow, Joan. Humiliated by the scandal, Joan flees to Inverley in disguise. Surely the quaint seaside town would be the last place anyone would look for a duchess on the run.

After her mother’s remarriage, fashionable spinster Miss Maeve Balfour must make a living with hands whose only labor has been arranging her hair into the latest style. With nowhere to turn and nothing to lose, she persuades mysterious newcomer Joan to let her stay in her manor house.

Although entranced by worldly and seductive Maeve, Joan doesn’t know if she can trust again. As Maeve learns Joan’s secrets, she yearns to protect her from the men who have sought to destroy her. But can a spinster and a widow dare to defy a dukedom—and win each other’s hearts?

Would you want to forget the only woman you’ve ever loved? Marlie Rose does.

Everyone thinks Broadway legend Marlie Rose has it all: a fabulous career spanning over five decades, all the major awards, and a lifetime in the spotlight. Only Marlie knows the heavy weight of her memories. When a new, experimental procedure promises to relieve trauma and heartbreak by erasing unwanted memories, Marlie signs up, desperate to let go of her tumultuous childhood, grief, and broken heart.

As Marlie recalls her memories and decides which ones to keep and which to erase, she unexpectedly reunites with Eleanor Olson, the woman she’s been in love with for forty-seven years. As her heartbreak fades and her heart races anew for Eleanor, Marlie discovers their love isn’t as dead as she thought it was, and she starts regretting the procedure.

Eleanor might be the only person who can help her restore her memories, but remembering might break her heart all over again.

In 1868, Caroline Bluebonnet Hutching is forced to leave her Texas home and make a new life in Nevada. But the townsmen are against her, and she can’t get the help she needs. Undaunted, she advertises for female workers, only to find that each woman who answers her ad is as desperate as she is. And she’s entirely unprepared for the one who steals her heart.

When raiders attack Isabel Segura’s horse ranch and slaughter her family, she’s left with nothing—no home, no future, no hope. When she sees Blue’s ad, a new dream sparks to life. Determined to begin again, she sets out on a journey she never could have imagined.

Heroism, loyalty, friendship, and love. The odds are against this unlikely group—but never underestimate women who have nothing to lose.

Miss Grace Linfield has resigned herself to life as a lady’s companion as the only path to respectable security. At least it allows her to visit the beautiful seaside town of Inverley with her charge, Lady Edith. Passions flare when botanist Miss Thea Martin whirls into town—and into Grace’s bed for a scandalous night of passion. 

Disaster looms when Lady Edith elopes with Thea’s brother. Prim-and-proper Grace and wildly outrageous Thea each wish it was anyone else by their side as they race after them to Gretna Green. In the midst of attempting to stop a wedding that will incur the wrath of both their families, they discover their passion for each other is too strong to resist.

A chance at a real relationship was the last thing either of them expected. When Grace and Thea return from Scotland, will the honeymoon be over? Or will love finally be in full bloom?

London, 1938. Evelyn has only one dream: to become a singer. Fleeing an arranged marriage, she leaves for Singapore in pursuit of a future brighter than the conventions of society could offer her.

Evelyn performs in a Chinatown cabaret to survive, where she meets Joan, a young Australian doctor and avid fan. Little by little, Evelyn and Joan form a close bond that leads to a love stronger than either has ever known.

But history has other plans. The Japanese army invades Singapore, and Evelyn must flee while Joan refuses to leave her patients. From prison camps to the deep jungle, through encounters and tragedies, Evelyn and Joan struggle to survive and to find each other again.

There is a time for courage, a time for sacrifice, a time for love.

In the fall of 1941, the United States Office of American Defense summons agent Polly Silvester to find an elusive spy. Critical information about aircraft designs, production numbers, and flight schedules vital to America’s safety are being stolen from the Portage Aircraft plant in Barberton, Ohio. And the spy is most likely a woman. Polly’s orders are simple. Find the spy—whatever the cost or sacrifice.

Polly has taken an oath to protect and serve her country, but the spy she’s hunting may be the love of her life. Desperate times and impossible choices skew the line between what’s right and what matters. Can Polly do what she must when everything is on the line?

Gathered for the first time in one collection, these short stories from Lee Lynch represent a quarter century of passionate portrayals of lesbian women. Lynch chronicles the lives of old women who fall in love, a Black firefighter seeking her place in the feminist community, bar dykes unwilling to back down, the denizens of lesbian-owned Café Femmes, and Henny—who runs an urban fruit stand while regaling her baby butch assistants with tales from her life. Iconic characters from Lynch's novels also make an appearance: Frenchy Tonneau from The Swashbuckler and Annie Heaphy from Toothpick House.

Lee Lynch’s work is considered among the classics and a cornerstone in the large and permanent foundation of lesbian literature.

In the quiet seaside town of Inverley, nothing exciting ever happens to gently bred spinsters like Miss Arabella Seton. Content with her watercolor paintings and her cats, she is confident that no one suspects her forbidden and unrequited passion for her best friend, Caroline. 

The eldest in a family of six children, Miss Caroline Reeve has the unenviable task of shepherding her siblings into adulthood with little coin and even less patience. The only benefit to being an eternal chaperone is that no one ever expects her to marry.

When the Reeve family inherits an unexpected fortune, Caroline must take her rightful place in high society. Fortune hunters abound, and it is up to Arabella to save her from their snares and convince her that love has been in front of her all along. 

Can the heiress and the spinster discover an unconventional love outside of the Marriage Mart?

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Harriet Browning has thrived as the heiress to a lumber fortune, living lavishly among New York’s elite. Her father’s death reveals unexpected financial woes, and Harriet is left to face a sudden, harsh reality.

Ava Clark threw herself into the war effort when her brothers enlisted. Suddenly, the war is over, and she’s without a cause and a job. An ad for a personal secretary from Harriet—the woman she loved more than a decade before—surprises Ava and proves impossible to resist. 

Harriet only wanted an assistant for a few months—someone to help sort out the mess her parents left. She never bargained for the woman who got away to show up at her front door.

Starred review from Publishers Weekly: "The romance burns tantalizingly slowly as Ledel takes the time to thoroughly explore the ways her well-shaded heroines both complement and clash with each other. This remarkable emotional maturity does not come at the expense of heat, however; when the love scenes come, they steam up the pages. It’s subtle, lovely, and stirring."

Anne, the Duchess of Hawthorne, is tired of her reputation as the Ice Queen of London society. She resolves to leave behind her cold-hearted marriage to the duke—and to find a woman to keep her warm at night. Perhaps the dashing designer she hires to transform her Mayfair estate can also help her to transform her life.

Letitia Barrow has big dreams of running her own interior design business. The opportunity to reinvent the Hawthorne estate is the job that will finally establish her as a leading designer among the ton. The duchess might make her weak in the knees, but giving in to temptation could risk everything she’s working so hard to build.

The designer and the duchess embark on an affair, with renovations to the house in full swing—and the renovations in their hearts well underway. Then, unexpectedly, the duke returns home and their feelings are tested. Can London’s hottest new designer melt the Ice Queen forever?

Hazel Thompson prides herself on being a beacon of earnest goodwill in Cedar Springs, Utah, where she works alongside her mother as a cook in a raucous restaurant and dance hall. But lately, Hazel wonders if she hasn’t clipped her own wings by always putting her family and neighbors first, leaving no time for her own wants.

Lida Jones, the daughter of roving Eastern European immigrants, treks West with her father in search of a better life on the rapidly developing American frontier. To help make money, Lida takes a job in the Pack Horse Library and gets to know the rowdy, tough residents of Cedar Springs. Getting close to anyone is a waste of time, though. She won’t be here long.

Hazel and Lida can’t help but get to know one another as Lida travels through on her route. When Lida’s father begins to struggle at work, Lida fears she’ll have to leave Cedar Springs—and Hazel—behind. But how can she when, finally, she’s found a place, and a person, to call home?

Maddie Weeks and Gerry Stern leave their homes when Uncle Sam calls for help winning the Second World War. Maddie is desperate to escape the economic and racial oppression of the Jim Crow South. Gerry doesn’t see a future for herself as a farmer’s wife in California’s Central Valley. When they meet by chance in a blues club in San Francisco, not even their differences can prevent them falling in love.

But love doesn’t solve every problem as Maddie and Gerry struggle to hold on to their identities and livelihoods as the war comes to an end and their independence is threatened. The war brought them together, but it could wind up destroying everything, including their future.

It’s 1874, and newly betrothed Ruth Mallowes arrives at Beulah Lodge, her austerely religious aunt Beatrice’s crumbling, isolated house in the North Yorkshire moors. Ruth plans to join her fiancé when he has established his mission in India, but what was supposed to be only a temporary stay will change her life forever.

Eliza Chambers has survived on the streets of Victorian London any way she can, and her future depends on her keeping her housemaid position at Beulah Lodge, even if it means enduring the cruelty of her mistress. Her growing attraction to Ruth, and the affection Ruth returns, could cost her everything.

When Ruth and Eliza’s chance at happiness is threatened by tragedy, Ruth is forced to confront the ultimate choice: her duty or her heart.