Helen Plum Library

"Plucked from his small fishing village and captured by the conquistadors looking to plunder the gold of Peru, young Waman is the everyman thrown into extraordinary circumstances, caught up in history's throes. He finds himself at every major moment in the empire-building of the Spanish explorers, including Francisco Pizarro, and in the culture clash and violent overthrow of the Incan leaders. He becomes an indispensable translator between the two...

England, 1835. London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses--until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she's never set foot in a kitchen, she begins collecting recipes and teaching herself to cook. Much to her...

"In 1583, the nineteen-year-old Christopher Marlowe--with a reputation as a brawler, a womanizer, a genius, and a social upstart at Cambridge University--is visited by a man representing Marlowe's benefactors. There are rumors of a growing plot against her majesty Queen Elizabeth I, and the Queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, has charged young Marlowe with tracking down the truth. The path to that truth seems to run through an enigmatic prisoner...

"From the internationally bestselling author of Nefertiti and Cleopatra's Daughter comes the breathtaking story of Queen Lakshmi--India's Joan of Arc--who against all odds defied the mighty British invasion to defend her beloved kingdom. When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly...

Megs Devonshire is brilliant with numbers and equations, on a scholarship at Oxford, and dreams of solving the greatest mysteries of physics. the younger brother she loves with all her heart doesn't have long to live. When George becomes captivated by a brand-new book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and begs her to find out where Narnia came from, there's no way she can refuse. Megs soon finds herself taking tea with the Oxford don and...

They could have been allies: two self-made millionaires who invented a global industry, in an era when wife and mother were supposed to be the highest goals for their sex. Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein each founded empires built on grit and determination...and yet they became locked in a feud spanning three continents, two world wars, and the Great Depression. Brought up in poverty, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden changed popular opinion, persuading...

SAGAS. The brilliant retelling of the Wars of the Roses continues with "Margaret of Anjou," the second gripping novel in the new series from historical fiction master Conn Iggulden. As traitors advance . . . a queen defends. It is 1454 and for more than a year King Henry VI has remained all but exiled in Windsor Castle, struck down by his illness, his eyes vacant, his mind blank. His fiercely loyal wife and queen, Margaret of Anjou, safeguards her...

"This much is history: On Christmas Eve, 1800, an "infernal machine" exploded in one of the busiest streets in Paris, France, destroying buildings and killing innocent civilians. It wasn't the first attempt on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the newly minted Republic of France. This much is exclusive to our story: Upon the failure of the Christmas Eve plot, the conspiracy takes a new and more diabolical turn. Posterity knows what became...

"An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history-and the men who drove her to it. They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams-their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was...

"Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite...