The Wet Nurse's Tale

Mrs. Engels

Gavin McCrea · 366 pages

A tale inspired by the enigmatic Irish lover of Communist Manifesto co-author Frederick Engels traces the experiences of an impoverished factory employee who navigates complex landscapes of Victorian society.

Marie, Dancing

Carolyn Meyer · 257 pages

Marie van Goethem, a fourteen-year-old ballet dancer in the famed Paris Opéra, has led a life of hardship and poverty. For her, dancing is the only joy to counter the pain inflicted by hunger, her mother's drinking, and her selfish older sister. But when famed artist Edgar Degas demands Marie's presence in his studio, it appears that her life will be transformed: He will pay her to pose for a new

Sapphire Battersea

Jacqueline Wilson · 368 pages

Hetty is now with her dear mother Ida... but Ida has fallen dangerously ill. While caring for her mother, she also struggles to find her own father, Robert, who has her striking red hair as well. Along the way she meets some one from her child hood... Someone called Jem. But after many years have passed, will she still love Jem as much as she did?

The Journal of Dora Damage

Belinda Starling · 464 pages

London 1859. By the time Dora Damage discovers that there is something wrong with her husband, Peter, it's too late. His arthritic hands are crippled, putting his book-binding business into huge debt and his family in danger of entering the poorhouse. Summoning her courage, Dora proves that she is more than just a housewife and mother. Taking to the streets, she resolves to rescue her family at an

Mary Reilly

Valerie Martin · 240 pages

This retelling of the enigmatic Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde tale deserves praise for suspense, character creation, and historical verisimilitude. Mary Reilly, a loyal, trusted servant in the household of Dr. Jekyll records in her diary the mysterious circumstances which lead to her Master's tragic fate. The hierarchy of social classes, relationships among servants and domestics, and details of language an

The Colour of Milk

Nell Leyshon · 173 pages

"The year is eighteen-hundred-and-thirty-one when fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father's farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer she is sent to work for the local vicar's invalid wife, where the reasons why she must record the truth of what happ

Agnes Grey

Anne Bronte · 184 pages

In her Introduction to an edition of "Agnes Grey," Barbara A. Suess writes "Bronte provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting." Anne Bronte relies on her own personal involvement in her duties as a home teacher to bring Agnes Grey to life. Agnes, a rector's daughter, must take employment as a governess to

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte · 474 pages

The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her ti

Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel

Deborah Hopkinson · 249 pages

Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854. Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water and not poisonous air when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.

Katie Mulholland

Catherine Cookson · 496 pages

Afterimage

Helen Humphreys · 243 pages

"When Annie Phelan arrives at the Dashell farm to begin work as a maid, she finds her new mistress strapping turkey wings on a naked boy who is to play the Angel of Death. Annie knows one thing for sure - she's not at the prim Mrs. Gilbey's anymore.". "England in 1865 is aswirl with change. This is the age of invention, the Crystal Palace, progress, and the colonies. At the farm, the master, Eldo

David Copperfield I

Charles Dickens

In the Shadow of the Lamp

Susanne Dunlap

Sixteen-year-old Molly Fraser works as a nurse with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War to earn a salary to help her family survive in nineteenth-century England.

Demelza

Winston Graham · 304 pages

The Virgin Cure

Ami McKay · 360 pages

A Woman of Substance

Barbara Taylor Bradford · 843 pages

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest most powerful women in the world. Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool. In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate. Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to s

Surrender to the Devil

Lorraine Heath · 377 pages

"Frannie Darling was once a child of London's roughest streets, surrounded by petty thieves, pickpockets, and worse. But though she survived this harsh upbringing to become a woman of incomparable beauty, Frannie wants nothing to do with the men who lust for her, the rogues who frequent the gaming hall where she works. She can take care of herself and feels perfectly safe on her own --safe, that i

Secrets of Sloane House

Shelley Gray · 336 pages

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood · 545 pages

In 'Alias, Grace, ' bestselling author Margaret Atwood has written her most captivating, disturbing, and ultimately satisfying work since 'The Handmaid's Tale.' She takes us back in time and into the life of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Mo

Her Every Wish

Courtney Milan

The Poisoned House

Michael Ford

Abigail is a maidservant in Greave Hall, an elegant London household governed by the tyrannical housekeeper, Mrs Cotton. Whilst the widowed master slips slowly into madness, Mrs Cotton gradually usurps the position of gentlewoman of the house. She wears his dead wife's jewellery and clothes, entertains guests as though the house is her own and reserves her most despotic treatment for Abi. In the d

Longing

Mary Balogh · 398 pages

The illegitimate daughter of an English lord, Siân Jones abandoned her heritage to live in a stalwart coal mining community in South Wales. Empowered by their cause, she's engaged to be married to the leader of a revolutionary movement that is bracing itself against the tyranny of English mine owners. But Siân's principles are unexpectedly shaken when she accepts a job as governess under Alexander

Fallen Grace

Mary Hooper