Historical Fiction audiobooks

Elvis in the Morning

By: William F. Buckley
Narrated by: Lloyd James
Length: 9 hours 50 minutes
Abridged: No

Orson is a young boy whose mother works at the US Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a GI stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis’ tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star’s attention, and he comes...

1812

By: David Nevin
Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
Length: 20 hours 14 minutes
Abridged: No

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Dream West comes this vivid historical novel about the dawn of America and the personalities that shaped it.

Only three short decades after the revolution that created the young republic, a deeply divided America would be drawn into war once again. The war of 1812 would either make America a global...

Pasadena

By: David Ebershoff
Narrated by: Lorna Raver
Length: 20 hours 27 minutes
Abridged: No

This sweeping, richly imagined novel charts the rapid transformation of Southern California from frontier to suburb during the first half of the twentieth century. At the story's center is Linda Stamp, a fisher girl born in 1903 on a coastal farm in San Diego's North County, and the three men who upend her life and vie for her affection: her...

Turncoat

By: Aaron Elkins
Narrated by: Christopher Lane
Length: 10 hours 27 minutes
Abridged: No

Pete Simon's all-American life was everything he had ever wished for: a good home, a satisfying career, and a marriage still strong and loving after nearly twenty years. But in the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, everything was about to change. It begins with the appearance of a stranger at his door. The next day his wife...

Havana Heat

By: Darryl Brock
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Length: 9 hours 14 minutes
Abridged: No

Set in the golden age of baseball, Havana Heat transports readers to 1911 America, where real-life pitcher Luther "Dummy" Taylor is trying to work his arm back into fighting shape. Though deaf, Taylor helped lead John McGraw's New York Giants to the pennant, winning 115 games between 1900 and 1908. But an injury relegates him to the minors, and...

To Shield the Queen

By: Fiona Buckley
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes
Abridged: No

Rumor has linked Queen Elizabeth I to her master of horse, Robin Dudley. As gossip would have it, only his ailing wife, Amy, prevents marriage between Dudley and the queen. To quell the idle tongues at court, the queen dispatches Ursula Blanchard to tend to the sick woman's needs. But not even Ursula can prevent the "accident" that takes Amy's...

Tournament

By: Shelby Foote
Narrated by: Grover Gardner
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes
Abridged: No

This debut novel by Shelby Foote, a major Southern writer whose masterpiece is The Civil War: A Narrative, introduces Hugh Bart, a farmer confronting life’s problems in the postbellum South. Hugh’s story is told through a clever blend of rich language and flashbacks that bring to life Jordan County, Foote’s fictional Mississippi Delta community....

The Desert of Wheat

By: Zane Grey
Narrated by: Jim Gough
Length: 13 hours 49 minutes
Abridged: No

The Desert of Wheat is a thrilling and romantic tale of sabotage in the wheat fields of the Pacific Northwest during World War I.

Young farmer Kurt Dorn is torn between going to France to fight the Germans or staying in America to be with the woman he loves and to protect his wheat crop against saboteurs who question his loyalties. He struggles...

The Bridge of Sighs

By: Olen Steinhauer
Narrated by: Ned Schmidtke
Length: 9 hours 21 minutes
Abridged: No

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post–World War II Eastern European city. It’s August, 1948, three years after the Russians “liberated” this small nation from German occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital’s rubble-strewn streets, and the ideals of...

The Rich Are Different

By: Susan Howatch
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 28 hours 52 minutes
Abridged: No

Dinah Slade is a young Englishwoman of immense vitality, great sensual power, and fierce ambition. When the handsome and powerful Paul Van Zale commits the imprudence of falling in love with her, her life and desires become intertwined with the fate of his great American banking family. Among the new acquaintances she makes is Paul’s wife, with...

Dead Man’s Chest

By: Roger L. Johnson
Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
Length: 16 hours 9 minutes
Abridged: No

When US Navy Commander Roger Johnson happened upon a 1919 Parliamentary transcript dealing with the near sinking of a British man-of-war called the King James, he at first gave it only passing thought—until he came across the words to a sailors’ ballad entitled “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest,” and a description of events that matched in...

To Wear the White Cloak

By: Sharan Newman
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 11 hours 31 minutes
Abridged: No

After an absence of a year, Catherine LeVendeur and her husband Edgar are glad to return to Paris. When they enter the house, however, they are shocked by the discovery of the dead body of a Knight Templar. Although innocent, Catherine fears that she or her family will be incriminated. Her father Hubert has recently announced his Jewish roots...

The Difficult Saint

By: Sharan Newman
Narrated by: C. M. Hébert
Length: 11 hours 42 minutes
Abridged: No

This novel in Newman's series of medieval mysteries featuring Catherine LeVendeur takes place in the twelfth century amidst Europe's religious and political turbulence and intolerance. Catherine, wife of one-handed Edgar, daughter of a Jewish merchant, and mother of two small children, is a Christian convert. Agnes, her estranged sister, has...

King of the Jews

By: Leslie Epstein
Narrated by: Edward Lewis
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes
Abridged: No

This masterpiece of black humor has taken its place among the great classics of Holocaust literature. Set in Poland, it is the story of I.C. Trumpleman, the indiscreet director of an orphanage. When the Germans invade and the Jewish community is forced into a ghetto, Trumpleman is chosen as the head of a Judenrat, granted the power to decide who...

Saints and Villains

By: Denise Giardina
Narrated by: Susan O’Malley
Length: 20 hours 18 minutes
Abridged: No

In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let alone secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister, was the exception. A true hero, he risked and finally lost his life through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler.

In this...

The Dress Lodger

By: Sheri Holman
Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
Length: 12 hours 39 minutes
Abridged: No

In sinister industrial England, fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger," a prostitute who rents a beautiful blue dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. By day a potter's assistant, by night a courtesan of the streets, Gustine works to support her fragile only child, born with a remarkable anatomical defect.

Surgeon...

The Expendable Spy

By: Jack D. Hunter
Narrated by: Brian Emerson
Length: 8 hours 20 minutes
Abridged: No

Against the background of a deadly undercover war between the Gestapo and Soviet agents during the collapse of the Third Reich, The Expendable Spy is the hair-raising novel of an audacious American who discovers a secret so big and so appalling that his own intelligence office orders his execution.

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street

By: Trevanian
Narrated by: Leonardo Leoncavallo
Length: 15 hours 32 minutes
Abridged: No

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching coming-of-age novel set in 1930s America.

Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else... Read more »

Sharpe’s Rifles

By: Bernard Cornwell
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes
Abridged: No

When Sharpe rises from the ranks to take command, he finds himself with an unexpected ally in the war against Napoleon.

It’s 1809, and the powerful French juggernaut is sweeping across Spain. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe is newly in command of the demoralized, distrustful men of the Ninety-fifth Rifles. He must lead them to safety, and the only...

Waterloo

By: Bernard Cornwell
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 13 hours 17 minutes
Abridged: No

With the emperor Napoleon at its head, an enormous French army is marching toward Brussels. The British and their allies are also converging on Brussels in preparation for a grand society ball, and it is up to Richard Sharpe to convince the Prince of Orange, the inexperienced commander of Wellington’s Dutch troops, to act before it is too late....

Sharpe’s Siege

By: Bernard Cornwell
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
Length: 10 hours 44 minutes
Abridged: No

Trapped with his back to the sea, Major Richard Sharpe and a handful of men must stand against a battalion of French troops.

Winter, 1814 – The invasion of France is under way, and the British Navy has called upon the services of Major Richard Sharpe. Sharpe’s mission seemed simple: capture a small unguarded French coastal fort, cripple...

The Crazyladies of Pearl Street - Abridged

By: Trevanian
Narrated by: Tom Bosely
Length: 5 hours 40 minutes
Abridged: Yes

Legendary writer Trevanian brings readers his most personal novel yet: a funny, deeply felt, often touching coming-of-age novel set in 1930s America.

Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and his spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned—again—by his father, a charming con artist. With no money and nowhere else... Read more »

Hidden Places

By: Lynn Austin
Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
Length: 15 hours 1 minutes
Abridged: No

Hidden Places is a Christy Award winner for excellence in Christian fiction. Fragrant blossoms herald spring, but the orchard is also a place of secrets and heartache. After the death of her husband Frank, Eliza is left with three young children and mounting debts. When a gentle stranger enters her orchard, she experiences a peculiar sensation... Read more »

Alibi - Abridged

By: Joseph Kanon
Narrated by: Holter Graham
Length: 6 hours 12 minutes
Abridged: Yes

From the bestselling author of Los Alamos and The Good German comes Joseph Kanon's riveting tale of love, revenge and murder set in postwar Venice.

Winner of the Hammett Prize

It is 1946, and Adam Miller has come to Venice to visit his widowed mother and try to forget the horrors he has witnessed as a U.S. Army war crimes investigator in...