Full AspenCat Catalog

Hetty "Handful" Grimké, an urban slave in early nineteenth- century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimké household. The Grimkés daughter Sarah has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. On Sarahs eleventh birthday in 1803, she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her handmaid....

My real name, no one remembers.The truth about that summer, no one else knows.In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing;...

"Moscow, February 1953. A week before Stalin's death, his final pogrom, "one that would forever rid the Motherland of the vermin," is in full swing. Three government goons arrive in the middle of the night to arrest Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater. But Levinson, though an old man, is a veteran of past wars, and his shocking response to the intruders sets in motion a series of events both zany and deadly...

"The setting: London, 1794. The problem: Four nouveau riche fathers with five marriageable daughters. The plan: The young women will learn to play the piano, give a concert for young Englishmen who have titles but no fortunes, and will marry very well indeed. The complications: The lascivious (and French) piano teacher; the piano maker's jealous (and musically gifted) daughter; the one of these marriageable daughters with a mating plan of her own....

"This hilarious Southern retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice tells the story of two hard-headed Civil war historians who find that first impressions can be deceiving. Shelby Roswell, a Civil War historian and professor, is on the fast track to tenure--that is, until her new book is roasted by the famous historian Ransom Fielding in a national review. With her career stalled by a man she's never met, Shelby struggles to maintain her composure...

"Elegant, secretive Sabina may be Empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister Emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly secret: Vix's beautiful son Antinous has become the Emperor's latest obsession. Empress and Emperor, father and son will spin in a deadly dance of passion, betrayal,...

Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, the tenth child of Victorian England's most famous writer, Charles Dickens, is a bit of a disappointment to his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenage boy is sent to Australia in the hopes he can make something of his life. Or at least fail while out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, Aboriginals, and very...

"Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago--and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with P.O. box addresses in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for...

Washington Post correspondent Kathy Reilly taps her friend, former marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, to find information on a Mili Petrova, a World War II female sniper in Stalin's Army. As they travel to Russia and the Carpathian Mountains, in the belief that Mili's disappearance was no accident, someone is determined to stop them at any cost.

"A vicious attack at a ranch in California thrusts archaeologist Erin Granger back into the fold of the Sanguines, an immortal order founded on the blood of Christ and tasked with protecting the world from the beasts haunting its shadows and waiting to break free into the sunlight. Following the prophetic words found in the Blood Gospel--a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries--Erin must again join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and...