Theodosia remains a haunting figure in American history, still imperious, still lovely, never vanquished. Anya seton’s portraits of Aaron and Theodosia Burr alike are vivid and credible. But his arrogance forces her to choose between the man he insists she marry and her love for a young soldier who will turn out to play a decisive role in her father’s fate.
The narrative is well sustained, and provides as background an entertaining account of the manners, the ways of living and traveling and entertaining followed during the early years of the nineteenth century. New york timesanya seton’s best-selling first novel, originally published in 1941, captures all the drama of the short life of Theodosia Burr 1783–1813.
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The Hearth and Eagle: A Novel
Inspired by research into her own family history, novelist Anya Seton created this compelling tale of New England, set in a “sea-girdled town of rocks and winding lanes and clustered old houses. It is not only the story of marblehead dating back to its earliest settlement, full of triumph and tragedy, and of a family who stayed there in the Hearth and Eagle Inn; it is also the story of Hesper Honeywood, a passionate young woman whose long and dramatic life, was interwoven with the history of both.
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The Winthrop Woman
Really good fictionalized history like this often gives closer reality to a period than do factual records. Chicago tribune in 1631 elizabeth Winthrop, newly widowed with an infant daughter, set sail for the New World. A rich and panoramic narrative full of gusto, sentimentality and compassion. The winthrop woman is that rare literary accomplishment — living history.
And so, as a response to this almost unmatched courage and vitality, Governor John Winthrop came to refer to this woman in the historical records of the time as his “unregenerate niece. Anya seton’s riveting historical novel portrays the fortitude, and ultimate triumph of the Winthrop woman, humiliation, who believed in a concept of happiness transcending that of her own day.
It is bound to give much enjoyment and a good many thrills. Times literary Supplement “Abundant and juicy entertainment. New york Times.
Green Darkness
The theme of this book is reincarnation, good and evil, an attempt to show the interplay—the law of cause and effect, among certain individual souls in two periods of English history. Green darkness is the story of a great love, suspense, in which mysticism, and mystery form a web of good and evil forces that stretches from Tudor England to the England of the twentieth century.
The marriage of the englishman richard Marsdon and his young American wife Celia slowly turns tragic as Richard withdraws into himself and Celia suffers a debilitating emotional breakdown. A wise mystic realizes that Celia can escape her past only by reliving it.
The Turquoise: A Novel
The life of santa Fe Cameron lingers long in memory. Springfield Republican. In 1850, as her mother lay dying and a priest stood by, Santa Fe Cameron was named by her Scottish father after the town in which she had just been born. At seven years old, she would also lose her father. Shortly thereafter, a navajo shaman recognized psychic power in the orphan girl, and gave her a turquoise pendant as a keepsake.
Seton, at her best, has a gaudy vitality all her own, and a sure sense of theatre. For “fey, ” life is made up of violent contrasts: the rough wagon that brings her East and the scented carriages waiting before her own Fifth Avenue mansion; the glittering world of the Astors and a dreary cell in the Tombs.
This turquoise, the indian symbol of the spirit, will dominate her life—even after she leaves the simple beauty of her native New Mexico to search for happiness in the glamorous New York of the 1870s. This reader for one enjoyed The Turquoise enormously. The new york times “with accurate historical background, Anya Seton has constructed a touchingly tragic story of a girl who tried so hard to find happiness that she lost everything in her search.
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Devil Water
New york Herald Tribune. This fiercely beautiful novel tells the true story of Charles Radcliffe, and of Jenny, a Catholic nobleman who joined the short-lived Jacobite rebellion of 1715, his daughter by a secret marriage. Set in the northumbrian wilds, passion, and colonial virginia—where jenny eventually settled on the estate of the famous William Byrd of Westover—Jenny’s story reveals one young woman’s loyalty, teeming London, and courage as she struggles in a life divided between the Old World and the New.
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Foxfire
Amanda lawrence, a charming, sheltered new York socialite, falls in love with Jonathan Dartland, a part-Apache mining engineer who belongs to the vastness of the Arizona desert. Amanda responds to his strength and self-reliance, but has nothing and nobody to guide her when she follows him to the grim town of Lodestone.
Not many authors succeed so well as Mrs.
Dragonwyck: A Novel
There was, on the hudson, a way of life such as this, and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck . . . She immediately falls under the spell of both the master and his mansion, flowering gardens, mesmerized by the Gothic towers, and luxurious lifestyle—but unaware of the dark, terrible secrets that await.
Eighteen-year-old miranda, bored with her local suitors and commonplace life on the farm, leaps at the chance for an escape. A novel of seduction, mystery, and danger set in New York’s Hudson Valley in the nineteenth century, by the author of Foxfire.
Katherine
Set in the vibrant fourteenth century of chaucer and the black death, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, serfs struggling in poverty, the story features knights fighting in battle, and Richard II—who rule despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, the king’s son, John of Gaunt, falls passionately in love with the already-married Katherine.
Anya seton's vivid rendering of the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster makes Katherine an unmistakable classic.
Avalon: A Novel
From the beloved bestselling author of katherine and Dragonwyck, this is a romantic tale of history and adventure “characterized by an authentic sense of time” The New York Times Book Review. Chance—or fate—in the form of a shipwreck off the Cornish coast brought Rumon and Merewyn together, and from that hour their lives were intertwined.
. He considers his responsibility ended. He had visions of the islands of the blessed, “where falls not hail, or rain, perhaps King Arthur’s Avalon, or any snow. Merewyn grew up in savage cornwall—a lonely girl, sustained by stubborn courage and belief in her descent from great King Arthur. The last quarter of the tenth century was a time of conflict and exploration—while the Anglo-Saxons fought against the Vikings, Norsemen voyaged into the unknown looking for new lands to pillage, and so discovered America.
Bound by his vow to her dying mother, Rumon brings Merewyn safely to England, keeping hidden the shameful secret of her birth. A novel of england during the viking era, from an author who “has vividly and colorfully portrayed life during the tumultuous Dark Ages” Historical Novels Review.
The Versions of Us
Jessie burton, author of The Muse and The Miniaturist . As the strands of their lives weave together and apart across the decades from college through wildly different successes and disappointments, births and funerals, seductions and betrayals, joys and sorrows, the only constant is the power of their connection.
Jim taylor hurries to help her. An utterly convincing love story about two people destined to be together somehow, no matter what. Times “one Day meets Sliding Doors. Ellea dazzling novel about the ways the smallest decisions give shape to our lives, The Versions of Us charts a relationship through three possible futures.
. Late for class, eva Edelstein swerves to miss a dog and crashes her bike. Theversions of Us is a tour de force of storytelling.