Raj-Indian Romance (historical romance)
Discover the best historical Raj-Indian romance books, from *The Far Pavilions* and *Shadow of the Moon* to *Zemindar*. Explore epic love stories set against the British Raj, featuring curated fiction by Valerie Fitzgerald, M.M. Kaye, and more.
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Shadow of the Moon
by Mary Margaret Kaye
Shortly before the great Indian mutiny, young Winter de Ballesteros leaves England for India to marry Conway Barton, the Commissioner of Lunjore, whom she has not seen since childhood. Her escort is Barton's aide, Captain Alex Randall. The long tumultuous journey brings them through Calcutta to Delhi and finally to Lunjore in 1856-- on the eve of the Mutiny itself.
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The River Turned Red
by Nirmala Moorthy
India- 1857: The East India Company's disregard for the religious and social taboos of the Hindu and Muslim soldiers, who form the bulk of the British army in India, makes mutiny inevitable. One British outpost after another goes up in flames along the Ganges. The common man -- driven to desperate measures by poverty and generations of inherited debt -- is trapped between native kingdoms where convicted felons are trampled to death by elephants and British protectorates where they are blown to bits by cannons. Helpless flotsam caught in the backlash are the victims: the soldier Daulat Ram who carries his British Captain's five-year-old daughter to safety; Kamal, his brother, who struggles to support his extended family and protect them from the terror that stalks the village, while Lila, heir to the impoverished kingdom of Paramgar, forced into a politically expedient marriage with a stranger in spite of her hopeless entanglement with a British officer, is hounded from one end of the country to the other in,a bid to escape her almost certain annihilation.
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Love Besieged
by Charles E. Pearce
A Heady Mix Of Adventure And Romance Set Within The Walls Of The Besieged City Of Lucknow In 1857, This New Edition Of Charles E. Pearce`S Love Besieged (1909) Typifies The Genre Of The Mutiny Novel.
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A Singular Hostage
by Thalassa Ali
In a land of exotic splendor, a young Englishwoman finds herself guardian of an orphan child believed by a dying maharajah to be endowed with magical gifts. It is a role that will take her on a perilous journey into a kingdom’s walled city to protect a child she doesn’t know from a culture she doesn’t understand... A Singular Hostage The year is 1838. Mariana Givens, a spirited young woman of twenty, has been sent to India to find a suitable husband. Traveling as a translator, she joins the entourage of Lord Auckland, the British Governor-General, as he journeys across India with an army ten thousand strong to meet the fabled Ranjit Singh, Maharajah of the Punjab. Eager young officers compete for Mariana’s favor, but it is with India that she falls in love: the baggage elephants tramping through country vast and wild; the scent of exotic foods at remote campsites; the enigmatic tutor who is her guide to native languages and ways. Lord Auckland must forge an alliance with Ranjit Singh that will deliver Afghanistan into British control, but as he negotiates his crucial treaty, Mariana is drawn into a perilous conspiracy surrounding the one-eyed Maharajah’s baby hostage--a child of mystical repute named Saboor.
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The Linnet Bird
by Linda Holeman
In the claustrophobic, mannered world of British India, Linny Ingram seems the perfect society wife: pretty, gracious, subservient. But appearances can be deceptive. Linny Ingram was born Linny Gow, an orphan raised in the gray slums of Liverpool. Sold into prostitution by her stepfather when she was only eleven, Linny clung to the belief that she was meant for something more, something better, than life on the cold, dangerous streets. A stroke of luck granted Linny the chance to re-create herself as a proper middle-class young lady, allowing her to join “the fishing fleet”—young women of good birth who sailed to India in search of husbands. India, with its exotic colors, sights, and smells, is a world away from the cold back alleys of Linny’s childhood. But even there, she is haunted by her past, and by the constant threat of discovery. Soon she finds that respectability and marriage bring a new kind of imprisonment. But having come so far, Linny is not about to surrender easily. In the lush tropics of India she finds not only the means of rebellion . . . she finds that she may be capable of feeling love and freedom after all.
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On the Face of the Waters
by Flora Annie Webster Steel
Historical novel set in India 1856-1858 and centred round a British woman's experiences during the Indian Mutiny (Sepoy Rebellion) and the Siege of Delhi.
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The Lady of Cawnpore
by Elisabeth McNeill
India, 1857. Following the massacre at Cawnpore, Emily and her sister Lucy are captured and held at the Bibighar, the house of the Indian mistress of the British Nabob. Saved by an Indian sepoy, Emily goes to live with him as his Indian wife, haunted for the rest of her life by the terrible scenes she has witnessed.
