Historical Biographical Fiction

Germany, 1945. Ever since Anton Kohler first heard the vibrant sound of the violin, he's dreamed of mastering the instrument. But when his father dies, the 15-year-old must give up his passion to support his seven younger siblings. As the Russian army marches closer to his hometown, Anton and his best friend Gerhard are pulled from their families and forced to help defend their home in a last desperate stand. When Anton witnesses the slaughter of concentration camp prisoners, he vows to escape the war and find a way home....

Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand - a skill that turned him into an American legend of the old West. He was smart, well spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses, and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime Westerns, novels, and movies.

Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She's in a reflective mood, thinking back on her thrilling, tragic, nearly impossible journey from her sheltered, old-fashioned family in New York to here: iconoclast and independent woman. Rebecca Godfrey’s Peggy is a blazingly fresh interpretation of a woman who defies every expectation to become an original.

Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" ( Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.

A writer resembling Zoé Valdés - a Cuban exile living in Paris with her husband and young daughter - is preparing a novel on the life of Dora Maar, one of the most promising artists in the Surrealist movement, until she met Pablo Picasso. The middle-aged Picasso was already the god of the art world's avant-garde. Dora became his lover, muse, and ultimately, his victim. She became The Weeping Woman captured in his famous portrait, the mistress he betrayed with other mistress-muses, and their affair ended with her commitment to an asylum at the hands of Picasso's friends.

France, March 1944. Virginia Hall wasn't like the other young society women back home in Baltimore - she never wanted the debutante ball or silk gloves. Instead, she traded a safe life for adventure in Europe, and when her beloved second home is thrust into the dark days of war, she leaps in headfirst. Once she's recruited as an Allied spy, subverting the Nazis becomes her calling. But even the most cunning agent can be bested, and in wartime trusting the wrong person can prove fatal.

Daughter of the nobility, cousin to a fallen Queen, Catherine Howard rose from the cluttered ranks of courtiers at the court of Henry VIII to become the King's fifth wife. But hers is a tale that starts long before the crown was placed on her head. A tale of tragedy and challenges, predators and prey; the story of a young girl growing up in a perilous time, facing dangers untold. The fifth wife of Henry VIII would end her life on the block, like her cousin Anne Boleyn...but where did her story begin?

Marie Sklodowska, 25, is studying science at the Sorbonne—one of the only universities in the world that has begun to admit women. A thousand miles from her native Poland, with no money and the odds stacked against any woman daring to pursue a career in such a rigorous field, Marie throws herself into her studies. She’s certain that to succeed in a man’s world, she will have to go it alone.

A princess of Spain, Catalina is only 16 years old when she sets foot on the shores of England. The youngest daughter of the powerful monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catalina is a coveted prize for a royal marriage - and Arthur, Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne, has won her hand. But tragedy strikes, and Catalina, now Princess Katherine, is betrothed to the future Henry VIII.

In the tumultuous years of the Civil War, the streets of Chicago offer a woman mostly danger and ruin - unless that woman is Kate Warne, the first female Pinkerton detective and a desperate widow with a knack for manipulation. Descending into undercover operations, Kate is able to infiltrate the seedy side of the city in ways her fellow detectives can't. She's a seductress, an exotic foreign medium, a rich train passenger - all depending on the day and the robber, thief, or murderer she's been assigned to nab.

Sous un ciel de plomb, des prisonniers défilent à l'entrée du camp d'Auschwitz. Bientôt, ils ne seront plus que des numéros tatoués sur le bras. C'est Lale, un déporté, qui est chargé de cette sinistre tâche. Il travaille le regard rivé au sol pour éviter de voir la douleur dans les yeux de ceux qu'il marque à jamais. Un jour, pourtant, il lève les yeux sur Gita et la jeune femme devient sa lumière dans ce monde d'une noirceur infinie. Ils savent d'emblée qu'ils sont faits l'un pour l'autre. Mais dans cette prison où l'on se bat pour un morceau de pain et pour sauver sa vie, il n'y a pas de place pour l'amour.

A family torn apart. A king with an iron fist. Will their faith be strong enough to survive persecution and reunite? Jeanne is the wife of a wealthy merchant, but now she risks losing everything. Louis XIV's soldiers will stop at nothing to forcibly convert the country's Protestants to the "true" faith. The men ransack Jeanne's belongings and threaten her children. If Jeanne and Jacob can't find a way to evade the soldiers' clutches, their family will face a fate far worse than poverty and imprisonment. They may never see each other again....

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world - and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s 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.

Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds.

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.

At the height of the Middle Ages in the 14th century, King Edward III of England is determined to use any means necessary to expand his power and gain control of England's bitter rival, France. His own son, Edward, prince of Wales, is far from immune from his political plans. And when Joan of Kent, now free from exile, sees her chance for revenge, she takes it. A calculated plot to scandalize the royal family for revenge for her father's downfall and execution soon turns into the most surprising thing: love.

When Tiro, the confidential secretary of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events which will eventually propel his master into one of the most famous courtroom dramas in history. The stranger is a Sicilian, a victim of the island's corrupt Roman governor, Verres. The senator is Cicero, a brilliant young lawyer and spellbinding orator, determined to attain imperium - supreme power in the state.

John Knox, the Thundering Scott, lives a life of adventure and danger in turbulent, corrupt 16th-century Scotland. Finding himself a wanted man, Knox is besieged in a castle by French soldiers, seized, and made a galley slave. Yet he is unflinching in his stand for the gospel, even in the face of assassins and death, and even when his fiery preaching makes him an enemy of Mary, Queen of Scots. Told from the perspective of a young student resolved to protect Knox at any cost, Douglas Bond's thrilling biographical novel provides a look at the harrowing life story of a giant of the faith.

Born from young King Henry’s first marriage, his elder daughter, Princess Mary, is raised to be queen once it becomes clear that her mother, Katherine of Aragon, will bear no more children. However, Henry’s passion for Anne Boleyn has a devastating influence on the young princess’s future when, determined to sire a male heir, he marries Anne, has his marriage to Katherine declared unlawful, brands Mary illegitimate, and banishes them both from the royal court.

In Flora Thompson's semi-autobiographical series Lark Rise to Candleford, she explores the Oxfordshire country life of her protagonist Laura in the 1880s and 1890s. This collection includes all three works in the trilogy, Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green.