Historical Biographical Fiction

Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists.

From New York Times best-selling novelist Sharon Kay Penman comes the stunning story of a great medieval warrior-king, the accomplished and controversial son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Richard the Lionheart. A powerful tale of intrigue, war, and diplomacy, Lionheart plays out against the roiling conflicts of love and loyalty, passion and treachery, all set against the rich textures of the Holy Land.

The stories of two very different women, linked by the secrets and lies of history, merge together as past and present weave together in this stunning story of love, loss and resilience. 2016. Kitty, fleeing from a devastating revelation in her own life, finds herself at her great-grandfather's cabin in Lake Akanabee. There she discovers a gorgeous necklace, which leads her uncover to long-buried family secret. 1914. Tatiana, Grand Princess of Russia, falls in love with Dmitri, a Russian solider, as she nurses him back to health.

1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, becoming an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries.

It is August 12, 1945. Tomorrow, August Snow will be tried at the International War Crimes Court for patenting a more lethal variation on the atomic bomb. He invented a radiation machine to cure his young daughter’s cancer, despite knowing that the very same technology was capable of great destruction, and inevitably profited from disaster. But are his intentions relevant when the fate of the world is at stake?

Margaret George's novel brings into focus the larger-than-life King Henry VIII, monarch of prodigious appetites for wine, women, and song.

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former soldier famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and met many times, talking and unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.

Autumn 1192. With Jerusalem still in the Saracens' hands, and a peace treaty agreed with their leader Saladin, Richard the Lionheart is free at last to travel back to his strife-ridden kingdom. By his side at every turn is the loyal knight Ferdia, also known as Rufus. Together they will face not just Richard's archenemy Philippe Capet of France, but also the king's treacherous younger brother, John.

The Paris Wife meets PBS’s Victoria in this enthralling novel of the life and loves of one of history’s most remarkable women: Winston Churchill’s scandalous American mother, Jennie Jerome.

When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok - Hick - is assigned to cover Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1932 campaign, the two women become deeply involved. Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship documented by 3,300 letters.

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock society....

The year is 1853, and the Habsburgs are Europe's most powerful ruling family. With his empire stretching from Austria to Russia, from Germany to Italy, Emperor Franz Joseph is young, rich, and ready to marry.

Inspired by his journals and writing, this moving novel inhabits the life and mind of renowned nineteenth-century naturalist, poet and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau, revealing the deep connections between his time and our own. Composed in short, compelling scenes, Followed by the Lark is a novel of significant moments in a life, capturing loss, change and the danger and healing that come from communion with the natural world, set against a backdrop of great change and tumult in America.

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider - brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture - one more after thousands - she can unlock the building blocks of life.

Some men strive for greatness. And some men find themselves thrust into the role of their nation's saviors. Such are the two heroes who reshaped and reconfigured the entire destiny of the kingdom of Scotland. Wallace the Braveheart would become the only legendary, heroic, commoner in medieval British history. The other, Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, would perfect the techniques of guerrilla warfare developed by Wallace and use them to create his own place in history as the greatest king of Scots.

In sixth-century Constantinople, one woman, Theodora, defied every convention and all the odds and rose from common theater tart to empress of a great kingdom - the most powerful woman the Roman Empire would ever know. The woman whose image was later immortalized in glittering mosaic was a scrappy, clever, conniving, flesh-and-blood woman full of sensuality and spirit whose real story is as surprising as any ever told....

In this brilliantly imagined novel, acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power. From the fairy-tale chateaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, this is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.

As recovery from World War II begins, expatriate American NoraTours travels from her home in southern France to London in search of her missing 16-year-old daughter. There she unexpectedly meets up with an oldacquaintance, famous model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Neither has emergedfrom the war unscathed. Nora is racked with the fear that her efforts tosurvive under the Vichy regime may have cost her daughter's life. Lee suffersfrom what she witnessed as a war correspondent photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated - and misunderstood - figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series.

The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman's life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms.