Historical Biographical Fiction

Rome, AD 41. Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor – but his position is precarious. His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory – but how? Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost nearly 40 years before. Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania?

It is May 1560. As sinister storm clouds gather overhead, 26-year-old Queen Elizabeth dispatches William Cecil, her most trusted adviser, to Scotland for crucial negotiations. Handsome, ambitious Lord Robert Dudley is at her side. But their leisurely midsummer idyll is cut short when the courts master lutenist plunges to his death from a parapet beneath the queen's window. The loyal retainers of Elizabeth's privy council do not accept the official verdict of accidental death. Their fears are borne out when another tragedy rocks the realm, and points the way to a conspiracy to bring down Elizabeth and seize the throne.

Based on a true story, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies. 'We're waiting. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha's neck where I'm holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can't see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up. They always gasp.'

In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal - between a husband and a wife, between sisters - fact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister's husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis.

London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer.

Raised in genteel poverty after the First World War, Maria Magdalena Dietrich dreams of a life on the stage. When a budding career as a violinist is cut short, the willful teenager vows to become a singer, trading her family's proper middle-class society for the free-spirited, louche world of Weimar Berlin's cabarets and drag balls.

Lady Macbeth takes listeners into the heart of 11th-century Scotland, painting a vivid picture of Gruadh, the last female descendent of the country's most royal line. Married, pregnant, then quickly widowed, she is forced to wed her husband's murderer, the warlord Macbeth. Determined to protect her interests and those of her infant son, she vows to preserve her family's legacy at any cost.

Nineteen-year-old April Wilton has just enlisted in the WRENs in Portsmouth, where she works servicing engines on ships. She finds herself immersed in dockyard life and surrounded by soldiers - from England and America. The atmosphere is one of spontaneity and impulsiveness, brought on by the unpredictability of war. So when April meets Daniel, a young American soldier, whose mother is Sioux and father is of African descent, she doesn't hesitate when she starts to fall for him.

Alice may be the president's daughter, but she's nobody's darling. As bold as her signature color Alice Blue, the gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking, poker-playing first daughter discovers that the only way for a woman to stand out in Washington is to make waves - oceans of them. With the canny sophistication of the savviest politician on the Hill, Alice uses her celebrity to her advantage, testing the limits of her power and the seductive thrill of political entanglements.

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands.... That was America in 1881. All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26, when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest.

Kate Chase Sprague was born in 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second daughter to the second wife of a devout but ambitious lawyer. Her father, Salmon P. Chase, rose to prominence in the antebellum years and was appointed secretary of the treasury in Abraham Lincoln' s cabinet, while aspiring to even greater heights. Beautiful, intelligent, regal, and entrancing, young Kate Chase stepped into the role of establishing her thrice-widowed father in Washington society and as a future presidential candidate.

May 1483: The Tower of London. When King Edward IV dies and Lady Elysabeth Scrope delivers her young godson, Edward V, into the Tower of London to prepare for his coronation, she is engulfed in political turmoil. Within months, the prince and his brother have disappeared, Richard III is declared king, and Elysabeth's sister Margaret Beaufort conspires with her son Henry Tudor to invade England and claim the throne. Desperate to protect her godson, Elysabeth battles the intrigue, betrayal and power of the last medieval court to keep Prince Edward safe.

When the most famous toddler in America, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., is kidnapped from his family home in 1932, the case makes international headlines. Already celebrated for his flight across the Atlantic, his father, Charles, Sr., is the country’s golden boy, with his wealthy, lovely wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, by his side. But there’s someone else in their household—Betty Gow, a formerly obscure young woman, now known around the world by another name: the Lindbergh Nanny. Betty must find the truth in order to clear her own name—and to find justice for the child she loves.

Three stories about historical heroes (Matthew Henson, Michael Faraday, and Joseph Lister) and three exciting adventures!

It is 1914, and 25-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone's lips these days is "flickers" - the silent moving pictures enthralling theatergoers. Turn any corner in this burgeoning town and you'll find made-up actors running around, as a movie camera captures it all. In this fledgling industry, Frances finds her true calling: writing stories for this wondrous new medium.

Fascinée par le destin de la miraculeuse petite gymnaste roumaine de quatorze ans apparue aux JO de Montréal en 1976...

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father.

England, 1422: Owen Tudor, a Welsh servant, waits in Windsor Castle to meet his new mistress, the beautiful and lonely Queen Catherine of Valois, widow of the warrior king, Henry V. Her infant son is crowned king of England and France, and while the country simmers on the brink of civil war, Owen becomes her protector. They fall in love, risking Owen's life and Queen Catherine's reputation, but how do they found the dynasty that changes British history - the Tudors?

Based on a true story, Queenie of Norwich is the compelling tale of one remarkable girl's journey to womanhood. Spanning the first half of the 20th century, Queenie's story is one of heartbreak and triumph, love and loss, and the power of family. It is a story of redemption, and how, with grit and determination, anything is possible.

In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.