Historical Biographical Fiction

St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless, and passionate as Peter himself.

It all started when Jeff Guinn was assigned to write a piece full of little-known facts about Christmas for his paper, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A few months later, he received a call from a gentleman who told him that he showed the story to an important friend who didn’t think much of it. And who might that be? asked Jeff. The next thing he knew, he was whisked off to the North Pole to meet with this “very important friend,” and the rest is, well, as they say, history.

Nazaire Poulin, a grain grower from Quebec, wants his old life back, but the sudden death of his spouse and the removal of his children have flipped his world upside down. He can’t afford seed money for his coming summer crop. He is a man lost. The Klondike Gold Rush has been over for a decade. Is it too late to find gold or a job rumored to pay six dollars a day? A spark of hope flashes in Nazaire’s body. Dare he go? Everything that Nazaire has is at risk as he ventures thousands of miles from home on a long shot. Many men have gone. Most returned broken. Some starved on the way.

In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god.

From the dawn of the 20th century to the devastation of World War II, this exhilarating novel of love, war, art, and family gives voice to two extraordinary women and brings to life the true story behind the creation and near destruction of Gustav Klimt's most remarkable paintings.

England, 1461: The young King Edward of York has taken the country by force from King Henry VI of Lancaster. Sir Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, flees the massacre of his Welsh army at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross and plans a rebellion to return his half-brother King Henry to the throne.

Die Farben der Liebe. Maria studiert Malerei, allen Widerständen zum Trotz. Nicht nur in der männlich dominierten Kunstwelt gilt es für sie als junge Frau, Vorurteile zu überwinden, sondern auch bei ihren Eltern. Dann aber lernt sie Franz Marc kennen, und zum ersten Mal fühlt sich Maria als Künstlerin ernstgenommen und als Frau begehrt. Gemeinsam suchen sie nach neuen Ausdrucksformen, inspirieren und ermutigen sich, ihre Malerei weiterzuentwickeln.

1135, England: Matilda, daughter of Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England's queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival, and cousin, Stephen do not know the iron will that drives her. She will win her inheritance against all odds, and despite all men. Adeliza, Henry's widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, is now married to a warrior who is fighting to keep Matilda off the throne. But Adeliza knows that Britain's crown belongs to a woman this time.

Eul’blond est l’expression préférée du grand gnou pour nommer son fils, son gaou. Ce surnom étant un savant mélange d’avertissements et de recadrage, il est aussi le cri hiérarchique du géniteur envers sa progéniture. Et ce, même si son prolongement n’est pas blond, mais plutôt brun. La grande migration des gnous de 1980 se prépare à Montréal. Eul’blond a douze ans et s’apprête, sans le savoir, à entrer dans le rituel de passage propre à sa race.

In Jesus, Judas believes he has found the One - the promised Messiah and future king of the Jews, destined to overthrow Roman rule. Galvanized, he joins the Nazarene’s followers, ready to enact the change he has waited for all his life. But soon Judas’s vision of a nation free from Rome is crushed by the inexplicable actions of the Nazarene himself. At last, Judas must confront the fact that the master he loves is not the liberator he hoped for, but a man bent on a drastically different agenda.

Barely five feet tall, suicidally courageous, obsessed with tigers, and sexually eccentric, Mabel Stark was the greatest female tiger trainer in history. Clad in her leather suits and married five times, she was the Mae West of tiger taming. In the 1910s and 1920s, when circus was the most popular entertainment in America, Mabel Stark was the biggest attraction for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus.

Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole - and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling....

"Combattu souvent, battu parfois, abattu jamais" : la vie de François-Athanase Charette de la Contrie est à l'image de sa devise. Vendéen comme lui, Philippe de Villiers nourrit depuis longtemps un attachement tout particulier pour ce héros dont le destin fait écho à sa propre histoire familiale. Au point de s'identifier à lui et de ressusciter, sous forme de mémoires imaginaires, la vie aventureuse de cet homme aussi séduisant qu'intrépide, fidèle envers et contre tout à une cause : "la Foi, le Roi, la Patrie".

January, 1980. At the height of the Cold War, Petra Kelly inspires hundreds of thousands to take to the streets to protest the placement of nuclear missiles on West German soil - including a NATO general named Emil Gerhardt, who shocks the establishment by converting to the cause. Petra and her general not only vault to fame as the stars of the Green Party, but they also fall in love. Then Manfred Schwartz, an ex-lover, urges Petra to draw back the curtain on Emil's war record, and they enter a world both complicated and threatening.

“Where are the hysterics, those magnificent women of former times?” wrote Jacques Lacan. Long history’s ghosts, marginalized and dispossessed due to their gender and class, they are reimagined by Maud Casey as complex, flesh-and-blood people with stories to tell.

Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer's chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.

In the century's darkest time, one man became the most unlikely of heroes. German-Catholic industrialist and Nazi Party member Oskar Schindler used his wealth and influence to save the lives of more than 1,300 Jews who would have otherwise died in the concentration camp at Plaszow. Here is the story on which Steven Spielberg based his powerful motion picture. If you like this, try Ursula Hegi's Stones from a River.

On Blackwell Island, New York, a hospital was built to keep its patients from ever leaving. With her late father's fortune under her uncle's care until her 25th birthday in the year 1887, Edyth Foster does not feel pressured to marry or to bow to society's demands. She freely indulges in eccentric hobbies like fencing and riding her velocipede in her cycling costume about the city for all to see. Finding a loophole in the will, though, her uncle whisks Edyth off to the women's lunatic asylum just weeks before her birthday. Do any of Edyth's friends care that she disappeared?

Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street. Meanwhile, astronomer Maria Mitchell loves running Nantucket’s Atheneum and spending her nights observing the stars, yet she fears revealing the secret wishes of her heart. On a sweltering July night, a massive fire breaks out in town, quickly kindled by the densely packed wooden buildings.