Historical Biographical Fiction

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.

Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

Britain, 1961: A beautiful blonde baby is born to Viscount Althorp, heir to the Spencer earldom. But Diana grows up amid the fallout of her parents’ messy divorce. She struggles at school. Her refuge throughout is romantic novels. She dreams of falling in love and being rescued by a handsome prince.

Karen Harper tells the tale of Consuelo Vanderbilt, her “Wedding of the Century” to the duke of Marlborough, and her quest to find meaning behind “the glitter and the gold”.

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.

Amid the turbulent, faction-ridden late reign of the fearsome Henry, eager high-spirited Catherine Howard caught the king's eye - but not before she had been the sensual plaything of at least three other men. Ignorant of her past, seeing only her youthful exuberance and believing that she could make him happy, he married her - only to discover, too late, that her heart belonged to his gentleman usher Tom Culpeper.

In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomer - and naïve one at that - Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, who introduces Dorothea to Monkey Block, an artists’ colony and the bohemian heart of the city. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics.

La jeunesse provençale de Giono, entre une mère repasseuse et un père cordonnier, est forcément solaire, musicale, saturée de parfums, de portraits, de tableaux... Dans ces souvenirs parus en 1932, les simples deviennent des héros, les animaux voisinent avec les anges et la nature se gorge de mythes. Transcrite dans la langue du bonheur, voici la genèse d'un très grand écrivain.

Football is the heartbeat of Brownwood, Texas. Now, the war has changed everything. Most of the Brownwood men over 18 and under 45 are off fighting, and in a small town, the possibilities are limited. Could this mean a season without football? But no one counted on Assistant Principal Tylene Wilson, who learned the game at her daddy’s knee. She knows more about it than most men, so she does the unthinkable, convincing the school to let her take on the job of coach.

Mary Tudor watches her elder brother become King of England and wonders what the future holds for her. Born into great privilege, Mary has beauty and intelligence beyond her years and is the most marriageable princess in Europe. Henry plans to use her marriage to build a powerful alliance against his enemies. Will she dare risk his anger by marrying for love? Meticulously researched and based on actual events, this 'sequel' follows Mary's story from book three of the Tudor Trilogy and is set during the reign of King Henry VIII.

Sent into exile once more, Don Rodrigo de Vivar has just Will Redbeard and two warriors for companions. Over the next years, he creates the legend of El Cid, defeating enemy after enemy. Fighting overwhelming odds, he succeeds every time until, at last, he has his fiefdom of Valencia. This is the final chronicle in the series and details the last 18 years of the life of the man known as El Cid. Although this is the last in the series, it is a standalone book. Forget the film and listen to the reality of the man who was the greatest knight of his age - some would say, any age!

Rome, AD 63. Vespasian has been ordered to a far-flung empire in Africa to free 200 Roman citizens who have been enslaved by a desert kingdom. But when Vespasian reaches the city, he discovers tensions spilling over into bloody chaos. Battling thirst and exhaustion, Vespasian must help the Romans escape, their only route to survival a desperate race across a barren desert with a hoard of heavily armed rebels at their backs. Meanwhile, back in Rome, Rome's elite fear for their lives as Emperor Nero's extravagance goes unchecked.

The USA Today best-selling author of In Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice.

In this thrilling and panoramic historical novel, we see one of the most storied uprisings of classical times from multiple points of view: Spartacus, the visionary captive and gladiator whose toughness and charisma turn a prison break into a multicultural revolt that threatens an empire; his consort, the oracular Astera, whose connection to the spirit world and its omens guides the uprising's progress; Nonus, a Roman soldier working both sides of the conflict in a half-adroit, half-desperate attempt to save his life....

The beloved bestselling author of The Color of Air, Women of the Silk, and The Samurai's Garden returns with this magnificent historical novel based on the life of the luminous, groundbreaking actress Anna May Wong—the first and only Asian American woman to gain movie stardom in the early days of Hollywood.

Del Wensley, wife of the most celebrated preacher in Harlan County, tries to mind her place. Until her husband’s infidelity pushes an already strained marriage to a breaking point. Clinging to her last hope for self-respect, Del turns her back on the rigid life she’s known. A coal train is rolling through the valley. With her eyes wide open to the unfamiliar, and to the freedom she craves, Del takes to the rails.

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?

Artists flock here, not just for wealth and fame, but for revolutionary color. Yet artist Giorgione “Zorzo” Barbarelli’s career hangs in the balance. Competition is fierce, and his debts are piling up. When Zorzo hears a rumor of a mysterious new pigment, brought to Venice by the richest man in Europe, he sets out to acquire the color and secure his name in history.

King Horic is dead. The oaths that once bonded the Danes and Northmen in the islands of Aquitaine have broken. Hasting's new land is imperiled by fearsome challengers and old foes alike. A rumor from the continent will shatter the brittle veneer of his strength and expose his deepest wound from the past. His greatest trial will not be fought with a sword, ax, or shield, but with his heart.

1920s Germany: Though the world has changed in the wake of the Great War, it is still ruled by men. Even a woman as resourceful and intelligent as Niki Rittenhaus needs alliances in order to survive. Her marriage to Rickard Länger, a movie producer for Berlin's Passport Pictures, seems convenient for them both. When Rickard succumbs to increasing pressure from the Nazis to make propaganda movies, a horrified Niki turns away from her own film aspirations and instead, begins to write.