Historical Biographical Fiction

An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden — Schindler’s Jews — to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.

Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the newfound freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived.

In sun-drenched Sicily, among the decadent Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s, Giuseppe Tomasi, the last prince of Lampedusa, struggles to complete the novel that will be his lasting legacy, The Leopard. With a firm devotion to the historical record, Lampedusa leaps effortlessly into the mind of the writer and inhabits the complicated heart of a man facing down the end of his life, struggling to make something of lasting worth, while there is still time.

In 1942, London, Nancy Mitford is worried about more than air raids and German spies. Still recovering from a devastating loss, the once sparkling Bright Young Thing is estranged from her husband, her allowance has been cut, and she’s given up her writing career. On top of this, her five beautiful but infamous sisters continue making headlines with their controversial politics. Eager for distraction and desperate for income, Nancy jumps at the chance to manage the Heywood Hill bookshop while the owner is away at war.

August, 1797. Midwife Parthenia Blenkinsop has delivered countless babies, but nothing prepares her for the experience that unfolds when she arrives at Mary Wollstonecraft’s door. Over the 11 harrowing days that follow, as Mrs. Blenkinsop fights for the survival of both mother and newborn, Mary Wollstonecraft recounts the life she dared to live amidst the impossible constraints and prejudices of the late 18th century, rejecting the tyranny of men and marriage, risking everything to demand equality for herself and all women.

To Pocahontas and her people, the Tidewater is the rightful home of the Powhatan tribe. To England it is Virginia Territory, fertile with promise, rich with silver and gold. As Jamestown struggles to take root, John Smith knows that the only hope for survival lies with the Powhatan people. He knows, too, that they would rather see the English starve than yield their homeland to invaders. In the midst of this conflict, Pocahontas, the daughter of the great chief, forges an unlikely friendship with Smith.

In death, she would become infamous, yet in life passed often unseen. Jane Parker, daughter of the scholar Lord Morley, leaves her home at a tender age, embarking on a career in the dangerous Tudor Court. From the halls of her father's house to the palaces of London, from England to Calais and the Field of the Cloth of Gold Jane will travel, seeing much of this world, and others.

In A Rose for the Crown, we meet one of history's alleged villains through the eyes of a captivating new heroine, the woman who was the mother of his illegitimate children, a woman who loved him for who he really was, no matter what the cost to herself.

With the age of voyages of discovery in the 15th century, the curtain of history slowly came down on the late Middle Ages. Portuguese and Spanish seafarers set out to remeasure the dimensions of the earth. Numerous spices and fruits, which we would hardly be able to do without today, found their way to Europe for the first time. Columbus discovered America in 1492 on his quest for India. Six years later, it was left to Vasco da Gama to travel through the sea route to India sought by Columbus on the eastern route around Africa.

Amid an opulent society living under the shadow of war are four muses, women whose bodies were shown in intimate detail, depicted by the charming yet controversial artist Egon Schiele. Adele, his passionate admirer; Gertrude, his sister who survived their blighted childhood but is jealous; his mistress Vally, a poor young woman from a bad background but with steel at her core; and the two, very different, Harms sisters, both of whom vie to become Schiele’s wife. Over the course of little more than a decade, the four women risk everything as they try to hold on to the man they adore.

One of history's most complex and alluring women, Anne Boleyn was irresistible to kings and commoners alike. Daughter of an ambitious country lord, Anne was sent to France to marry well and raise the family's fortunes. She soon surpassed even their greatest expectations when King Henry VIII swore he would put aside his loyal queen to make Anne his wife.

Egypt, 1400s BC. The pharaoh's pampered second daughter, lively, intelligent Hatshepsut, delights in racing her chariot through the marketplace and testing her archery skills in the Nile's marshlands. But the death of her elder sister, Neferubity, in a gruesome accident arising from Hatshepsut's games forces her to confront her guilt...and sets her on a profoundly changed course.

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.

In July 1913, 25-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She’s spent her whole life in the copper-mining town of Calumet, Michigan, where men risk their lives for meager salaries - and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day. When Annie decides to stand up for herself and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle.

In 1631 Elizabeth Winthrop, newly widowed with an infant daughter, set sail for the New World. Against a background of rigidity and conformity she dared to befriend Anne Hutchinson at the moment of her banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony; dared to challenge a determined army captain bent on the massacre of her friends, the Siwanoy Indians; and, above all, dared to love a man as her heart and her whole being commanded.

An epic re-creation of the exhilarating and mysterious time when the Sun King ruled Egypt, Ramses, the Son of Light, has become the rage in France. With over two million copies sold, it is the greatest publishing phenomenon to hit the shelves there in 20 years. Rameses is only 14 when his father, the Pharaoh Seti, begins testing his true mettle. Being the younger of two sons, the proud Ramses has a problem with being relegated to second place.

When Jackie is twenty-one, she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a dinner party in Georgetown. She is dreaming of France, of a life of freedom and adventure. She has won an internship at Vogue, and she thinks Kennedy is not her kind of adventure: “Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy.” And yet there is his intelligence, his humor and drive, and the chemistry between them. He pursues her, then disappears, then pursues her again in a pattern of intimacy and distance.

Amid the glitz and glamour of 1950s New York, Phoebe Adler pursues her dream of screenwriting. A dream that turns into a living nightmare when she is blacklisted - caught in the Red Menace that is shattering the lives of suspected Communists. Desperate to work, she escapes to London, determined to keep her dream alive and clear her good name. There, Phoebe befriends fellow American exile Hannah Wolfson, who has defied the odds to build a career as a successful television producer in England.

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.

Immigrée irlandaise courageuse et obstinée arrivée seule à New York à la fin du XIXe siècle, Mary Mallon travaille comme lingère avant de se découvrir un talent caché pour la cuisine. Malheureusement, dans toutes les maisons bourgeoises où elle est employée, les gens contractent la typhoïde, et certains en meurent. Mary, de son côté, ne présente aucun symptôme de la maladie. Au contraire, sa robustesse est presque indécente.