Historical Biographical Fiction

“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.

Ukraine, 1940. When war rips their country apart, Julia is sent away by her tearful parents in the dead of night, clutching her mother’s necklace and longing for one last embrace. But soon she is captured by Nazi soldiers and forced into a German labor camp, where behind a tall fence topped with cruel barbed wire, she has never felt more alone. Just as she begins to give up on all hope, Julia meets Henry, a young man from her village who shares her heart full of dreams.

Briarhill to Brooklyn is a work of creative nonfiction, in which I tell the story of my Irish family’s journey from County Galway on a coffin ship named Cushlamachree. Their destination was Brooklyn.

London, 1938. The effervescent "It girl" of London society since her father was named the ambassador, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy moves in rarified circles. Eager to strike out on her own, Kick is soon swept off her feet by Billy Hartington, the future duke of Devonshire. But their love is forbidden, as Kick's devout Catholic family and Billy's staunchly Protestant one would never approve their match. And when war breaks like a tidal wave across her world, Billy is ripped from her arms as the Kennedys are forced to return to the States.

An award-winning novel from one of Ukraine’s most prolific contemporary authors, Forgottenness tells a spellbinding story of belonging and uprootedness, as understood by two exiles across time. An exceedingly anxious narrator grapples with a host of conditions, from obsessive-compulsive disorder to a creeping sense of agoraphobia. As her symptoms deepen, she finds unexpected solace researching Viacheslav Lypynskyi (1882-1931), a social and political activist of Polish descent who played a pivotal role in the struggle for Ukrainian independence—and who nursed his own comorbidities.

It’s October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they’re pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd. The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction.

Read in the style of a secret diary, this famous sequel to I, Claudius gives a wry and human view of the Roman world, bringing to life some of the most scandalous and violent times in history. Claudius has survived the murderous intrigues of his predecessors to become, reluctantly, Emperor of Rome. He recounts his surprisingly successful rule; how he cultivates the loyalty of the army to repair the damage caused by his nephew Caligula; his friendship with the Jewish King Herod Agrippa; and his invasion of Britain.

1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers. Despite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers and others—now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau—find success, forming a bond amid the cobblestoned streets and storied villas of the newly liberated city.

In September 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She’s twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother’s expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light.

On the lam for an act of violence against the American government, 25-year-old Jenny Shimada agrees to care for three younger fugitives whom a shadowy figure from her former radical life has spirited out of California. One of them, the kidnapped granddaughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity for embracing her captors' ideology and joining their revolutionary cell.

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.

Lady Evelyn Herbert was the daughter of the Earl of Carnarvon, brought up in stunning Highclere Castle. Popular and pretty, she seemed destined for a prestigious marriage, but she had other ideas. Instead, she left behind the world of society balls and chaperones to travel to the Egyptian desert, where she hoped to become a lady archaeologist, working alongside her father and Howard Carter in the hunt for an undisturbed tomb.

Knowing she was seen as a threat to the queen she served, Lady Katherine Grey, legitimate heir to the throne, longs only for the comfort of a loving marriage and a quiet life far from the intrigue of the Tudor court. After seeing her sister become the pawn of their parents and others seeking royal power and then lose their lives for it, she is determined to avoid the vicious struggles over power and religion that dominate Queen Elizabeth's court. Until she finds love - then Kat is willing to risk it all, even life in prison.

Lady Be Good transports us to the glittering, sumptuous era of 1920s New York to follow the life of aspiring actress Dorothy Hale as she comes of age. Breaking societal rules imposed on women, “Peck’s Bad Girl of Pittsburgh Society” leaves behind her privileged world for the bright lights of Broadway to chase her dream.

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.

This long-anticipated sequel to the national best seller Lionheart is a vivid and heart-wrenching story of the last event-filled years in the life of Richard, Coeur de Lion. Taken captive by the Holy Roman Emperor while en route home - in violation of the papal decree protecting all crusaders - he was to spend fifteen months imprisoned, much of it in the notorious fortress at Trefils, from which few men ever left alive, while Eleanor of Aquitaine moved heaven and earth to raise the exorbitant ransom.

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.

Award-winning historian and best-selling author Paul L. Maier has created a compelling style of documentary fiction. He uses what is historically known of Pilate's life, adds in the known political climate of first-century Judea, and unveils the colorful, untold story that changed history. Filling in the details of Pilate's early career in Rome, Maier captures the drama of imperial Rome under Tiberius Caesar, the plotting of his political allies and enemies, and his relationship with his beloved but ambitious wife, Procula.

San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wrestle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner who put her own career on hold to support her husband, but Jack doesn't see it that way...until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly charmed, Charmian's eyes open to a world of possibilities.

Even with her privileged life, Lady Hester Stanhope knows that claiming the adventurous life she truly wants will not be easy, thanks to her eccentric father's stifling grip. With the help of her renowned statesman uncle William Pitt the Younger, she takes on the glittering, treacherous heights of London Society. Her formidable intelligence, outspoken opinions, and headstrong determination gain the favor of the beau monde's leading taste-maker Beau Brummell—and she quickly learns to bend the rules of the ton to her own advantage.