Historical Biographical Fiction

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to The Book of Daniel, World's Fair, and The March, the novels of E. L. Doctorow comprise one of the most substantive achievements of modern American fiction. Now, with Homer & Langley, this master novelist has once again created an unforgettable work. Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers - the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War.

When Katharine “Kay” Swift - the restless but loyal society wife of wealthy banker James Warburg and a serious pianist who longs for recognition - attends a performance of Rhapsody in Blue by a brilliant, elusive young musical genius named George Gershwin, her world is turned upside down. Transfixed, she’s helpless to resist the magnetic pull of George’s talent, charm, and swagger.

In his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Norman Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: he has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler. The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, takes the young Adolf from birth through his adolescence. En route, reavealing portraits are offered of Hitler's father and mother, sisters, and brothers.

"I suffered much cruelty as an unmarried mother and I had no recourse when they took my boy away from me. I had no rights, no prospects, no future. Everyone believed I was ruined. But no one knew the secrets of my own childhood, nor could they ever have imagined the dangerous and heretical scheme I would devise to protect and watch over my remarkable son as he grew in to manhood. Some might call me a liar, since all I describe would be impossible for a woman of my station. But that is where my design unfolds...."

Spanien im Mittelalter, zwischen 1058 und 1099: Schon früh verdient sich der junge Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, den sie später ehrfürchtig "El Cid" nennen werden, den Beinamen "Der Kämpfer", denn keiner kann ihn im ritterlichen Zweikampf besiegen. Doch für den erwachsenen Mann hält das Schicksal Wechselvolles bereit: Sein König, Sancho II. von Kastilien, wird von der eigenen Schwester ermordet. Rodrigo findet zwar in Jimena die Liebe seines Lebens, doch ahnt er nicht, dass sie ihn im Auftrag des neuen Königs ausspionieren soll.

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.

From Syrie James, the best-selling author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, comes a novel that captures the passionate heart and restless soul of Charlotte Brontë—the author who gave the world Jane Eyre while longing for a soulmate.

When her father is assigned the task of spying on the French Court, the charming and sweetly innocent Anne Boleyn is delighted by the thought of a new adventure. And she is not to be disappointed, for her beautiful sister, Mary, has been handed a mission: to let herself be seduced by the King of France in order to uncover his secrets. Mesmerized by the thrilling passion, intrigue, and betrayal that unfolds, Anne discovers the power of being a woman who catches the eye of a powerful king.

L’opera al nero è la storia di un personaggio immaginario, Zenone, medico, alchimista, filosofo, dalla nascita illegittima a Bruges nei primi anni...

Joan of Kent, renowned beauty and cousin to King Edward III, is destined for a politically strategic marriage. As the king begins a long dynastic struggle to claim the crown of France, plunging England into the Hundred Years' War, he negotiates her betrothal to a potential ally and heir of a powerful lordship. But Joan, haunted by nightmares of her father's execution at the hands of her treacherous royal kin, fears the king's selection and is not resigned to her fate. She secretly pledges herself to one of the king's own knights, one who has become a trusted friend...

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.

In the home where Arabella Godwin was raised it is forbidden to speak her name, and her picture is turned to the wall. But in the turbulent America of the 1850s, everyone knows her as "Belle Cora", madam of San Francisco's finest bordello. Judges and senators do her bidding; a vicious newspaper editor plots her downfall; a preacher looks at her from across his pulpit and tries to forget that once she was his wife. Merchant's daughter, farm girl, prostitute, mother - the only thing that never changes is her tireless pursuit of the one man who can see her for who she really is.

In 1825, in rural Pennsylvania, Emma Hale marries an itinerant treasure-digger, a man who has nothing but a peep-stone in his pocket and a conviction that he can speak directly to God. His name is Joseph Smith and in a few short years, he will found his own religion, gather zealous adherents by the tens of thousands, and fracture Emma’s life and faith.

1977 : Martin Radford, jeune historien londonien dont la carrière universitaire a été brisée par un scandale, arrive sur l'île de Madère. Il y rencontre Leo Sellick, un millionnaire sud-américain, qui habite une superbe villa, naguère propriété du mystérieux Edwin Strafford, mort en 1951. Homme politique de premier ordre, promis à un brillant avenir, Edwin Strafford a été en 1908, à l'âge de 32 ans, ministre de l'intérieur du cabinet Asquith, aux côtés de Lloyd George et de Churchill, avant de démissionner brutalement en 1910 et de quitter la vie politique sans explication aucune pour disparaître dans l'anonymat.

The Rappahannock Line continues the story of Irish immigrant Daniel Ryan who serves in Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. As the year 1862 draws to its close, the powerful Union army gathers its strength on the Rappahannock River in Virginia to renew its advance on the Confederate capital. Lee's army confronts it there bringing on a further bloody collision.

In his scintillating debut, John Pipkin fictionalizes an ignoble event in noted naturalist Henry David Thoreau's life. One year before his historic retreat to the woods around Walden pond, Thoreau struck a match and carelessly started a mammoth fire that would go on to consume 300 acres of forest and farmland.

When Morrie moved in next door to Hilde in 1936 they became best friends. They are just five years old. But this is Nazi Germany and the law decrees they cannot remain friends because he is Jewish and she is the daughter of a Nazi policeman. For a short time music and culture opens up a new world for Hilde. But it cannot last. Her loving grandparents take in the children and gift them a pet budgerigar.

This series features a real historical figure—the formidable Ela Longespée. The young Countess of Salisbury was chosen to marry King Henry II’s illegitimate son William. After her husband’s untimely death, Ela served as high sheriff of Wiltshire, castellan of Salisbury Castle, and ultimately founder and abbess of Lacock Abbey.

Lilia is a gripping, cinematic true story of resilience and survival set against the backdrop of Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Hitler’s brutal occupation. Amidst war-torn chaos, a young girl and her family fight to endure unthinkable loss, betrayal, and the daily terror of Nazi rule. Stripped of childhood and forced to navigate an unforgiving world, Lilia clings to the only thing that cannot be taken from her—hope.

August 1942. Jacob and Moses Stein, two young Jewish brothers, are staying with their aunt in Paris amid the Nazi occupation. The boys’ parents, well-known German playwrights, have left the brothers in their aunt’s care until they can find safe harbor for their family. But before the Steins can reunite, a great and terrifying roundup occurs. The French gendarmes, under Nazi order, arrest the boys and take them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver - a massive, bleak structure in Paris where thousands of France’s Jews are being forcibly detained.