Historical Biographical Fiction

As the beautiful daughter of courtiers, Elizabeth "Bessie" Blount is overjoyed when she secures a position as maid of honor to Katherine of Aragon. But when she captures the attention of the king himself, there are whispers that the queen ought to be worried for her throne. When Bess gives birth to a healthy son the whispers become a roar. But soon the infamous Boleyn girls come to court and Henry's love for her begins to fade.

On November 22, 1963, the First Lady accompanied her husband to Dallas, Texas dressed in a pink Chanel-style suit that was his favorite. Much of her wardrobe, including the pink suit, came from the New York boutique Chez Ninon, where a young seamstress, an Irish immigrant named Kate, worked behind the scenes to meticulously craft the memorable outfits. When the pink suit becomes infamous, Kate's already fragile world - divided between the excess and artistry of Chez Ninon and the traditional values of her insular neighborhood - threatens to rip apart.

In the mid-19th century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his fathers nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his fathers will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

A moving story, wrapped in humor, about love, loss, and hope in one of history’s darkest hours. 1933. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany marks the beginning of the end for the Jews of Europe. For little newborn Yaakov, this is only the beginning. Hungary, 1944. 11-year-old Yaakov and his parents and younger sister are forced out of their home into the unknown. They find themselves in the ghetto, living under impossible conditions, until they are banished by the Nazis to Bergen Belsen concentration camp through Austria, what might be their final destination.

South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, twenty-six-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader. Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her husband's flamboyant male concubine.

This exquisitely imagined novel opens as William rescues Caroline from a life of drudgery in Germany and brings her to England and a world of music making and stargazing. Lina, as Caroline is known, serves as William's assistant and the captain of his exhilaratingly busy household. William is generous, wise, and charismatic, an obsessive genius whom Lina adores and serves with the fervency of a beloved wife. When William suddenly announces that he will be married, Lina watches her world collapse.

From her beginnings as the daughter of a courtesan to her extraordinary transformation into the most celebrated actress of her era, Sarah Bernhardt is brought to life by an internationally best-selling author praised for his historical novels featuring famous women.

In Cardiff, Wales in 1952, Mahmood Mattan, a young Somali sailor, is accused of a crime he did not commit: the brutal killing of Violet Volacki, a shopkeeper from Tiger Bay. At first, Mahmood believes he can ignore the fingers pointing his way; he may be a gambler and a petty thief, but he is no murderer. He is a father of three, secure in his innocence and his belief in British justice. But as the trial draws closer, his prospect for freedom dwindles.

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.

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.

Returning to her Midwest roots, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick draws a page from her grandmother's photo album to capture the interplay between shadow and light, temptation and faith that marks a woman's pursuit of her dreams. She took exquisite photographs, but her heart was the true image exposed. Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele loves nothing more than capturing a gorgeous Minnesota landscape when the sunlight casts its most mesmerizing shadows.

In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life.

Award-winning author Denny S. Bryce and USA Today bestselling author Eliza Knight collaborate on a brilliant novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe.

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.

A freak auto accident on a rainy night in Hawaii leaves a young man dead. The year? 1980. The young man? Mark David Chapman. Eighteen years later, Paul McCartney decides to honor his wife Linda’s passing with a benefit concert. Twenty eight years after the break-up, Paul calls his three oldest friends. “Hey lads, let’s put on a show…”The world has been waiting a lifetime for a Beatles reunion and now it’s here. Or is it?

1913, un paquebot quitte l'Europe. À son bord, trois jeunes en quête d'une seconde chance. Rosetta, jeune femme indépendante et rebelle, fuit son village italien. À la mort de ses parents, harcelée et violentée par la pègre, ayant perdu son honneur, elle n'a eu d'autre choix que d'abandonner la ferme familiale. Rocco, fier et fougueux jeune homme, laisse derrière lui sa Sicile natale. Il cherche à échapper à la Mafia locale, à laquelle il a refusé de se soumettre.

This incredible story is based on true events concerning young Betsy Roberts: how she was kidnapped, abused, but survived America's first serial killers - the evil Harpe brothers - how she outlived and ultimately profited using her wits and sheer determination. Betsy Roberts, a young woman from Kentucky, is brutally kidnapped by notorious outlaws Micajah and Wiley Harpe who abuse, then exploit her. The novel describes how Betsy uses her wits and courage to survive, and then ultimately prospers despite the most appalling conditions and treatment she suffers.

From the palaces of pre-revolutionary Iran to Swiss boarding schools and the world's glamor capitals, Princess Soraya Esfandiary Bahktiari lived a life seemingly straight out of a fairy tale. The only daughter of a prominent Iranian family, at 16 she is selected from among the most beautiful and eligible women of her country to wed the Shah of Iran. Too young to recognize prominent members of Iranian society made the match - and that her job is to help unite a country being driven apart - one truth is inescapable: Soraya loves the Shah deeply.

After the defeated Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte goes into exile on tiny St. Helena Island in the remote South Atlantic, he and his lover, Albine de Montholon, plot to escape and rescue his young son. Banding together African slaves, British sympathizers, a Jewish merchant, a Corsican rogue, and French followers, they confront British opposition as well as treachery within their own ranks with sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, but always desperate action. When Napoleon and Albine break faith with one another, ambition and Albine’s husband threaten their reconciliation.

During the fur-trapping era of the early 1800's, Marie Dorion refuses to be left behind in St. Louis when her husband heads west. Faced with hostile landscapes, an untried expedition leader, and her volatile husband, Marie finds that the daring act she hoped would bring her family together may, in the end, tear them apart. History records that on the journey, Marie may have briefly met Sacajawea, the famous interpreter who accompanied Lewis and Clark. She too was married to a mixed-blood man of French Canadian and Native American descent, and was raising a son in a white world.