Historical Biographical Fiction

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.

On the eve of World War I, 21-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees - on her own for the first time - is introduced to the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats at a soirée in London. Although Yeats is famously eccentric and many years her senior, Georgie is drawn to him, and when he extends a cryptic invitation to a secret society, her life is forever changed. A shadow falls over London as zeppelins stalk overhead and bombs bloom against the skyline. Amidst the chaos, Georgie finds purpose tending to injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital, befriending the wounded and heartbroken Lieutenant Pike....

In this novel about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife, Lidian, Amy Belding Brown examines the emotional landscape of love and marriage. Living in the shadow of one of the most famous men of her time, Lidian becomes deeply disappointed by marriage, but consigned to public silence by social conventions and concern for her family’s reputation. Drawn to the erotic energy and intellect of close family friend Henry David Thoreau, she struggles to negotiate the confusing territory between love and friendship while maintaining her moral authority and inner strength.

A gripping, fact-based story of how Daniel Morgan and his courageous riflemen played a crucial role in George Washington's victory in the American Revolution.... They wore hunting shirts, deer-skin leggins and moccasins. Each had a tomahawk and a scalping knife in their belts and carried "long rifles" in their hands. Every rifleman was a Patriot volunteer, a tracker, and a hunter. And they could kill a redcoat from 250 yards.

In 1727, Stefan Silbermann is a grief-stricken 13-year-old, struggling with the death of his mother and his removal to a school in distant Leipzig. Despite his father’s insistence that he try not to think of his mother too much, Stefan is haunted by her absence, and, to make matters worse, he’s bullied by his new classmates. But when the school’s cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, takes notice of his new pupil’s beautiful singing voice and draws him from the choir to be a soloist, Stefan’s life is permanently changed.

The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all.

England, 1840. For the two decades following the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen has lived alone and unwed, spending her days visiting friends and relations and quietly, purposefully working to preserve her sister’s reputation. Now in her 60s and increasingly frail, Cassandra goes to stay with the Fowles of Kintbury, family of her long-dead fiancé, in search of a trove of Jane’s letters. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold.

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.

Daughter of a god, wife of a king, prize of antiquity's bloodiest war, Helen of Troy has inspired artists for millennia. Now Margaret George, the highly acclaimed best-selling historical novelist, has turned her intelligent, perceptive eye to the myth that is Helen of Troy.

Miss V. Conroy is good at keeping secrets. She likes to sit as quiet as a mouse, neat and discreet. But when her father sends her to Kensington Palace to become the companion to Princess Victoria, Miss V soon finds that she can no longer remain in the shadows. Her father is Sir John Conroy, confidant and financial advisor to Victoria's mother, and he has devised a strict set of rules for the young princess that he calls the Kensington System.

Loosely inspired by a true story, this tender portrait of marriage asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the remarkable story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history.

Versailles, 1789. As the burgeoning rebellion reaches the palace gates, Marie Antoinette finds her privileged and peaceful life swiftly upended by violence. Once her loyal subjects, the people of France now seek to overthrow the crown, placing the heirs of the Bourbon dynasty in mortal peril. Displaced to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the royal family is propelled into the heart of the Revolution. There, despite a few staunch allies, they are surrounded by cunning spies and vicious enemies.

> The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.

Jump on Santa's sleigh for a journey through 17 centuries of Christmas magic!

When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather's bookshop, she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls' lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself?

From afar Talitha's life seemed perfect. In her twenties, and already a famous model and actress, she moved from London to a palace in Marrakesh, with her husband Paul Getty, the famous oil heir. There she presided over a swirling ex-pat scene filled with music, art, free love and a counterculture taking root across the world.

At the height of the Middle Ages in the 14th century, King Edward III of England is determined to use any means necessary to expand his power and gain control of England's bitter rival, France. His own son, Edward, prince of Wales, is far from immune from his political plans. And when Joan of Kent, now free from exile, sees her chance for revenge, she takes it. A calculated plot to scandalize the royal family for revenge for her father's downfall and execution soon turns into the most surprising thing: love.

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed.

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.