Political Historical Fiction

Beautiful, educated Svetlana Petrova defied her stifling aristocratic family to join a revolution promising freedom. Now, released after years of imprisonment, she discovers her socialist party vying for power against the dictatorial Bolsheviks and her beloved uncle, a champion of her cause, was murdered by a mysterious assassin named Orlova. Her signature? Blinding her victims before she kills them. Svetlana resolves to avenge his death by destroying this vicious opponent, even as she longs to reunite with the daughter she has not seen in years.

"Une journée d'Ivan Denissovitch", c'est celle du bagnard Ivan Denissovitch Choukhov, condamné à dix ans de camp de travail pour avoir été fait prisonnier au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le récit nous montre sa journée depuis le coup sur le rail suspendu dans la cour qui marque le lever, jusqu'au court répit du soir et au coucher, en passant par les longues procédures de comptage, la peur des fouilles, les bousculades au réfectoire, les travaux de maçonnerie par un froid terrible dans l'hiver kazakhe, les menues chances et malchances de la journée.

A forested property on a Brandenburg lake outside Berlin lies at the heart of this darkly sensual, elegiac novel. Encompassing over 100 years of German history, from the 19th century to the Weimar Republic, from World War II to the Socialist German Democratic Republic, and finally reunification and its aftermath, Visitation offers the life stories of 12 individuals who seek to make their home in this one magical little house. The novel breaks into the everyday life of the house and shimmers through it, while relating the passions and fates of its inhabitants.

La historia humana está plagada de individuos cuyos nombres perdurarán por siempre; hay otros tan icónicos que se los conoce solo por su nombre de pila. Pero existe otra categoría, la de aquellos que ni siquiera pueden ser nombrados y para quienes basta con una letra: a ella pertenece Benito Mussolini. Esta es la biografía novelada de un hombre y, a través de él, también la de una época entera, la del surgimiento del fascismo.

March 1917 tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it.

It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator's sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul's girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life--and this story of good intentions and reckless actions.

Personable, good looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend.

In recent decades, ostensibly to combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai’s underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspects. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch dispensed with dishing out this vigilante justice, has a difficult choice: Should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?

Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.

Rome, AD 51: Vespasian brings Rome's greatest enemy before the emperor. After eight years of resistance, the British warrior Caratacus has been caught. But Agrippina, Emperor Claudius' wife, pardons Caratacus. Claudius is a drunken fool, and Narcissus and Pallas, his freedmen, are battling for control of his throne. Separately,they decide to send Vespasian east to Armenia to defend Rome's interests. Meanwhile the East is in turmoil.

"The Lion" will be landing. And at New York's JFK Airport, an elite American task force waits as the notorious Libyan terrorist prepares to defect to the West. Then, aboard Flight 175, something goes eerily, horribly wrong - a mere prelude to the terror that is to come. Ex-NYPD cop, now Federal Task Force agent John Corey - together with his formidable and beautiful new partner, Kate Mayfield - will follow a trail of smoke and blood across the country. His quarry: a foe with the cunning of a lion and all the bloodlust of a man.

Le pire est toujours à craindre lorsqu'il s'agit de s'emparer du pouvoir. Merveille d'un empire menacé, Constantinople est au cœur des plus grandes ambitions. Nicétas et Héraclius, héritiers d'un monde en déclin, sont prêts à tout pour éliminer l'empereur Phocas, l'Usurpateur, et prendre le pouvoir. Mais remporter des batailles ne leur suffira pas. Une jeune fille, qu'il faudra conquérir elle aussi, leur permettra d'accéder au trône. Les amis d'hier deviennent ennemis mortels, complots politiques et intrigues amoureuses s'entremêlent, les vengeances appellent d'autres vengeances plus terribles encore.

Patrick Taylor’s first novel of the Irish Troubles, Pray for Us Sinners, introduced us to Provisional IRA bombmaker Davy MacCutcheon and the love of his life, Fiona Kavanagh. Davy planned to leave the Provos after one final mission. But the deadly mission backfired, and Davy ended up in prison. Six years later, in Now and in the Hour of Our Death, Fiona Kavanagh has found sanctuary in Vancouver, Canada. But news of a breakout at the Maze prison brings back memories she thought she’d left behind.

In the midst of the Japanese occupation of China and Hong Kong, two lives become intertwined: Wong Chia Chi, a young student active in the resistance, and Mr. Yee, a powerful political figure who works for the Japanese occupational government. As these two move deftly between Shanghai's tea parties and secret interrogations, they become embroiled in the complicated politics of wartime - and in a mutual attraction that may be more than what they expected.

Giuseppe Levi, the father, is a scientist, consumed by his work and a mania for hiking—when he isn't provoked into angry remonstration by someone misspeaking or misbehaving or wearing the wrong thing. Giuseppe is Jewish, married to Lidia, a Catholic, though neither is religious; they live in the industrial city of Turin where, as the years pass, their children find ways of their own to medicine, marriage, literature, politics. It is all very ordinary, except that the background to the story is Mussolini's Italy in its steady downward descent to race law and world war.

The dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, recurrent themes of Paul Bowles’s writings, are dramatized with brutal honesty in this novel set in Fez, Morocco, during that country’s 1954 nationalist uprising. Totally relevant to today’s political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations, The Spider’s House is perhaps Bowles’s best, most beautifully subtle novel.

De Prague à Alger, en passant par Paris, de 1910 à 2010, ce roman évoque la traversée d'un siècle par Joseph Kaplan, médecin juif praguois, qui débarque à Paris en 1936. Il écoute les chansons de Carlos Gardel et écume les bars parisiens, insensible à la montée des fascismes européens. Dans les tourmentes de l'Histoire, de la Seconde Guerre mondiale jusqu'à la chute du mur de Berlin, Joseph Kaplan va traverser le siècle en trébuchant puis se relevant.

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.

The third volume of Gore Vidal's magnificent series of historical novels aimed at demythologizing the American past, 1876 chronicles the political scandals and dark intrigues that rocked the United States in its centennial year.

Eine neue Gefahr ist aus der Asche des Dritten Reichs auferstanden: Phoenix! Rudolf Heß, die rechte Hand Hitlers, ist tot und sein persönliches Tagebuch, die "Spandauer Papiere", landen durch Zufall in den Händen des unscheinbaren Polizisten Hannes Apfel. Nur Stunden später ist Hannes nicht nur das Ziel von mehreren internationalen Geheimdiensten, sondern wird auch noch von der mysteriösen und skrupellosen Gruppe "Phoenix" gejagt! Denn was auch immer in den "Spandauer Papieren" geschrieben steht – es könnte den Kalten Krieg wieder eskalieren lassen ... und sogar einen alten Feind zurückbringen.