Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

April, 1912: It's the perfect finale to a Grand Tour of Europe—sailing home on the largest, most luxurious ocean liner ever built. For the Fortune sisters, the voyage offers a chance to reflect on the treasures of the past they've seen and contemplate the futures that await them. For Alice, there's foreboding mixed with her excitement. A fortune teller in Egypt gave her a dire warning about traveling at sea. And the freedom she has enjoyed on her travels contrasts with her fiance's plans for her return—a cossetted existence she's no longer sure she wants.

Vargas Llosa, Premio Nobel de Literatura y Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras, relata el fin de una era dando voz al impecable e implacable general Trujillo, apodado el Chivo, y al sosegado y hábil doctor Balaguer (sempiterno presidente de la República Dominicana). ¿Por qué regresa Urania Cabral a la isla que juró no volver a pisar?

Wang Er, a twenty-one-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession of his crimes, but he instead takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writing about the Cultural Revolution’s impact on his life and those around him. Finally, alone and humbled, Wang Er must come to terms with the banality of his own existence.

With the age of voyages of discovery in the 15th century, the curtain of history slowly came down on the late Middle Ages. Portuguese and Spanish seafarers set out to remeasure the dimensions of the earth. Numerous spices and fruits, which we would hardly be able to do without today, found their way to Europe for the first time. Columbus discovered America in 1492 on his quest for India. Six years later, it was left to Vasco da Gama to travel through the sea route to India sought by Columbus on the eastern route around Africa.

Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most 20-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her clever calculations. But Mitza is smart enough to know that, for her, math is an easier path than marriage. And then fellow student Albert Einstein takes an interest in her, and the world turns sideways. Theirs becomes a partnership of the mind and of the heart, but there might not be room for more than one genius in a marriage.

In the throes of crisis, Rome braces for change. Caesar, Rome’s greatest general and conqueror of Gaul, now faces being stripped of his command and dragged back to Italy for prosecution by his enemies. His former ally, Pompey, has sided with his opponents in the Senate and frustrates all efforts to find peace. With no alternatives, Caesar crosses the Rubicon and spearheads an invasion of Rome with Mark Antony at his side, throwing the empire into civil war. Will Antony rise to the heights of power or be executed as a traitor?

Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army. In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence’s upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she’s pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony’s war.

Married to Emperor Franz Joseph, Elisabeth—fondly known as Sisi—captures the hearts of her people as their “fairy queen,” but beneath that dazzling persona lives a far more complex figure. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, the halls of the Hofburg Palace buzz not only with imperial waltzes and champagne but with temptations, rivals, and cutthroat intrigue. Feeling stifled by strict protocols and a turbulent marriage, Sisi finds solace at her estate outside Budapest, where she rides her beloved horses and enjoys visits from a man with whom she’s unwittingly become enamored.

Captain Nemo is the fictional life story of one of Jules Verne's most memorable characters from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. It covers his boyhood friendship with the dreamer Jules Verne, adventures aboard sailing ships, battles with pirates, and survival on a mysterious deserted island. Each time he returns home to his beloved France, Captain Nemo shares the tales of his exploits with the struggling writer Verne.

In death, she would become infamous, yet in life passed often unseen. Jane Parker, daughter of the scholar Lord Morley, leaves her home at a tender age, embarking on a career in the dangerous Tudor Court. From the halls of her father's house to the palaces of London, from England to Calais and the Field of the Cloth of Gold Jane will travel, seeing much of this world, and others.

Dublin, 1904. Nora Barnacle is a 20-year-old from Galway, working as a maid at Finn’s Hotel. On June 16th, Bloomsday, her life is changed when she meets Dubliner James Joyce - a fateful encounter that turns into a lifelong love. Despite his hesitation to marry, Nora follows Joyce in pursuit of a life beyond Ireland. But as their life unfolds, Nora finds herself in conflict between their intense desire for each other and the constant anxiety of living in poverty throughout Europe.

A highly decorated English soldier and an acclaimed poet and novelist, Siegfried Sassoon won fame for his trilogy of fictionalized autobiographies that wonderfully capture the vanishing idylls of Edwardian England and the brutal realities of war. In this first novel of the semiautobiographical George Sherston trilogy, Sassoon wonderfully captures the vanishing idylls of the Edwardian English countryside.

When Marie moves from her family's waxwork museum into the palace of Versailles, her whole life is set to change... When Marie Tussaud learns the exciting news the royal family will be visiting her famed wax museum, the Salon de Cire, she never dreams that the king's sister will request her presence at Versailles: as a royal tutor in wax sculpting.

My Struggle: Book One introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable.

From Brexit to Covid, parties to pig culling, the Conservative government has lurched from crisis to crisis. With a front-row seat on the, erm, backbenches, the Secret Tory has picked up on all the petty rivalries, bad decision-making and scandalous affairs that Whitehall has to offer. And he’s got no qualms about sharing it. All. Join the mystery MP as he drunk-texts Liz Truss after a crate of WKD, accompanies Jacob Rees-Mogg (and his kids) to picket a foodbank, takes on the French in the ‘Trawler Wars’, and euthanises Rishi Sunak’s dog—and that’s just October.

Washington City, 1864. One has to be careful with talk of secession, of Confederate whispers falling on Northern ears. Better to speak only when in the company of the trustworthy, like Mrs. Surratt. A widow who runs a small boardinghouse on H Street, Mary Surratt isn't half as committed to the cause as her son, Johnny. If he's not delivering messages or escorting veiled spies, he's inviting home men like John Wilkes Booth, an actor who is even more charming in person than he is on the stage.

His most intimate and epic work to date, Inside Story is the portrait of Martin Amis' extraordinary life, as a man and a writer. This novel had its birth in a death - that of the author's closest friend, Christopher Hitchens. We also encounter the vibrant characters who have helped define Martin Amis, from his father Kingsley, to his hero Saul Bellow, from Philip Larkin to Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Jane Howard, and to the person who captivated his 20s, the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps.

Salisbury 1226. When a child of village outcasts disappears from Salisbury, the odious new sheriff doesn’t seem to care. Ela Longespée is determined to help the girl’s desperate parents and her investigation leads her into the thick of a human-trafficking ring in London. There, she vows to find the lost child, arrest the perpetrators, and convince the king to make her high sheriff of Wiltshire.

Artist Hans Holbein is summoned to the house of Sir Thomas More to receive the commission of a lifetime. He will leave with a secret that could cost him his life. He will learn the truth about the life of King Richard III, the man that the Tudor dynasty has been at great pains to villify. From his return from exile with his brother, King Edward IV, to his rise to become the king's most loyal, most trusted, and most powerful subject. From his flourishing personal life to his seizure of the throne from his nephew.

The Dalai Lama's cat is back - older, a bit wiser and as curious as ever. In this audiobook, the Dalai Lama sets for his lovable feline companion the task of investigating the art of purring. Whether it's the humorous insights gained from a visiting Ivy League Psychology Professor, the extraordinary research of a world-famous biologist, or the life-changing revelations of a mystical yogi, His Holiness's cat encounters a wealth of wisdom about happiness.