Historical Biographical Fiction

Acclaimed historical novelist Vanessa Riley is back with another novel based on the life of an extraordinary Black woman from history: Haiti’s Queen Marie-Louise Coidavid, who escaped a coup in Haiti to set up her own royal court in Italy during the Regency era, where she became a popular member of royal European society.

In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".

The Magician tells the story of Thomas Mann, whose life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism. He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide.

Newly widowed and the father of an infant son, Henry VIII realizes he must marry again to ensure the royal succession. Forty-six, overweight, and suffering from gout, Henry is soundly rejected by some of Europe's most eligible princesses. Anna of Kleve, from a small German duchy, is 24 and has a secret she is desperate to keep hidden. Henry requests her portrait from his court painter, who portrays her from the most flattering perspective. Henry is entranced by the lovely image, only to be bitterly surprised when Anna arrives in England and he sees her in the flesh.

Elisabeth Eidenbenz left Switzerland in 1937 to aid children orphaned during the Spanish Civil War. Now, her work has led her to France, where she's determined to provide expectant mothers and their unborn children a refuge amid one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Desperate to escape the invasion of Franco's Fascist troops, Isabel Dueñas becomes one of many Spanish patriots fleeing their country. She leaves behind her husband as he fights for democracy, and she seeks asylum in a refugee camp across the border in France.

1857. Three women—once strangers—come together in unpredictable Utah Territory. Hopeful, desperate, and willful, they’ll allow nothing on Earth or in Heaven to stand in their way. Following the call of their newfound Mormon faith, Tamar Loader and her family weather a brutal pilgrimage from England to Utah, where Tamar is united with her destined husband, Thomas Ricks. Clinging to a promise for the future, she abides an unexpected surprise: Thomas is already wedded to one woman—Tabitha, a local healer—and betrothed to still another.

After two bestselling series examining the Civil War and WWII, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have turned their sharp eye for detail on the Revolutionary War with To Try Men's Souls. The story follows three men with three very different roles to play in history: General George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Jonathan Van Dorn, a private in Washington's army.

She rode with the most famous outlaws of her time. From the deserts of Texas to the sweeping vistas of Wyoming, the refinement of New York City to the lush valleys of Argentina, Etta followed the outlaw men she loved so dearly. Then, she disappeared.

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.

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe oppose him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum and a deadlock. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell.

In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.

To Pocahontas and her people, the Tidewater is the rightful home of the Powhatan tribe. To England it is Virginia Territory, fertile with promise, rich with silver and gold. As Jamestown struggles to take root, John Smith knows that the only hope for survival lies with the Powhatan people. He knows, too, that they would rather see the English starve than yield their homeland to invaders. In the midst of this conflict, Pocahontas, the daughter of the great chief, forges an unlikely friendship with Smith.

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

The internationally renowned novel about the life and death of Jesus Christ. Hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, The Last Temptation of Christ is a monumental reinterpretation of the Gospels that brilliantly fleshes out Christ’s Passion. This literary rendering of the life of Jesus Christ has courted controversy since its publication by depicting a Christ far more human than the one seen in the Bible. He is a figure who is gloriously divine but earthy and human, a man like any other - subject to fear, doubt, and pain.

By the end of the 15th century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians.

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.

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.

1918: Pretty, vivacious Grand Duchess Maria Romanov, the 19-year-old daughter of the fallen Tsar Nicholas II, lives with her family in suffocating isolation, a far cry from their once-glittering royal household. Her days are a combination of endless boredom and paralyzing fear; her only respite are clandestine flirtations with a few of the guards imprisoning the family - never realizing her innocent actions could mean the difference between life and death.

Her story is so much more than a tale of war, tremendous courage, and loss. It is one of the greatest love stories in history. Based upon a true Spanish heroine. Barcelona, Spain, 1803. Agustina Saragossa, the youngest daughter of a bladesmith, sneaks around the military barracks, yet not to snag a husband as everyone thinks. Stubborn, hot-tempered and fiercely devoted to her country, like her grandfather before her, she is far more interested in learning about the ensuing war between Britain and France than the lazy, arrogant Spanish soldiers at the compound. When Sergeant Juan Roca, a ...

17th Century Holland. When Griet becomes a maid in the household of Johannes Vermeer in the town of Delft, she thinks she knows her role: housework, laundry and the care of his six children. But as she becomes part of his world and his work, their growing intimacy spreads tension and deception in the ordered household and, as the scandal seeps out, into the town beyond.