Historical Biographical Fiction

Based on a true story, Queenie of Norwich is the compelling tale of one remarkable girl's journey to womanhood. Spanning the first half of the 20th century, Queenie's story is one of heartbreak and triumph, love and loss, and the power of family. It is a story of redemption, and how, with grit and determination, anything is possible.

The Macedonian is based on the early life of Philip II, King of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great and perhaps the greatest military genius of the ancient world. Born a minor prince of the royal house, he survives the intrigues of a family in which treachery and murder are almost a tradition. A brilliant commander while still in his teens, he becomes king when his brother, King Perdikkas, and half the Macedonian army are massacred and his country is on the brink of ruin.

Three stories about historical heroes (Matthew Henson, Michael Faraday, and Joseph Lister) and three exciting adventures!

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".

For more than three decades, Yugoslavia's history played out in the life of one man. That man was Josip Broz Tito. The fictional autobiography of a regime insider, K. Balej's thoroughly researched novel provides a revealing insight into the emergence and functioning of the Yugoslav socialist system from the time of the Vienna Congress in 1815 to Tito's own death in 1980. It is an immersive exploration of the changing nature of Tito's power and the fascinating symbiosis of man and state that Tito represents.

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.

1564: Devon sailor Francis Drake sets out on a journey of adventure. Drake learns of routes used to transport Spanish silver and gold, and risks his life in an audacious plan to steal a fortune.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and public lectures, and reading some of the greatest books of the era.

May 1536, London...a fallen queen sits waiting in the Tower of London, condemned to death by her husband. As death looms before her, Anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII, looks back on her life...from the very beginning.

Considered by some to be Budd Schulberg's masterpiece, The Disenchanted tells the tragic story of Manley Halliday, a fabulously successful writer during the 1920s - a golden figure in a golden age - who by the late 1930s is forgotten by the literary establishment, living in Hollywood and writing for the film industry. Halliday is hired to work on a screenplay with a young writer in his twenties named Shep, who is desperate for success and idolizes Halliday.

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.

"The Heroic Slave" is the only work of fiction by the eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The narrative was inspired by Madison Washington, a slave on the Creole who led a rebellion on the ship in November 1841, and had it sail to Nassau in the Bahamas instead of New Orleans. The short story appeared in the collection Autographs for Freedom (1852).

Elizabeth of York, her life already tainted by dishonour and tragedy, now queen to the first Tudor king, Henry the VII. Joan Vaux, servant of the court, straining against marriage and motherhood and privy to the deepest and darkest secrets of her queen. Like the ravens, Joan must use her eyes and her senses, as conspiracy whispers through the dark corridors of the Tower.

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.

Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship - forged over writing, talk, and family dinners - flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.

In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end - his last three novels have been commercial failures, and the critics have turned against him. In despair Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin's farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic - and his life turns upside down. The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon.

Two years after Emperor Augustus's bloody defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, he triumphantly returns to Rome. To his only child, Julia, he brings an unlikely companion - Selene, the daughter of the conquered Egyptian queen and her lover. Under the watchful eye of Augustus's wife, Livia, Selene struggles to accept her new home among her parents' enemies. Bound together by kinship and spilled blood, these three women - Livia, Selene, and Julia - navigate the dangerous world of Rome's ruling elite.

John Knox, the Thundering Scott, lives a life of adventure and danger in turbulent, corrupt 16th-century Scotland. Finding himself a wanted man, Knox is besieged in a castle by French soldiers, seized, and made a galley slave. Yet he is unflinching in his stand for the gospel, even in the face of assassins and death, and even when his fiery preaching makes him an enemy of Mary, Queen of Scots. Told from the perspective of a young student resolved to protect Knox at any cost, Douglas Bond's thrilling biographical novel provides a look at the harrowing life story of a giant of the faith.

It’s October 1931. When Winnie Ruth Judd arrives at the Los Angeles train station from Phoenix, her shipping trunks catch the attention of a suspicious porter. By the time they’re pried open, revealing the dismembered bodies of two women inside, Ruth has disappeared into the crowd. The search for, and eventual apprehension of, the Trunk Murderess quickly becomes a headline-making sensation. Even the Phoenix murder house is a sideshow attraction.

“This novel about Sarah Bernhardt, the iconic French actress, is both a riveting portrait of the artist as a passionate young woman and a luscious historical novel full of period detail.”—Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of Mistress of the Ritz and The Aviator’s...