Historical Biographical Fiction

It is August 12, 1945. Tomorrow, August Snow will be tried at the International War Crimes Court for patenting a more lethal variation on the atomic bomb. He invented a radiation machine to cure his young daughter’s cancer, despite knowing that the very same technology was capable of great destruction, and inevitably profited from disaster. But are his intentions relevant when the fate of the world is at stake?

L’opera al nero è la storia di un personaggio immaginario, Zenone, medico, alchimista, filosofo, dalla nascita illegittima a Bruges nei primi anni...

In this sweeping tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal - between a husband and a wife, between sisters - fact and fiction seamlessly blend together, creating a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman and her struggle to reconcile her love for her sister with her obsessive desire for her sister's husband, the mythic father of psychoanalysis.

This is the story of Owain Glyndwr, the last Welsh Prince of Wales. In the year 1399, Welsh nobleman Owain Glyndwr is living out a peaceful gentleman's life in the Dee Valley of Wales with his wife Margaret and their eleven children. But when Henry of Bolingbroke usurps the throne of England from his cousin Richard II, that tranquility is forever shattered. What starts as a feud with a neighboring English lord over a strip of land evolves into something greater - a fight for the very independence of Wales.

In his novel based on the extraordinary life of the gay brother of Vladimir Nabokov, Paul Russell re-creates the rich and changing world in which Sergey, his family, and friends lived; from wealth and position in prerevolutionary Russia, to the halls of Cambridge University, and the Parisian salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. But it is the honesty and vulnerability of Sergey, our young gay narrator, that hook the reader.

This book is based on the true life of Henry Stuart. When the 67-year-old former professor finds out he is dying of tuberculosis, he vows to “learn in solitude how to save myself.” He sets off for Fairhope, Alabama, with only the writings of his beloved Tolstoy for company. There, the barefoot poet builds himself a small hut and slowly becomes an inspiration for the rest of the utopian town. When his last few months become his last few years, Henry’s attempt to understand death becomes a lesson on life.

Yakov Blumkin claimed to have had nine lives. Born to a poor Jewish family and orphaned as a child, he was a Socialist Revolutionary, a terrorist, the assassin of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach, a poet close to the avant-garde, a member of Cheka, a military strategist, a secret agent, and Leon Trotsky’s secretary. Executed in 1929 on Stalin’s orders at the age of only twenty-nine, he has continued to inspire a powerful curiosity, and wild rumors and falsehoods about his extraordinary life abound today.

1547: Pedro Gonsalvus, a young boy living on the island of Tenerife, understands that he is different from the other children in his village. He is mercilessly ridiculed for the shiny layer of hair covering his body from head to toe. When he is kidnapped off the beach near his home, he finds himself delivered by a slave broker into the dangerous and glamorous world of France’s royal court. There “Monsieur Sauvage,” as he is known, learns French, literature, and sword fighting, becoming an attendant to the French King Henri II and a particular favorite of his queen.

As the struggle between York and Lancaster continues, Margaret Beaufort fights for admittance to the court of the victorious Edward IV of York and his unpopular queen, Elizabeth Woodville. The old king and his heir are dead, leaving only Margaret's son, the exiled Henry Tudor, with a tenuous claim to the throne. The royal nursery is full, with two small princes securing York's continuing rule. But Edward and Elizabeth's magnificent court hides a dark secret, a deception that threatens the security of the English throne...and all who lust after it.

Now remembered as the author of the world's most famous hymn, in the mid-18th century, as England and France stand on the brink of war, John Newton was a young sailor wandering aimlessly through life. His only duty was to report to his ship and avoid disgracing his father - until the night he heard Polly Catlett's enchanting voice caroling. He was immediately smitten and determined to win her affection.

Schon früh begehrt Simone de Beauvoir gegen die bürgerlichen Regeln auf - sie will mehr, als die Tochter aus gutem Hause und später Ehefrau und Mutter zu sein. Sie will stattdessen studieren und Lehrerin werden, um ihr Leben in Freiheit zu leben und - vor allem - um schreiben zu können. Der Wunsch nach persönlicher Weiterentwicklung treibt sie an, doch die großen Widerstände, denen sie sich als selbständige Frau ausgesetzt sieht, lassen sie immer wieder zweifeln.

The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" - the Chicanos of East Los Angeles. Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

When Malian slave traders invaded the Nigerian town of Òsogùn, thirteen-year-old Àjàyí's life is split in two. Before, there was his childhood, surrounded by friends and family, watched over by the ancient Yorùbá gods of forest and water, earth and sky. After, there was capture, slavery—and eventually release—with Àjàyí, left transfigured, unrecognizable, and now, in the service of a new god, with a new name and a culture different from the one left far behind.

This series features a real historical figure—the formidable Ela Longespée. The young Countess of Salisbury was chosen to marry King Henry II’s illegitimate son William. After her husband’s untimely death, Ela served as high sheriff of Wiltshire, castellan of Salisbury Castle, and ultimately founder and abbess of Lacock Abbey.

Lilia is a gripping, cinematic true story of resilience and survival set against the backdrop of Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Hitler’s brutal occupation. Amidst war-torn chaos, a young girl and her family fight to endure unthinkable loss, betrayal, and the daily terror of Nazi rule. Stripped of childhood and forced to navigate an unforgiving world, Lilia clings to the only thing that cannot be taken from her—hope.

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.

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady - a queen in her own right. But all reigns must come to an end.

Five years after the highly publicized trial of Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” law student Valérie Portheret began her doctoral research into the 108 children who disappeared from Vénissieux fifty years earlier, children who somehow managed to escape deportation and certain death in the German concentration camps. She soon discovers that their rescue was no unexplainable miracle.

Il romanzo trae ispirazione da un'esperienza autobiografica e narra la storia di un'intensa passione vissuta tra Pietro Brusio e Narcisa Valderi. L'uomo, attratto dalla trasgressione, conquista la donna, liberandola dal suo matrimonio, e si afferma come uno scrittore di grande successo, affrontando persino un duello per difenderla. La colpa diventa il filo conduttore che unisce i protagonisti. Il tema del matrimonio e dell'adulterio non si limita a essere una trasgressione o una conferma dei valori tradizionali, ma assume una sfumatura più complessa.

Based on a true story, this is the tale of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of 18th-century Paris. With a beautiful rival who’s better connected and better trained than she is, Adélaïde faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves.