Historical Biographical Fiction

In 1665, London was struck by the bubonic plague, an epidemic that was the last major instance of the bubonic plague in England. This instance of the plague killed 100,000 people over a year and a half, and was transmitted through rats that ran through the city. A Journal of the Plague Year was presented as an eyewitness account of the epidemic through the eyes of Londoners.

A holy man to Hindus, a hero to Muslims, and a criminal to the British, Mohandas K. Gandhi was an inspiring figure of the 20th century, a man whose quest to live in accord with God’s highest truth led him to initiate massive campaigns against racism, violence, and colonialism.

From the #1 bestselling author of The Secret Wife comes a story of love, passion, and tragedy as the lives of Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas are intertwined—and they become the ultimate rivals, in love with the same man. The President's Wife; a Glamorous Superstar; the rivalry that shook...

Based on a true story. In October 1660, Etienne Gayneau rushes through the cobblestone streets of La Rochelle, France, to meet his cousin at the harbor. A ship carrying King Louis XIV's elite musketeers is docking. He dreams of becoming one himself, but has no idea that their arrival will force his Huguenot family to flee in the dead of night. His cousin has offered him a safe haven. Now he must choose - stay and pursue his dream or leave and face an uncertain destiny. Both choices are fraught with dangers. Either way his life will never be the same.

Versailles, 1789. As the burgeoning rebellion reaches the palace gates, Marie Antoinette finds her privileged and peaceful life swiftly upended by violence. Once her loyal subjects, the people of France now seek to overthrow the crown, placing the heirs of the Bourbon dynasty in mortal peril. Displaced to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the royal family is propelled into the heart of the Revolution. There, despite a few staunch allies, they are surrounded by cunning spies and vicious enemies.

In this illuminating biographical novel, Sherry Jones spans Josephine Baker's early years in servitude and poverty in America to her rise to fame as a showgirl in her famous banana skirt to her activism against discrimination, and her many loves and losses. From 1920s Paris to 1960s Washington to her final, triumphant performance, one of the most extraordinary lives of the 20th century comes to stunning life on the page. With intimate prose and comprehensive research, Sherry Jones brings Josephine Baker into focus for the first time in a joyous celebration of a life lived in technicolor.

Early one morning, less than a month after her 18th birthday, Alexandrina Victoria is roused from bed with the news that her uncle William IV has died, and she is now queen of England. The men who run the country have doubts about whether this sheltered young woman, who stands less than five feet tall, can rule the greatest nation in the world. Surely she must rely on her mother and her venal advisor, Sir John Conroy, or her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who are all too eager to relieve her of the burdens of power.

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

Germany, 1942. Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann is stripped of his place in the world when his school is seized by the Nazis. He relocates to a small German hamlet to wed Elisabeth Herter, a widow who seeks a marriage - in name only - to a man who can help raise her three children. Anton seeks something too - atonement for failing to protect his young students from the wrath of the Nazis. But neither he nor Elisabeth expects their lives to be shaken once again by the inescapable rumble of war.

Some men strive for greatness. And some men find themselves thrust into the role of their nation's saviors. Such are the two heroes who reshaped and reconfigured the entire destiny of the kingdom of Scotland. Wallace the Braveheart would become the only legendary, heroic, commoner in medieval British history. The other, Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, would perfect the techniques of guerrilla warfare developed by Wallace and use them to create his own place in history as the greatest king of Scots.

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...

Miss V. Conroy is good at keeping secrets. She likes to sit as quiet as a mouse, neat and discreet. But when her father sends her to Kensington Palace to become the companion to Princess Victoria, Miss V soon finds that she can no longer remain in the shadows. Her father is Sir John Conroy, confidant and financial advisor to Victoria's mother, and he has devised a strict set of rules for the young princess that he calls the Kensington System.

Eul’blond est l’expression préférée du grand gnou pour nommer son fils, son gaou. Ce surnom étant un savant mélange d’avertissements et de recadrage, il est aussi le cri hiérarchique du géniteur envers sa progéniture. Et ce, même si son prolongement n’est pas blond, mais plutôt brun. La grande migration des gnous de 1980 se prépare à Montréal. Eul’blond a douze ans et s’apprête, sans le savoir, à entrer dans le rituel de passage propre à sa race.

The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. Estranged from Ada's father, who was infamously "mad, bad, and dangerous to know", Ada's mathematician mother is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science.

Award-winning historian and best-selling author Paul L. Maier has created a compelling style of documentary fiction. He uses what is historically known of Pilate's life, adds in the known political climate of first-century Judea, and unveils the colorful, untold story that changed history. Filling in the details of Pilate's early career in Rome, Maier captures the drama of imperial Rome under Tiberius Caesar, the plotting of his political allies and enemies, and his relationship with his beloved but ambitious wife, Procula.

Aleen Cust has big dreams. And no one―not her family, society, or the law―will stop her. Born in Ireland in 1868 to an aristocratic English family, Aleen knows she is destined to work with animals, even if her family is appalled by the idea of a woman pursuing a veterinary career. Going against their wishes but with the encouragement of the guardian assigned to her upon her father’s death, Aleen attends the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, enrolling as A. I. Custance to spare her family the humiliation they fear.

For fans of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, bestselling author C. W. Gortner effortlessly weaves history and drama in this captivating novel about one of the world’s most notorious families. Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy...

Flora Thompson is best known as the author of Lark Rise to Candleford, a semi-autobiographical, bestselling series exploring Oxfordshire country life in the late 19th century. Heatherley picks up the story a year after her central character, Laura, left Candleford Green, moving on to Grayshott on the Hampshire/Surrey border, and with it, finding a new world. Through Laura, the book explores Flora’s experience working in a post-office, where to her surprise her customers included the authors Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw.

In the mid-1940s, the great historical novelist Anya Seton embarked on a fervent search for her forebears that led her to Marblehead, Massachusetts, a "sea-girdled town of rocks and winding lanes and clustered old houses". There she found not only an ancestor, but also the setting for this, her fourth novel.

A voyage of discovery, two remarkable women, and an extraordinary time and place enrich this New York Times bestselling novel by Tracy Chevalier, author of At the Edge of the Orchard and Girl With a Pearl Earring. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and...