Political Historical Fiction

Akhulgo, 1838: Jamalludin wächst als Sohn eines mächtigen Imams im Kaukasus auf. Als Zar Nikolaus I. die Region mit Krieg überzieht, verlangt er den Jungen als Unterpfand. So gelangt der kleine Junge nach Sankt Petersburg, an den prächtigen Zarenhof. Der Zar will den Sohn seines Widersachers als Russen erziehen, um ihn später als Verbündeten zurück in den Kaukasus zu schicken. Jamalludin ist hin- und hergerissen zwischen der Sehnsucht nach seinem Elternhaus und den Möglichkeiten, die sich ihm in Petersburg bieten.

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.

Set during the tumultuous middle of the George W. Bush years - amid the twin catastrophes of the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina - Landfall brings Thomas Mallon's cavalcade of contemporary American politics, which began with Watergate and continue with Finale, to a vivid and emotional climax.

America wasn’t founded. It was forged in smoke, sabotage, and the kind of silence that doesn’t beg for credit. The Boston Tea Party was a cover. Beneath wigs and warpaint, rebels moved Turkish opium through the harbor and crossed names off ledgers. Some were loyalists. Some weren’t. Nobody asked twice. In the smoke-filled port cities of rebellion, a syndicate formed. Part secret society, part shadow state, it traded liberty like cargo and laundered loyalty through blood. Washington held the center. Franklin read every cipher twice.

Leningrado, Rusia, 1968. Desde su infancia, está claro que Alexander Karpenko está destinado a liderar a sus compatriotas. Sin embargo, cuando su padre es asesinado a manos del KGB por haber desafiado al estado, Alexander y su madre se verán obligados a escapar de Rusia si quieren tener la oportunidad de sobrevivir. En los muelles se les presenta una disyuntiva de la que no hay marcha atrás: embarcar en un navío mercante que va de camino a América o en otro con destino a Gran Bretaña. Alexander lanza una moneda para decidir a cuál suben...

Per oltre cinquant'anni la valle del Nilo non ha conosciuto altro che guerra e distruzione per mano degli Hyksos, un popolo assetato di sangue giunto dal lontano Oriente. La situazione è disperata: a frenare l'avanzata del nemico rimane solo un manipolo di coraggiosi ribelli capitanati da Taita, potente mago e consigliere del faraone, l'unico convinto che esista ancora una speranza. Piay, che gli è stato affidato dai genitori quando aveva solo cinque anni, è stato addestrato per diventare un prode guerriero e una spia senza rivali.

The 1968 Tet uprising plunges America deeper into the abyss of Vietnam. Martin Luther King is shot, and riots rage in 130 burning American cities. Students protesting the War take over American universities, and street battles in Paris nearly topple the French government. Senator Eugene McCarthy enters the Democratic presidential race against Lyndon Johnson, followed by Bobby Kennedy, who goes on to win the California Democratic primary.

Travin es un joven judío apasionado de la política comunista y admirador de la Unión Soviética. Junto a su madre y su hermana, viajan a Córdoba, Argentina, para pasar el verano. Ahí, con un país dividido por las fuerzas armadas, Travin queda fascinado con la presencia de un grupo social totalmente diferente al suyo. Bajo una identidad falsa, la vida de Travin se desdoblará.

Summer on Fire: A Detroit Novel is set in the Motor City during the hot summer of 1967. Its characters are thrust into tumultuous episodes of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, anti-war demonstrations, rock and roll at the Grande Ballroom, drugs, anarchism, the White Panther Party, Wilhelm Reich, and a bomb plot that an editor of the Metro Times wrote, provides “a people’s history and radical folklore of Detroit”. The setting is seven weeks in a critical year that demanded ethical choices by all involved, ones which mirror today’s crises.

When 16-year-old Gabriel Lazris, an American in Santiago, Chile, meets Caro Ravest, something clicks. Caro, who is Chilean, is charming, curious, and deeply herself. Gabriel dreams of their future together. But everybody’s saying there’s going to be a coup—and no one says it louder than Gabriel’s dad, a Nixon-loving newspaper editor who Gabriel suspects is working with the C.I.A. Gabriel’s father is adamant that the moment political unrest erupts, their family is going home. To Gabriel, though, Chile is home.

"America de peste pogrom e un roman aflat într-un echilibru instabil între burlesc și gravitate, dar de o forță indiscutabilă." — Libération

AD 211: Septimius Severus, Emperor of Rome, has invaded what is now Scotland, but Tullius, second-in-command of the legendary Sixth Victrix Legion, has more to worry about. Severus’s eldest son, a young Caracalla, is already testing the limits of his power as his monstrous nature begins to reveal itself. With his family under threat of death from him, Tullius must balance their safety with a sworn duty to his emperor and turn to the only people who can help – those north of Hadrian’s Wall – his enemies.

Anne is a former patient from a women's asylum trying to carve out a new life for herself in a world that doesn't understand her. Newcomer Lawrence is desperate to develop his talent as a photographer and escape the restrictions of his puritanical upbringing. Ellis, an army surgeon, has lived through the trauma of one civil war and will do anything to avoid another bloodbath. Each keeps company with the restless beasts of Paris' Menagerie, where they meet, fight their demons, lose their hearts, and rebel in a city under siege.

Eine Frau kämpft für die Rechte der Kinder. 1830: Nicht nur in Preußen herrscht die Überzeugung, dass man von Kindern nichts hören und sehen sollte. Um sie vom Weg der Sünde abzubringen, ist körperliche Züchtigung notwendig. Entsetzt verfolgt die junge Luise Levin, wie ihre Neffen geschlagen werden und wie man die Kinder von Arbeiterinnen in Verwahranstalten diszipliniert. Als sie von einer neuartigen Erziehungsanstalt erfährt, die Friedrich Fröbel in Thüringen gegründet hat, bewirbt sie sich dort gegen den Willen ihrer Familie als Haushälterin.

Deportado cinco veces por cuatro presidentes peruanos, sospechoso de haber estado involucrado en tres golpes de estado en el Perú y uno en el extranjero, Eudocio Ravines, figura ácida y rutilante en la historia latinoamericana del siglo XX, aparece por doquiera que uno escarbe, conspirando, denunciando, polemizando, escaldando y sacando de quicio. Después de una relación estrecha y dramática con Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre y José Carlos Mariátegui, abandona sus roles de comisario político de alto nivel en la Internacional Comunista para combatir la ideología que antes defendía férreamente.

Esta novela narra el ascenso y la caída de Santos Rodríguez, un influyente asesor político que luego de acompañar a distintos presidentes aspira él mismo a convertirse en gobernante de una República jamás nombrada, pero que se parece mucho al México de mediados del siglo XX. Dotado de un gran carisma y copiosas arcas, y amparado en su buena fortuna, Santos Rodríguez buscarácumplir su sueño a toda costa. Pero nada es tan sencillo en un país donde la lucha por el poder ocurre en el terreno de la miseria moral.

Watergate could have turned out quite differently. In this novel, it does. The story is told by a fictitious White House official who becomes entangled in a web of bribery, blackmail, arson, and espionage. He conspicuously fails to follow his own good advice: Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post.

March 1945—the Nazis have tested their first atomic bomb, the West doesn’t want the world to know—and the Soviets are racing to claim it. Desperate to keep nuclear technology out of Stalin’s hands, the Office of Strategic Services sends Scott Arlington on a one-way mission behind enemy lines. His objective: intercept the Nazi scientists, prevent the Soviets from seizing the German atomic facility, and erase all traces of the program—by any means necessary.

Conrad de Lancey has seen enough of evil: the shadow of fear on the faces of innocents; the sudden lull before the slaughter begins. Franco's bloody insurrection taught this Englishman all about hell. Arriving in his mother's country, the now Nazi Germany, Conrad is sick at heart. Even Berlin—infamous haven of decadence—salutes fascism. Himmler's black-shirted troops rule the city, and every German arm bears a Swastika. But does every German heart belong to Hitler?

Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the disgraced former Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning—not only for her husband, but the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept isle of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country; a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history; and her dangerous alliance with the brilliant, mercurial Francis Greenway, the colony's maverick architect.