Showing results for "J" in Biographical Fiction

Salisbury, 1226. A mysterious poacher claims to be a long-lost heir - to a man found crushed by his own cart wheel. Ela Longespée is determined to find the truth, even though the king has coldly appointed another sheriff in her place. Ela takes pity on the man - an injured knight who once saved her husband’s life - and convinces the sheriff to release him from jail while she investigates. Will it turn out to be a deadly mistake?

Eighteen-year-old James Douglas can only watch, helpless, as the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace is hanged, drawn, and quartered. Even under the heel of a brutal English conqueror, James' blood-drenched homeland may still have one hope for freedom, the rightful king of the Scots, Robert the Bruce. James swears fealty to the man he believes can lead the fight against English tyranny. The Bruce is soon a fugitive, king in name and nothing more. Scotland is occupied, the Scottish resistance crushed. Yet James believes their cause is not lost.

James, Lord of Douglas, known to his foes as the Black Douglas, leads a flank of the Scottish army in crushing a vast invading English force at the waters of the Bannockburn. Fresh from battle, James revels in honors heaped on him by the Scots and in the hatred of the enemy. When King Robert the Bruce orders him to push their advantage and force the English to the peace table, they both know the only way James can do so is by fire and the sword - the only language King Edward of England understands.

Fourteenth-century Scotland suffers under the heel of England's King Edward, and James Douglas refuses to submit to the conqueror. As he wages a scorched-earth guerrilla war to drive out the invader and reclaim his birthright, Edward brings a vast army to crush the Scots. In the midst of the brutal war, even the woman James loves is threatened by his implacable duty.

King Horic is dead. The oaths that once bonded the Danes and Northmen in the islands of Aquitaine have broken. Hasting's new land is imperiled by fearsome challengers and old foes alike. A rumor from the continent will shatter the brittle veneer of his strength and expose his deepest wound from the past. His greatest trial will not be fought with a sword, ax, or shield, but with his heart.

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.

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually—and then all at once—comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere.

"The rock-n-roll fable we all need right now" tells the story of an unlikely group of musicians who are brought together through the power of music when something miraculous happens. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing and explosively creative neighborhood—and seen through the eyes of people who have experienced true devastation—we find this unintended troupe bringing a community together across cultural, generational, and ethnic divides. But can some things—even good and true things—get too big for their own good?

My story is a true life drama set in the remote east Texas woods in 1971. The main characters are 10 emotionally disturbed delinquent teenage boys from the Southside of Chicago. The boys had been rejected from Chicago and Illinois juvenile facilities and from the boys ranch in Austin Texas.

After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. She has the fortitude to manage the house and garden, raise their children, and face unbearable sorrow by herself - in fact, she is sometimes in thrall to her own independence.

Dive into the heart of medieval Ireland with this historical tale of courage, deception, and the relentless pursuit of power. Aoife, the defiant daughter of the dethroned King of Leinster, is thrust from a life of privilege into the heart of political and familial turmoil. Promised in marriage to the formidable Norman warrior, Strongbow, her life becomes a canvas of conflict, painted with the broad strokes of national upheaval and the intricate lines of personal betrayal.

"Je souhaite que l'auditeur ressente dans les variations de ma voix toutes les émotions qu'il ne pourrait trouver en ne lisant que le livre. Cette émotion-là est difficile à jouer. Je n'ai pas joué, j'ai fermé les yeux et j'ai entendu les échos de cette enfance..."

Poteet Victory is a rags-to-riches story of historical significance. Through his efforts on behalf of the tribes, Poteet became one of the most-honored Native Americans of the past half century. Abandoned as a child, he beat the odds to become a renowned painter, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who has sold thousands of paintings for millions of dollars.

The girl who led the English against the French in the One Hundred Years War, who hears voices of the saints and God himself, discovers she will burn at the stake, not for leading the French Armies against her English captors, not for heresy against the church, but for cross-dressing. Despised by Bishop Cauchon, he lays out a legal case against Joan which is full of lies but no one goes against him. Most look forward to watching whom they believe is the devil woman burn at the stake. A guard she has befriended lays out an escape plan to free her but fate intervenes.

Captain Nemo is the fictional life story of one of Jules Verne's most memorable characters from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. It covers his boyhood friendship with the dreamer Jules Verne, adventures aboard sailing ships, battles with pirates, and survival on a mysterious deserted island. Each time he returns home to his beloved France, Captain Nemo shares the tales of his exploits with the struggling writer Verne.

This is the story of Willow 'Twig' Olsen, a woman of Scandinavian descent, who was trapped into an existence of traditional servitude for the first 38 years of her life, and what transpires after her last parent dies, and she is finally free to seek male companionship, as she has long desired. What happens thereafter is a whirlwind of unexpected events that lead to greed, deception, and eventually murder.

The story of two Civil War soldiers who fight on opposite sides but somehow come together in an unexpected bur profound way. Based on a true story of the author's own ancestors, it is a story of how their families united despite the odds.

Navigating the ins and outs of an absent father and a traumatized mother, and marked by choices made around religious zealots, drug addicted family, and growing up with his gay siblings in suburbia. We discover that as we grow, we become collectors of memories, keeping the ones that matter and throwing out the ones that don’t. Our choices rely heavily on how we interpret our past, and what meaning that we give to those memories.

Kurz vor Weihnachten, Ende der achtziger Jahre in Irland. Gewalt, religiöser Terror, Anfeindungen und Ausgrenzungen bestimmen den Alltag in einem Stadtteil in der Nähe von Belfast. "Sandy ist das, was mich am Leben hält", sagt Laurina eines Tages zu ihrer Mutter. Es ist der Tag, an dem das elfjährige Mädchen beginnt zu kämpfen, gegen ein unvorstellbar tristes Leben. An der neuen Schule sind alle gegen Laurina und ihre Schwester Sandy, weil sie keine ehrlichen Katholiken sind, wie die anderen Kinder sagen.