Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

A blend of autobiography and fiction, the book opens on the day his close friend, Pop, a celebrated hunter, leaves Ernest in charge of the safari camp and news arrives of a potential attack from a hostile tribe. Drama continues to build as his wife, Mary, pursues the great black-maned lion that has become her obsession. Spicing his depictions of human longings with sharp humor, Hemingway captures the excitement of big-game hunting and the unparalleled beauty of the scenery.

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.

William Marshal’s prowess and loyalty as a knight in the English royal household has been rewarded by marriage to Isabelle de Clare, heiress to great estates in England, Normandy and Ireland. But their contentment and security is shattered when King Richard dies and is succeeded by his brother John, who takes the Marshals’ sons hostage and seizes their lands.

A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings. The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank.

Raised alongside her numerous brothers and sisters by the formidable empress of Austria, ten-year-old Maria Antonia knew that her idyllic existence would one day be sacrificed to her mother’s political ambitions. What she never anticipated was that the day in question would come so soon.

Like The Last Temptation of Christ, Saint Francis is a fictionalized biography of a widely venerated Christian figure: Francis of Assisi, whose renunciation of his young man’s life of leisure and founding of a religious order dedicated to living in poverty and sharing the Gospels with all living things profoundly influence the ways in which Christians the world over worship and give service to their god even today.

12th century, England: A penniless young knight with few prospects, William Marshal is plucked from obscurity when he saves the life of Henry II's formidable queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In gratitude, she appoints him tutor to the heir to the throne, the volatile and fickle Prince Henry. But being a royal favorite brings its share of danger and jealousy as well as fame and reward.

Every painting tells a story, but what if the women on the canvas could talk? Four flames, four wild, blazing hearts, longing to be known. All four will become muses to the charismatic but controversial artist Egon Schiele. In an elegant bohemian city like Vienna, everything seems possible - until an act of betrayal changes everything. For just as a flame has the power to mesmerize, it can also destroy everything in its path.

Set in Philly one year into Trump's presidency, Sean Thor Conroe's audacious, freewheeling debut follows our eponymous f--cboi, Sean, as he attempts to live meaningfully in a world that doesn't seem to need him. Reconciling past failed selves - cross-country walker, SoundCloud rapper, weed farmer - he now finds himself back in his college city, trying to write, doing stimulant-fuelled bike deliveries to eat. Unable to accept that his ex has dropped him, yet still engaged in all the same f--kery that led to her leaving in the first place.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France.

How do we give a voice to those who so often remain unheard? Will You Read This, Please is a frank and impactful collection of twelve stories as told to our best British writers, based on the lived experience of people who have faced mental illness in the UK. Edited by Joanna Cannon, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, Three Things About Elsie and A Tidy Ending, the stories told here are powerful, resonant and heart-breaking. This is a ground-breaking and unforgettable collection, shining a light on the stigma and isolation of living with mental illness.

The hero of Everyman is obsessed with mortality. As he reminds himself at one point, "I'm 34! Worry about oblivion when you're 75." But he cannot help himself. He is the ex-husband in three marriages gone wrong. He is the father of two sons who detest him, despite a daughter who adores him. A masterful portrait of one man's inner struggles, Everyman is a brilliant showcase for one of the world's most distinguished novelists.

To the world, she was Princess Victoria, daughter of a queen, wife of an emperor, and mother of Kaiser Wilhelm. Her family just called her Vicky...smart, pretty, and self-assured, she changed the course of the world. January 1858: Princess Victoria glides down the aisle of St. James Chapel to the waiting arms of her beloved, Fritz, Prince Frederick, heir to the powerful kingdom of Prussia.

Bosworth 1485: After victory against King Richard III, Henry Tudor becomes King of England. Rebels and pretenders plot to seize his throne. The barons resent his plans to curb their power and he wonders who he can trust. He hopes to unite Lancaster and York through marriage to the beautiful Elizabeth of York. With help from his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, he learns to keep a fragile peace. He chooses a Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, as a wife for his son Prince Arthur.

Lady Anne Seymour knows that her family hangs by a thread. If her sister-in-law Jane Seymour cannot give the King a son, she will be executed or set aside, and her family with her. Anne throws herself into the deadly and intoxicating intrigue of the Tudor court, determined to pay any price to see the new queen's marriage succeed and the Seymour family elevated to supreme power. But Anne's machinations will earn her a reputation as a viper, and she must decide if her family's rise is worth the loss of her own soul.

England, 1461: The young King Edward of York has taken the country by force from King Henry VI of Lancaster. Sir Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, flees the massacre of his Welsh army at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross and plans a rebellion to return his half-brother King Henry to the throne.

It is the turn of the 18th century in Frankfurt, Germany, and young Gutle and Meir Amschel Rothschild struggle to establish themselves in the cramped, restricted Judengasse. But when Meir’s talents as a novice banker catch the attention of a German prince, Meir is afforded entrée into the European world of finance and nobility, and the Rothschilds’ lives are changed forever. As proud as Gutle is of her husband’s success, she is also cautious - very much aware of the fact that her husband’s rise is tied to his patrons’ willingness to “see past” his Jewishness.

Evelyn Hugo, el icono de Hollywood que se ha recluido a su edad madura, por fin decide contar la verdad sobre su vida llena de glamour y de escándalos. Convocada en el lujoso apartamento de Evelyn, Monique escucha fascinada mientras la actriz le cuenta su historia. Desde su llegada a Los Ángeles en los años 50 hasta su decisión de abandonar su carrera en el mundo del espectáculo en los 80 —y, desde luego, los siete maridos que tuvo en ese tiempo—, Evelyn narra una historia de ambición implacable, amistad inesperada y un gran amor prohibido.

Italy, 1943. Luca Benedetto has joined the partisans in their fight against the German troops ravaging the shores of his town on Lake Como. While risking his life to free his country, Luca is also struggling to protect Sarah, his Jewish lover who’s hiding in a mountain cabin. As the violent Nazi occupation intensifies, Luca and Sarah fear for more than their own lives.

Luna Lewis is white. But her friends aren't, nor are her brothers, nor her one-time Princess of Indonesia–finalist stepmother. After transforming from pudgy preteen to ‘exotic' beauty, Luna reinvents herself as ‘Luna Lu' and takes her ticket out of the most isolated city on earth. However, as her international modelling career approaches its expiry date, Luna must grapple with what she's sacrificed—and who she's become—in her mission to conquer the world.