Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Biographical Fiction

The Two Roberts is a fictional reimagining of the lifelong love between working-class artists Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. They met as students at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. They fell in love almost immediately and rarely left each other’s side - meeting great success and bitter failure but always staying committed to art and each other. They were at the heart of a social set that included Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart - living an out Bohemian life, whatever the consequences.

Jacquetta, daughter of the count of Luxembourg and kinswoman to half the royalty of Europe, was married to the great Englishman John, duke of Bedford, uncle to Henry VI. Widowed at the age of 19, she took the extraordinary risk of marrying a gentleman of her household for love and then carved out a life for herself as Queen Margaret of Anjou's close friend and a Lancaster supporter - until the day that her daughter Elizabeth Woodville fell in love and married the rival king Edward IV.

At Heim Hochland, a Nazi breeding home in Bavaria, three women’s fates are irrevocably intertwined. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she’s secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official’s child. And Irma, a forty-four-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. All three have everything to lose.

In the midst of World War II, Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing has created a machine named Nautilus that can send a message back into the recent past. After Turing uses it to help the Allied forces succeed on D-Day, he sees the power (and potential danger) of what he has created. He knows he can only entrust it to one person: Joan, the mother of his secret child.

Mary Bligh is no shrinking violet. After an horrific six-month sea voyage from Britain, she proves to be as strong-willed as her father, the bloody-minded, newly appointed Governor William Bligh. The pair immediately scandalise Sydney with their personalities, his politics and her pantaloons. And when 300 armed soldiers of the Rum Rebellion march on Government House to depose him, the Governor is nowhere to be seen as Mary stands defiantly at the gates, fighting them back with just her parasol.

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

Sabine Kuegler wuchs im Dschungel von Westpapua auf, ihr Buch "Dschungelkind" wurde ein weltweiter Millionenbestseller. Mit 17 Jahren kam sie nach Europa und erfuhr einen Kultur-Clash. Heute lebt sie in Hamburg, hat Kinder, Freunde und Arbeit. Aber noch immer ist sie eine Zerrissene zwischen den Welten und der innere Kampf um ihre Identität quält sie.

Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her ma is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone. As she wends her way across the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.

Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind.

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.

A woman torn between love and duty. Two husbands dead, a boy and a sick man. And now Katharine is free to make her own choice. The ageing king's eye falls upon her. She cannot refuse him, or betray that she wanted another. She becomes the sixth wife - a queen and a friend. Henry loves and trusts her. But Katharine is hiding another secret in her heart, a deeply held faith that could see her burn.

Following the 'three days of peace and music' at Woodstock, the 1969 gathering in Bethel, NY that would change the world forever, hippie paradises began to emerge all around the world. In the Dam Square in Amsterdam, long-haired young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense could be found meditating, playing music and discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness and the search for an inner truth. They were a generation refusing to live the robotic and unquestioning life that their parents had known.

Anne Neville and her sister Isabel are daughters of the most powerful magnate in 15th century England. Ever ruthless, always plotting, in the absence of a son and heir, Warwick sets about using his daughters as pawns in his political games. Anne grows from a delightful child brought up at the court of Edward IV and his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, intimacy and friendship with the family of Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Her life is overturned when her father turns on his former allies, escapes England and invades with an enemy army.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have peppered her unremarkable career.

Madeleine Talmage Force is just 17 when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialite. Despite their 29-year age difference and the scandal of Jack's recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love. On their honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace away from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time - and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner.

Italy is exhausted. Tired of the political class. Tired of the inept moderates and the agonising machinations of a democracy that no longer seems to be working. While the leaders of the country have sat idly in the safety of parliament, achieving nothing, one man on the outside has risen to the top. Like an animal, he can smell that change is coming. He is Benito Mussolini.

England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector's wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances' love of books and secretly practiced Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn't report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.

Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. A Guardian Fiction Book of the year. Sometimes discovery brings destruction. "When We Cease to Understand the World" shows us great minds striking out into dangerous, uncharted terrain. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger: these are among the luminaries into whose troubled minds we are thrust as they grapple with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, they alienate friends and lovers, they descend into isolated states of madness.

This is the story of a man who loved two women, and one of them killed him. Some people have dreams that are so outrageous that if they were to achieve them, their place in history would be guaranteed. Francis Drake, Robert Scott, Percy Fawcett, Charles Lindbergh, Amy Johnson, Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong are among such individuals. But what if one man had such a dream, and when he'd achieved it, there was no proof that he had fulfilled his ambition?

In England, the Middle Ages are a time for ambitious men to prosper. Before he becomes the father of William Marshal, John FitzGilbert is a man of honor and loyalty, sworn to royal service. When the old king dies, his successor rewards the handsome and ambitious John with castles and lands. But King Stephen has a tenuous hold on his reign over medieval England. In these unstable times, John's loyalty to the British king comes at great cost. So, when jealous rivals at court seek to destroy John, he takes matters into his own hands.