Biographical Fiction

Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all....

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world....

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca....

Inspired by a true story, two teens kidnapped by an African warlord find salvation through love in a powerful and healing historical novel from the #1 bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley....

The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons—the impulsive and sensual Dmitri....

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival....

This is the story about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune—a forbidden friendship that changed the world....

Her beauty saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee....

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary....

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph....

Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia....

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins....

Bestselling author ReShonda Tate presents a fascinating fictional portrait of Hattie McDaniel, one of Hollywood’s most prolific but woefully underappreciated stars—and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in the critically acclaimed classic film Gone With the Wind.

In 1580s England, during the Black Plague, a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction....

1867, Richmond, Virginia: Though she wears the same low-cut purple gown that is the uniform of all the girls who work at Worsham's gambling parlor, Arabella stands apart. It's not merely her statuesque beauty and practiced charm....

Sharp-eyed, stubborn, and passionate, Jindan was known for her beauty. When she caught the eye of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, she was elevated to royalty, becoming his youngest and last queen—and his favorite....

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Garden of Evening Mists comes a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption....

The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman's life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms....

Dan Freeman, the “spook who sat by the door,” is enlisted in the CIA’s elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as “Freedom Fighters” in this explosive novel....

Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight....

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post comes an epic imagining of the life of Margaret Fuller—America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation....

Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling....

In Prohibition-era Los Angeles, two women on opposite sides of the law must take control of their lives, make their marks, and try to survive. Even if it means crossing the line....

From the New York Times best-selling authors of America's First Daughter comes the epic story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton - a revolutionary woman....

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him....

The Education of Joshua Chastain is a fictional memoir about a gay boy who grows up in a small Mormon community in northern Arizona, a kind of Mormon shtetl. The novel describes Josh's journey of self-discovery as he explores his sexuality, engages in various sexual relationships during his teenage years (including one with a Roman Catholic priest), and endures verbal and sometimes physical abuse from teachers and classmates.

In Seventeen, Friendship, and Swimming, Colombe Schneck orchestrates a coming-of-age in three movements. Beautiful, masterfully controlled, yet filled with pathos, they invite the listener into a decades-long evolution of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, and loss.

Adored only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon, young Princess Mary grows up as the sole heiress to the English throne. But her father wants a son, and soon Mary's world begins to fall apart. With her parents' marriage - and England - in crisis, Mary is banished from the court and kept apart from the mother she adores. The King promises to restore his daughter to favour, but first Mary must do something for which she will never forgive herself. She seeks solace in her faith.

Code Name Sanford - I often warn in GMJ books about the threat and menace of penetration agents (radicals) inside Western Intelligence Agencies. This is something that will bite the West in the years to come and is being suppressed for political reasons. In the previous book, Code Name Odette, GMJ 8, we took a hard look at cyphers and codes, explaining to you the difference between the two as well as the history of cyphers. More importantly, we warned that according to the Al-Qaeda Manual, found on the laptops of the London Tube bombers (the 2005 attack), that hostile penetration is taking ...

The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons—the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.

In the vein of The Paris Wife and The Personal Librarian comes this debut novel, a magnificent work of “biographical fiction” that reimagines the turbulent and triumphant early years of Ella Fitzgerald, arguably the greatest singer of the twentieth century.

Christina Georgina Rossetti is the youngest of four siblings in a close-knit, creative Anglo-Italian family. A spirited child like her brother, Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in adolescence she struggles with being sickly and depressed. She emerges "a dove on a solitary branch," realizing her voice through writing, most exceptionally poetry.

This book follows the fictitious Harris family through the American Revolution and migration westward to the shores of Lake Ontario. Thomas Harris was the soldier’s soldier and was awarded a battlefield commission by General George Washington just before the Battle of Yorktown. Following release from his military obligations and suffering severe hardships, Harris and his family moved westward from Connecticut, across New York State. As in the first book of the "Lineage" series, the author laid down his own family tree against events in history, as if family members of the period could ...

From interdisciplinary writer and performer Jacob Wren comes Polyamorous Love Song, a novel of intertwined narratives concerning the relationship between artists and the world. Shot through with unexpected moments of sex and violence, listeners will become acquainted with a world that is at once the same and opposite from the one in which they live.

Growing up motherless in 1980's Miami Beach, Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha get by with their charismatic and capricious father, Jackson Jones. When a small windfall relocates them to a condemned mansion on the water, the siblings are forbidden traditional schooling and left to live off the land. As Jackson uses their new home to create a communal cult, the siblings are forced to raise themselves in a carefree, chaotic oasis. Living amidst the vagrant seekers who take up residence in Jackson's utopia, Sienna and Siddhartha strive to protect their unconventional family.

Intense and densely layered, Involuntary Bliss is the latest intriguing story from the award-winning young Canadian writer Devon Code. Situated in modern-day Montreal during a weekend in late August, two young men attempt to restore their friendship.

It’s 1927. Letty Hart’s father is long gone, but his old winery provides a meager wage and a legal livelihood for selling sacramental wine. But when that contract goes bust, Letty stumbles upon a desperate option: her father’s hidden cellar—and enough liquor to tempt Letty to bootleg the secret stash. In an underworld dominated by merciless men, Letty is building an empire.

18th century, Scotland. Jacobite sympathies stir powerful emotions, especially in a titled young man with little to occupy him. But strong-willed Lady Winifred Nithsdale has already seen her mother, father, and brother imprisoned for their support of England's Catholic king. While she wants to be loyal, Winifred tries to protect her husband from imprisonment, or worse, the scaffold. But will she escape with her own life intact?

Code Name Dawson is the last book in the “Egg Breaker War” Series within the GMJ Series. It has been a long road for Angelique Dawson, the brilliant onetime South African Secret Service Head of Counter-Terrorism and Counter-Espionage. After her illegal detention in 2012 and subsequent escape and defection to France (Code Name VFO565), she came back to deal with unfinished business. The “Egg Breaker War” kicked off with a surprise attack on the households of the narrator in the GMJ Books, Geoffrey Foxtrot and his best friend, legendary Special Forces officer, Geelslang Peter Ndebele,...

Code Name Devorah deals with the use of armoured fighting vehicles in unconventional warfare scenarios. During my life, I have spoken to many South African armour officers, a breed apart and to be avoided if possible. They proudly follow something between the Russian and Prussian outlook on war. The Russians see war as a science, a mathematical exercise. The Prussians see war as an art where instinct plays a large role and the commander must have a “feeling” for the battle. The South African Armour officers combined the two doctrines to fit their needs; they see logistics, by God, and ...