Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

Chosen by John Irving in the New York Times as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century “Paul Theroux has exploited this biographical lacuna with great shrewdness and gusto… his fictional account of Blair’s life there [Burma] is a valid and entirely credible attempt to add flesh to the...

Italy, 1943. The Nazi occupation has cemented its grip on the devastated city of Naples. Giuseppe DiPietra, a curator in the National Archives, has a subversive plan to aid the Allies. If he’s discovered, forced labor or swift execution. Lucia Pastone, secretary for the Italian Fascist government, is risking her own life in secret defiance of orders. And Lucia’s father, Aldo, is a black marketeer who draws Giuseppe and Lucia into the underworld - for their protection and to help plant the seeds of resistance.

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed.

""In this sweeping, immersive novel, Clare McHugh draws readers into the mesmerizing world of the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria – Princess Vicky – as she emerges into a powerful force in her own right and ascends to become the first German Empress.” —Marie Benedict, New York Times...

No.1 bestselling author Gill Sims is back with her eagerly awaited sixth Why Mummy novel. When family life gives you lemons, trade them for grapes! Mummy Ellen has a Vision. She will cherish every moment this holiday with her Moppets Peter and Jane, alongside her ride-or-die best pal, Hannah...

Having sent his much-beloved but deceitful young wife Katheryn Howard to her beheading, King Henry fixes his lonely eyes on a more mature woman, 30-year-old, twice-widowed Katharine Parr. She, however, is in love with Sir Thomas Seymour, brother to the late Queen Jane. Aware of his rival, Henry sends him abroad, leaving Katharine no choice but to become Henry's sixth queen in 1543. The king is no longer in any condition to father a child, but Katharine is content to mother his three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and the longed-for male heir, Edward.

The Dalai Lama's cat is back - older, a bit wiser and as curious as ever. In this audiobook, the Dalai Lama sets for his lovable feline companion the task of investigating the art of purring. Whether it's the humorous insights gained from a visiting Ivy League Psychology Professor, the extraordinary research of a world-famous biologist, or the life-changing revelations of a mystical yogi, His Holiness's cat encounters a wealth of wisdom about happiness.

“This is not your grandmother’s St. Joan. . . . If every generation gets the Joan it deserves, ours could do worse than an ass-kicking, avenging angel fighting simply for the right to fight.”—The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY IN PARIS BOOK AWARD “It is...

In the vein of America’s First Daughter, Piper Huguley’s historical novel delves into the remarkable friendship of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt. At the turn of the twentieth century, in a time of great...

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.

From New York Times best-selling novelist Sharon Kay Penman comes the stunning story of a great medieval warrior-king, the accomplished and controversial son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Richard the Lionheart. A powerful tale of intrigue, war, and diplomacy, Lionheart plays out against the roiling conflicts of love and loyalty, passion and treachery, all set against the rich textures of the Holy Land.

“An extraordinary profile of immense courage and daring.”—Chanel Cleeton, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Left Cuba “If you only read one WWII book this year, make it this one."—Natasha Lester, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Orphans In the...

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing.

From iconic tortured artist/everyman Charles Bukowski, Hollywood is the fictionalization of his experience adapting his novel Barfly into a movie by the same name. Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego, is pushed to translate a semi-autobiographical book into a screenplay for John Pinchot. He...

The Provincial Lady finds herself in London, looking for voluntary work to support the war effort, which proves an unexpectedly difficult thing to achieve. Her interactions with a varied host of companions, also caught up in a strange frenzy, reflect so clearly the mood and tension of the time, yet the account is witty, apposite - and so very English, with the stiff upper lip underpinning it all.

If you love The Crown, then this is the audiobook for you! Diana, Catherine, Meghan…glamorous Princess Margaret outdid them all. Springing into post-World War II society, and quite naughty and haughty, she lived in a whirlwind of fame and notoriety. Georgie Blalock captures the fascinating...

Scientist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt summons the great mathematician Carl Gauss to Berlin before embarking on an ambitious expedition across Russia, determined to measure the world.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Six Tudor Queens series explores the private side of the legendary king Henry VIII and his dramatic and violent reign in this extraordinary historical novel. Young Henry began his rule as a magnificent and chivalrous Renaissance prince who embodied every virtue. He had all the qualities to make a triumph of his rule, yet we remember only the violence. Henry famously broke with the Pope, founding the Church of England and launching a religious revolution that divided his kingdom. He beheaded two of his wives and cast aside two others.

The Petting Zoo tells the story of Billy Wolfram, an enigmatic 38-year-old artist who has become a hot star in the late 1980s New York art scene. As the novel opens, Billy, after viewing a show of Velazquez paintings, is so humbled and awed by their spiritual power that he suffers an emotional breakdown and withdraws to his Chelsea loft. Carroll's novel moves back and forth in time to present emblematic moments from Billy's life.

In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing.