Historical Biographical Fiction

South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, twenty-six-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader. Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her husband's flamboyant male concubine.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling....

A daring, compelling, and impeccably researched historical novel that offers dramatic new insight into the life of the greatest composer the world has ever known. Its fresh perspective and deeply felt understanding of Beethoven's motivations, passions, and challenges speak eloquently to us today, connecting us to our own successes, failures, and dreams, and ultimately to the true consequence of our lives. At the moment of his death on a snowy afternoon in March, 1827, Ludwig van Beethoven pleads with Providence to grant him a final wish—one day, just a single day of pure joy. But first he...

In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".

1135, England: Matilda, daughter of Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England's queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival, and cousin, Stephen do not know the iron will that drives her. She will win her inheritance against all odds, and despite all men. Adeliza, Henry's widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, is now married to a warrior who is fighting to keep Matilda off the throne. But Adeliza knows that Britain's crown belongs to a woman this time. Both women will stand and fight for what they know is right for England's royalty.

Elizabeth "Gera" Fitz Gerald had a privileged life in her youth in Ireland, daughter of the FitzGerald Dynasty. Her privileged world is overturned when her father, the ninth earl of Kildare, is imprisoned in the Tower of London by King Henry VIII and her family is destroyed by corruption charges and scandal. Torn from her island home and the rest of her family spread out across Europe, Elizabeth has no choice but to accept a place in England's glittering court.

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?

In the mid-19th century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his fathers nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his fathers will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

Hanson joins the Green Berets fresh out of college. Carrying a volume of Yeats's poems in his uniform pocket, he has no idea of what he's about to face in Vietnam - from the enemy, from his fellow soldiers, or within himself. In vivid, nightmarish, and finely etched prose, Kent Anderson takes us through Hanson's two tours of duty and a bitter, ill-fated return to civilian life in-between, capturing the day-to-day process of war like no writer before or since.

It’s the 1970s, and from hippie London to Warhol’s Factory in New York, reluctant aristocrat Loulou de la Falaise is desperately seeking adventure. Having escaped an early, unhappy marriage, she arrives on a whim in Paris—the champagne-soaked heart of the fashion world, where the rigid old world of haute couture and the fast-paced new world of ready-to-wear are vying for supremacy. Glamour, sex, and cocaine nights fuel the Paris fashion scene. Its crown prince is the soulful and intensely gifted Yves Saint Laurent.

Paris, 1940. The Nazis have occupied the city - and the Ritz. The opulent old hotel, so loved by Parisians, is now full of swaggering officers, their minions and their mistresses. For American Olivia Olsen, working as a chambermaid at the hotel means denying her nationality and living a lie, every day bringing the danger of discovery closer. When Hitler’s right-hand man moves in and makes her his pet, she sees an opportunity to help the Resistance - and draw closer to Jack, her contact, whose brusque instructions may be a shield for something more....

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father's death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the World War I veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

August 1942. Jacob and Moses Stein, two young Jewish brothers, are staying with their aunt in Paris amid the Nazi occupation. The boys’ parents, well-known German playwrights, have left the brothers in their aunt’s care until they can find safe harbor for their family. But before the Steins can reunite, a great and terrifying roundup occurs. The French gendarmes, under Nazi order, arrest the boys and take them to the Vélodrome d’Hiver - a massive, bleak structure in Paris where thousands of France’s Jews are being forcibly detained.

L.A. Woman is quintessential Babitz, the story of Sophie, a 20-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A.; and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the '20s to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and that Rudolph Valentino is the essence of life. Sophie and Lola, like the many other women who move in and out of this electric saga, know that while L.A. is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal.

Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell her the hidden keys to her success. But the day Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade. Giulia must run for her life and escapes to Naples, under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, to the home of her aunt Isabetta, a famous courtesan.

Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa, and Naples, peopled with historical characters and filled with the details of the life of a 17th-century painter, The Passion of Artemisia is the story of Gentileschi's struggle to find love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art.

December 1952. While the young Queen Elizabeth II finds her feet as the new monarch, she must also find the right words to continue the tradition of her late father’s Christmas Day radio broadcast. But even traditions must evolve with the times, and the queen faces a postwar Britain hungry for change.

The Will and the Wisp is based on the compelling true story of the Armstrong family history. Set in the 1800's, O.C. Armstrong is a Mississippi tenant farmer that shares the crops with his brother-in-law Bud, and good friend old black Neil. When the men stumble upon a treasure the Wisp seems to offer a warning of doom, and the Native Indians tell them the treasure is evil. Then life takes an unexpected turn, the Armstrong family is torn apart, but will they heed these words of wisdom and leave the treasure alone? Is it too late? Or will they pursue the wealth and be forced to face the ...

The Age of Light tells the story of Vogue-model-turned-renowned-photographer Lee Miller, and her search to forge a new identity as an artist after a life spent as a muse. She arrives in Paris in 1929, where she soon catches the eye of the famous Surrealist Man Ray. Though he wants to use her only as a model, Lee convinces him to take her on as his assistant. But Man Ray turns out to be an egotistical, charismatic force, and as they work together in the darkroom, their personal and professional lives become intimately entwined, changing the course of Lee's life forever.

Built on the backs of those who fell before it, Julius Caesar's imperial dynasty is only as strong as the next person who seeks to control it. In the Roman Empire, no one is safe from the sting of betrayal: man, woman - or child. As a boy Nero's royal heritage becomes a threat to his very life, first when the mad emperor Caligula tries to drown him, then when his great-aunt attempts to secure her own son's inheritance. Faced with shocking acts of treachery, young Nero is dealt a harsh lesson: It is better to be cruel than dead.