Historical Biographical Fiction

King Horic is dead. The oaths that once bonded the Danes and Northmen in the islands of Aquitaine have broken. Hasting's new land is imperiled by fearsome challengers and old foes alike. A rumor from the continent will shatter the brittle veneer of his strength and expose his deepest wound from the past. His greatest trial will not be fought with a sword, ax, or shield, but with his heart.

It's the spring of 1917, and change is in the air. American women have done something remarkable: They've banded together to create military-style training camps for women who want to serve. These so-called National Service Schools prove irresistible to the Kopp sisters, who leave their farm in New Jersey to join up.

The year is 1601. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, childless. Her nervous kingdom has no heir. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen’s spymasters - hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism - fear that James is not what he appears.

Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project. Working with some of the age’s greatest scientific minds, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard, Charlie is assigned the task of designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. As he performs that work Charlie suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda—unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s task—mistakes as self-doubt. Once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the feelings of culpability devastate him and Brenda.

For decades Hazie Coogan has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton, veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart - and boudoir. Soon, Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in an upcoming musical extravaganza. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans and for posterity.

Barbara Chase-Riboud is an award-winning poet, novelist, scholar, and sculptor. Hottentot Venus, a 2004 BCALA Literary Award winner, focuses on Sarah Blaartman, an African tribewoman who, because of her prominent sexual characteristics, was paraded as a freak before audiences in England and Paris. This mesmerizing novel reflects the racism and cruelty of turn-of-the-century Eurocentric culture, but it also reveals Sarah's remarkable strength of spirit.

A free woman of color in the 1830s, Margaret Morgan lived a life full of promise. One frigid night in Pennsylvania, that changed forever. They tore her family apart. They put her in chains. But they never expected her to fight back. In 1837, Margaret Morgan was kidnapped from her home in Pennsylvania and sold into slavery. The state of Pennsylvania charged her kidnapper with the crime, but the conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, the heart of this story is not a Supreme Court ruling.

Nefertiti has forced Naomi to flee Amarna with Malachi and the three children. But even under the protection of Naomi’s family in Thebes, Nefertiti still hunts her and Tut. Nefertiti sends assassins to kill them, and while Naomi fights to protect the children, Malachi fights to keep her safe. With three children in tow, one of which isn’t her own, she is labeled the harlot outcast wife of the pharaoh and is shunned. She isn’t safe among her own people, and flees from being stoned to death.

In a world where loyalty is tested and power is fleeting, young Ela, only child of the Earl of Salisbury, finds herself swept out of England after the death of her father to the opulent courts of Richard Lionheart. Betrothed to William Longsword, the King's illegitimate brother, she navigates a life filled with danger and ambition. As King John’s tyranny looms, Ela's love for William and their growing family face relentless threats. When war strikes and William is presumed lost at sea, ambitious suitors circle like vultures. Will Ela’s unwavering spirit endure, or will fate tear them ...

It was Emily Carr (1871-1945), not Georgia O'Keeffe or Frida Kahlo, who first blazed a path for modern women artists. Overcoming the confines of late Victorian culture, Carr became a major force in modern art. Her boldly original landscapes are praised today for capturing an untamed British Columbia, and its indigenous peoples, just before industrialization would change it forever. In this novel, Susan Vreeland brings to life this fiercely independent and underappreciated figure.

An epic re-creation of the exhilarating and mysterious time when the Sun King ruled Egypt, Ramses, the Son of Light, has become the rage in France. With over two million copies sold, it is the greatest publishing phenomenon to hit the shelves there in 20 years. Rameses is only 14 when his father, the Pharaoh Seti, begins testing his true mettle. Being the younger of two sons, the proud Ramses has a problem with being relegated to second place.

In 1573, Countess Erzsébet Báthory gives birth to an illegitimate child. Secretly taken to a peasant family living in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the infant girl is raised as their own. Years later, a young woman called Boróka—ignorant of her true history—is sent to join the Countess’s household. Terrified of the Countess’s murderous reputation and the brutally cruel women who run the castle, Boróka struggles to find her place. Then plague breaches the castle’s walls, and a tentative bond unexpectedly forms between the girl and the Countess.

In the years after Bosworth, a small boy is ripped from his rightful place as future king of England. Years later, when he reappears to take back his throne, his sister, Elizabeth, now queen to the invading king, Henry Tudor, is torn between family loyalty and duty. As the final struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster is played out, Elizabeth is torn by conflicting loyalty, terror, and unexpected love.

My Struggle introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intense and irresistible to hear. Unafraid of the big issues - death, love, art, fear - and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.

Queen. Lover. Stateswoman. Strategist. Wife. Mother. Commander. Pharaoh. Kleopatra must embody all roles as the mesmerizing sequel to Kleopatra Book I unfolds, and this magnificent sage reaches its stunning culmination. In this volume, Kleopatra, the most celebrated woman of the ancient world, has been reinstated to the throne. Embracing the fierce mission that will ultimately shape her into the Queen of Kings, Pharaoh of the Two Lands of Egypt, shenow shares her bed with the conqueror Julius Caesar. But in order for their infant son to be officially recognized as Caesar's rightful heir, ...

In the 1920s, long before he wrote The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was an accomplished pilot. Along with Jean Mermoz and Henri Guillaumet, he was chosen to pioneer new mail routes across the globe. No distance was too far and no mountain too high - each letter had to reach its destination. The three friends soared through the air, while back on solid ground, they dealt with a world torn apart by wars and political factions.

Amid the glitz and glamour of 1950s New York, Phoebe Adler pursues her dream of screenwriting. A dream that turns into a living nightmare when she is blacklisted - caught in the Red Menace that is shattering the lives of suspected Communists. Desperate to work, she escapes to London, determined to keep her dream alive and clear her good name. There, Phoebe befriends fellow American exile Hannah Wolfson, who has defied the odds to build a career as a successful television producer in England.

Adored by her parents and pampered by the court, the infant Princess Mary’s life changes suddenly and drastically when her father’s eye is taken by the enigmatic Anne Boleyn. Mary stands firm against her father’s determination to destroy both her mother’s reputation and the Catholic church. It is a battle that will last throughout both her father’s and her brother’s reign, until she is almost broken by persecution.

Scotland has been torn apart by civil war, and the young and passionate Catholic Mary Queen of Scots is in the hands of her enemies. Under duress, Mary abdicates in favour of her son, James VI, and flees to England for safety, boldly seeking refuge with her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. But Elizabeth has never trusted the ambitious Catholic queen and has Mary imprisoned.

"God save the Queen! God save our good Queen Mary"! When these words rang out over England, Mary Tudor thought her troubles were over. She could put her painful past - the loss of her mother and mistreatment at the hands of her father - behind her. With her accession to the throne, Mary set out to restore Catholicism in England and find the love of a husband that she had long desired. But the tragedies in Mary's life were far from over. How did a gentle, pious woman become known as "Bloody Mary"?