Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

One of the foremost writers of her generation explores the strength and pain of being young As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li. 'Days: the easiest possession. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. They would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into a friend or an enemy to...

Nineteen-year-old Anne of Denmark, Queen of Scotland, is thrilled and triumphant at the birth of a healthy baby boy, destined to reign as King of Scotland and, possibly, England. But Anne's enjoyment of maternal glory quickly fades as her husband King James, fearing his son will be politically manipulated against him as he was against his mother, the deceased Mary Queen of Scots, removes the child permanently from her care. Outraged, Anne tries to regain control of her son, initiating a bitter marital struggle which sours what had been a loving and harmonious marriage.

The story blends a bit of imagination with the true story about six-year-old Paddy and his life in New York City, to rural Kilkenny County in Ireland, in the 1960s, and back again to New York, and how he learned that Banshees are real while also managing to navigate and survive a broken home and a variety of other early-life challenges. The boy’s name may not really be Paddy, but to tell this story, a hint of Irishness and anonymity may be necessary.

From the author of Caroline, a revealing retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women, from the perspective of Margaret “Marmee” March, about the larger real-world challenges behind the cozy domestic concerns cherished by generations of readers. In 1861, war is raging in the South...

Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter verliert die Schauspielerin Nina ihre Stimme. Das Schweigen ihrer Mutter schnürt ihr die Luft ab. Zu viele Fragen sind noch offengeblieben: Was hat Irma so erschüttert, dass sie der ältesten Tochter nie die ersehnte Wärme geben konnte? Was geschah damals, in jenem...

Brought to you by Penguin. The heartbreaking Japanese classic telling the story of two orphans fighting for survival at the end of World War Two, published in English for the first time In the dying days of the War, Seita and Setsuko must fend for themselves. Firebombs have obliterated their...

2,300 years ago an unbeaten army of the West invaded the homeland of a fierce Eastern tribal foe. This is one soldier’s story . . . The bestselling novelist of ancient warfare returns with a riveting historical novel that re-creates Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Afghan kingdoms in...

The Nazis wanted her champagne. The critics wanted her erased. Lily Bollinger refused to surrender. 1940: In occupied France, the Bollinger cellars are a battlefield. Newly widowed Lily must host the Nazi Weinführer while Resistance fighters hide in the chalk tunnels directly beneath her feet.

November 1539. Sent as a bride for the much-married King of England, Anna of Cleves has left her homeland and family behind to travel to England. There to be wed to a man who has killed one wife, and perhaps caused the deaths of two more, Anna fears her marriage and husband, yet she has been promised to Henry VIII to secure alliance for her country, and safety for her people. But will there be safety for Anna? Into a court of scandal and cutthroat politics she is thrown, and only by her wits will she survive.

London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There they bring together a glittering circle of bright, outrageous artistic friends who will grow into legend and come to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. And at the center of this charmed circle are the devoted, gifted sisters: Vanessa, the painter, and Virginia, the writer.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of A Touch of Love by Jonathan Coe, read by Peter Caulfield. Robin, a postgrad student in Coventry, has spent four and a half years not writing his thesis. He and his academic colleagues, united by pallor, social ineptitude and sexual inexperience, once...

Una de las mas amargas creaciones de Dostoyevsky, El Jugador es una novela autobiografica que describe tristes experiencias que tuvo el gran escritor. Los protagonistas son todos fanaticos del juego, en este ganan, pierden y ponen todas sus esperanzas, no tanto por la ganancia economica sino por la emocion.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous fiction about the power of...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters' RACHEL CUSK He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once...

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?

In time for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States comes a sweeping, intimate portrayal of Abigail Adams—wife of one president and mother to another—whose wit, willpower, and wisdom helped shape the fledgling republic. A stunning historical novel with modern-day implications...

It is 1948, and post-war Britain is on her knees. The call has gone out to the British Empire for volunteers to help rebuild the Mother Country, and young men and women from across the Caribbean have been quick to respond, paying the considerable sum of £28.10s to board HMT Empire Windrush. As five hundred disparate passengers begin the two-week voyage, it becomes clear that their lives will never be the same again.

Brought to you by Penguin. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction Flaubert's Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of the past and our sense of abroad; with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and...

Removed from the shadow of death as the Queen of King Henry VIII, Anna of Cleves revels in her new life as the King's "good sister". A new Queen has risen, the young Catherine Howard, and as court and country try to pit Anna against Catherine, the Lady of Cleves strives to show only friendship and support to the new Queen and the royal family.