Showing results for "free" in Biographical Fiction

An awkward misfit, nine-year-old Fulke FitzWarin leaves his family for the household of Joscelin de Dinan, Lord of Ludlow. Once there, he begins to learn the knightly arts which he desperately hopes will free him from the shadows of his past. Joscelin’s youngest daughter, Hawise, befriends Fulke when he most needs it. But as the years pass, an enemy to Ludlow changes their friendship unalterably, forcing them onto opposite sides of a cruel divide.

One of history's most complex and alluring women, Anne Boleyn was irresistible to kings and commoners alike. Daughter of an ambitious country lord, Anne was sent to France to marry well and raise the family's fortunes. She soon surpassed even their greatest expectations when King Henry VIII swore he would put aside his loyal queen to make Anne his wife.

Lady Anne Seymour knows that her family hangs by a thread. If her sister-in-law Jane Seymour cannot give the King a son, she will be executed or set aside, and her family with her. Anne throws herself into the deadly and intoxicating intrigue of the Tudor court, determined to pay any price to see the new queen's marriage succeed and the Seymour family elevated to supreme power. But Anne's machinations will earn her a reputation as a viper, and she must decide if her family's rise is worth the loss of her own soul.

Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.

In this novel about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife, Lidian, Amy Belding Brown examines the emotional landscape of love and marriage. Living in the shadow of one of the most famous men of her time, Lidian becomes deeply disappointed by marriage, but consigned to public silence by social conventions and concern for her family’s reputation. Drawn to the erotic energy and intellect of close family friend Henry David Thoreau, she struggles to negotiate the confusing territory between love and friendship while maintaining her moral authority and inner strength.

She was the mother of Henry VIII and wife of Henry VII, but who was Elizabeth of York? Raised as the precious eldest child of Edward IV, Elizabeth had every reason to expect a bright future until Edward died, and her life fell apart. When Elizabeth's uncle became Richard III, she was forced to choose sides. Should she trust her father's brother and most loyal supporter or honor the betrothal that her mother has made for her to her family's enemy, Henry Tudor? The choice was made for her on the field at Bosworth.

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.

Who was the real George Eliot? In Love with George Eliot is a glorious debut novel which tells the compelling story of England’s greatest woman novelist as you’ve never heard it before.

Eighteen-year-old James Douglas can only watch, helpless, as the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace is hanged, drawn, and quartered. Even under the heel of a brutal English conqueror, James' blood-drenched homeland may still have one hope for freedom, the rightful king of the Scots, Robert the Bruce. James swears fealty to the man he believes can lead the fight against English tyranny. The Bruce is soon a fugitive, king in name and nothing more. Scotland is occupied, the Scottish resistance crushed. Yet James believes their cause is not lost. 

Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style - the iconic little black dress - and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII - as discovered in recently unearthed wartime files.

In the cold spring of 1936, Arthor Crandle, down-on-his luck and desperate for work, accepts a position in Providence, Rhode Island, as a live-in assistant for an unnamed shut-in. He arrives at the gloomy colonial-style house to discover that his strange employer is an author of disturbing, bizarre fiction. Health issues have confined him to his bedroom, where he is never to be disturbed. But the writer, who Crandle knows only as "Ech-Pi", refuses to meet him, communicating only by letters left on a table outside his room.

The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.

Daughter of the nobility, cousin to a fallen Queen, Catherine Howard rose from the cluttered ranks of courtiers at the court of Henry VIII to become the King's fifth wife. But hers is a tale that starts long before the crown was placed on her head. A tale of tragedy and challenges, predators and prey; the story of a young girl growing up in a perilous time, facing dangers untold. The fifth wife of Henry VIII would end her life on the block, like her cousin Anne Boleyn...but where did her story begin?

1236. Beautiful Ailenor of Provence, cultured and intelligent, is only 13 when she marries Henry III. Aware of the desperate importance of providing heirs to secure the throne from those who would snatch it away, she is ruthless in her dealings with Henry's barons. As conflict escalates between them, Ailenor's shrewd and clever Savoyard uncles come to support her, but her growing political power is threatened when Henry's half-siblings also arrive at court. Henry and Ailenor become embroiled in an unpopular war to protect Gascony, the last English territory on the continent.

After the untimely death of his older brother, six-year-old Prince Amenhotep IV becomes the unlikely heir to the Egyptian throne, the most powerful kingship in the ancient world. By the time he becomes pharaoh over a decade later, the growing influence of the wealthy and corrupt Amun priesthood threatens to undermine his sovereignty. Desperate to maintain power, Amenhotep outlaws the Amun religion, renames himself Akenaten, and proclaims himself the living incarnation of a single, all-powerful deity - the Aten, or sun.

In death, she would become infamous, yet in life passed often unseen. Jane Parker, daughter of the scholar Lord Morley, leaves her home at a tender age, embarking on a career in the dangerous Tudor Court. From the halls of her father's house to the palaces of London, from England to Calais and the Field of the Cloth of Gold Jane will travel, seeing much of this world, and others.

La Reine Margot is a novel of suspense and drama which recreates the violent world of intrigue, murder, and duplicity of the French Renaissance. Dumas fills his canvas with a gallery of unforgettable characters, unremitting action, and the engaging generosity of spirit which has made him one of the world’s greatest and best-loved storytellers.

The hero of Everyman is obsessed with mortality. As he reminds himself at one point, "I'm 34! Worry about oblivion when you're 75." But he cannot help himself. He is the ex-husband in three marriages gone wrong. He is the father of two sons who detest him, despite a daughter who adores him. A masterful portrait of one man's inner struggles, Everyman is a brilliant showcase for one of the world's most distinguished novelists.

Thirteenth-century Bohemia is a dangerous place for a girl, especially one as odd as Mouse, born with unnatural senses and an uncanny intellect. Some call her a witch. Others call her an angel. Even Mouse doesn't know who - or what - she is. But she means to find out. When young King Ottakar shows up at the Abbey wounded by a traitor's arrow, Mouse breaks church law to save him and then agrees to accompany him back to Prague as his personal healer.

La novela que influenció toda una generación. El Lobo estepario es una de las grandes novelas del premio Nobel de 1946 Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), por tratar en forma profunda el tema del antagonismo entre las dos naturalezas de un individuo, en este caso Harry Haller, una persona desilusionada de la vida, que alterna la que se considera naturaleza bondadosa del ser humano con la ferocidad que caracteriza al lobo estepario.