Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

From the author of Caligula (an engrossing new spin on a well-known tale - The Times) comes a new standalone novel in the Damned Emperors series: Commodus. Rome is enjoying a period of stability and prosperity. The Empire's borders are growing, and there are two sons in the imperial succession...

Attractive, wealthy, and influential, Katherine Willoughby is one of the most unusual ladies of the Tudor court. A favourite of King Henry VIII, Katherine knows all his six wives, his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and his son Edward, as well as being related by marriage to Lady Jane Grey. She marries Tudor knight, Sir Charles Brandon, and becomes Duchess of Suffolk at the age of 14. Her Spanish mother, Maria de Salinas, is Queen Catherine of Aragon’s lady in waiting, so it is a challenging time for them all when King Henry marries the enigmatic Anne Boleyn.

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.

Sunday Times and New York Times best-selling author Cathy Glass returns with her first novel. The Girl in the Mirror is a moving and gripping story of a young woman who tries to piece together her past and uncovers a dreadful family secret that has been buried and forgotten. When Mandy learns her much-loved Grandpa is dying, she is devastated and returns to the house where she spent so many wonderful summers as a child. But the childhood visits ended abruptly, and those happy days are now long gone.

Waiter by day, man about Paris by night; the young and good looking Felix Krull has created for himself a personality to charm and deceive the world of wealth. When the Marquis de Venosta makes him a proposal that he can't refuse, the young Felix finds himself on the pathway that will elevate him into the world of riches.

Knowing she was seen as a threat to the queen she served, Lady Katherine Grey, legitimate heir to the throne, longs only for the comfort of a loving marriage and a quiet life far from the intrigue of the Tudor court. After seeing her sister become the pawn of their parents and others seeking royal power and then lose their lives for it, she is determined to avoid the vicious struggles over power and religion that dominate Queen Elizabeth's court. Until she finds love - then Kat is willing to risk it all, even life in prison.

Cousins Masha and Rachel Morgenstern board the luxury liner the SS Manhattan bound for New York, desperate to escape the concentration camps that claimed the rest of their family. America offers a safe haven, but to reach it they must survive a hazardous Atlantic crossing. Among their fellow passengers fleeing the war, each with their own conflicts, secrets, and surprises, are the composer Igor Stravinsky, making a new start after a decade of tragedy, and Rose Kennedy, determined to keep her four children from harm.

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider - brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture - one more after thousands - she can unlock the building blocks of life.

'I cried my eyes out' Reader review⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1941, Nazi-occupied Paris: In the glamorous Ritz hotel there is a woman with a dangerous secret… As Coco Chanel’s assistant, Adèle lives side by side with German officers in the splendour of The Ritz hotel. But Adèle has a secret. She is...

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father and his bewilderment and grief on his father’s death. When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives.

Based on the true story of the Jane Collective, an illegal underground abortion service, Looking for Jane reimagines the fraught battle for reproductive rights and the women who demanded the right to choose. Spanning decades, Evelyn, Nancy and Angela's lives intertwine to reveal the devastating consequences that come from a lack of choice and the buried truths that will always find a way to the surface.

This series features a real historical figure—the formidable Ela Longespée. The young Countess of Salisbury was chosen to marry King Henry II’s illegitimate son William. After her husband’s untimely death, Ela served as high sheriff of Wiltshire, castellan of Salisbury Castle, and ultimately founder and abbess of Lacock Abbey.

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis' life were not always what they seemed. This wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown is told in stylish, elegant prose and endowed with lavish portions of Davies' wit and wisdom.

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. 

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the two World Wars. Upon the death of her German baron father, Billi moves from the family château to live with her vibrant and erratic English mother on the French Riviera. From there she is sent for schooling in England, where she lives an itinerant life, boarding among a bohemian crowd, attending galleries and public lectures, and reading some of the greatest books of the era.

For everyone who has fallen through the wardrobe door, experienced the magic of Narnia, and longs to know more, New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan delivers a heartfelt story that is simultaneously a fascinating look into the bond between siblings, a peek behind the curtain of...

1431 is a dangerous time for a woman to be defiant. England has been fighting France for 100 years. At home, power-hungry men within a corrupt government manipulate a weak king - and name Cecily's husband, York's loyal duke, an enemy. As the king's grasp on sanity weakens, plots to destroy York take root. It will take all of Cecily's courage and cunning to save her family. But when the will to survive becomes ambition for a crown, will she risk treason to secure it?

In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets...

The comical tales of a new mum on her journey from postnatal depression to the dawning of her self-worth as she discovers adventure, friendship, and the healing power of horses. Join Grace as she battles her negative thought patterns and fears among a backdrop of eccentric characters, pampered farm animals, and the glorious Yorkshire countryside.

The New York Times-bestselling author of Elizabeth I brilliantly reimagines the story of the most mysterious woman in the Bible Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute, a female divinity figure, a church leader, or all of those? Biblical references to her are tantalizingly brief, but we do know that she...