Showing results by publisher "Dreamscape Media" in Biographical Fiction

With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned. When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach. He will treat his students as people poised to enter the adult world.

My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life—my adult life, that is—which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling. . . In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older...

Dive into the life of a normal man with a normal family in this humorous novel told in diary entries from one Charles Pooter: husband, father, and someone who experiences relatable social embarrassments and humiliations. As he chronicles a year in his life, he discusses his 20-year-old son's foray into the dating scene, the couple's attempts at blending in with higher society, and his general interactions with friends and coworkers.

Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom...or death. Alone and despondent, she is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she's been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers. As she waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison.

A groundbreaking novel of historical fiction based on the real experiences of two of the Golden Age of Pirates’ most infamous women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who dared to subvert the rules and gender roles of their time. 1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant...

At the beginning of Virginia Woolf's fantastical and satirical 1928 novel, Orlando is a young nobleman in Elizabethan, England. At the age of 30, Orlando awakens to have found he's now a woman. Moving through the following centuries, the novel stretches over 300 years, during which time Orlando meets several key figures of English literary history.

Born on a farm in 1818, Lucy Stone dreams of extraordinary things for a girl of her time, like continuing her education beyond the eighth grade and working for the abolitionist cause, and of ordinary things, such as raising a family of her own. But when she learns that the Constitution affords no rights to married women, she declares that she will never marry and dedicates her life to fighting for change. At a time when it is considered promiscuous for women to speak in public, Lucy risks everything for the anti-slavery movement.

On the evening of Good Friday, 1865, Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris joined the Lincolns in the presidential box at Ford’s Theater, becoming eyewitnesses to one of the great tragedies of American history. In this riveting novel, Thomas Mallon re-creates the unusual love story of this young engaged couple whose fateful encounter with history profoundly affects the remainder of their lives.

When Alice Ahmadi discovers a famed emerald necklace while interning at a struggling Parisian magazine, she is plunged into a glittering world of diamonds and emeralds, courtesans and spies, and the long-buried secrets surrounding the necklace and its glamorous former owners. When she realizes the mysterious Honeybee Emeralds could be her chance to save the magazine, she recruits her friends Lily and Daphne to form the “Fellowship of the Necklace.” Together, they set out to uncover the romantic history of the gems.

After the defeated Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte goes into exile on tiny St. Helena Island in the remote South Atlantic, he and his lover, Albine de Montholon, plot to escape and rescue his young son. Banding together African slaves, British sympathizers, a Jewish merchant, a Corsican rogue, and French followers, they confront British opposition as well as treachery within their own ranks with sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, but always desperate action. When Napoleon and Albine break faith with one another, ambition and Albine’s husband threaten their reconciliation.

It’s 1343 and Jeanne de Clisson is out for revenge. At forty-three, her perfect life—a loving husband, three young children, and two castles in the French countryside—shatters when Phillip VI, the King of France, arrests and beheads her husband for treachery. There’s no evidence and no trial—only the execution. The nobles are shocked. The paranoid king is relieved. And Jeanne…Jeanne wants the king’s head on a pike.

Based on the true story of Mary Bryant, an iconic figure in the foundational lore of Australia as Great Britain's penal colony, Fled is a sweeping, heart-wrenching account of one woman's lifelong search for freedom.

In 1940, art-world icon Georgia O'Keeffe bought a house in a mountain-rimmed New Mexico desert, planning to live there for six months every year. To manage her remote household while she paints, O'Keeffe invited Maria Chabot—a young and naïve would-be writer—to join her. Their tempestuous relationship endured throughout the chaotic years of WW2, the death of Georgia's domineering, philandering husband (Alfred Stieglitz), and Maria's design and building of a remarkable adobe house and studio for the artist in the native village of Abiquiu—a generous gift from an exceptional friend.

Down-and-out and deteriorating, Rosemary Candwell drifts from anonymous beds and bars in Providence to a homeless shelter hidden among the hedge-rowed avenues of Newport and through the revolving door of service jobs and quick-fix psychiatric care, always grasping for hope, for a solution. She’s desperate to readjust back into a family and a world that has deemed her a crazy bitch living a choice they believe she could simply un-choose at any time.

Based on Melville's real-life experiences after having jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands, his first novel was extremely popular, provoking public skepticism until the events within were corroborated by a fellow castaway. Typee is properly considered a work of fiction, as the three weeks stay on which the author based his story is here extended to four months, and the book is supplemented with imaginative reconstruction and adaptation of material from other Pacific exploration books of the time. The title refers to the province of Tai Pi Vai.

On March 4, 1861, the air at the inaugural ball is charged with hope and apprehension. The last thing anyone wants is any sort of hitch in the proceedings, so Lincoln's trusted entourage is on their guard: Allan Pinkerton, head of the president's security team, is wary of potential assassins, and Lincoln's oldest friend, Joshua Speed, is by his side, along with Speed's nephew, Adam Quinn, who's been called to serve as Lincoln's assistant. But despite the tight security, trouble comes anyway: a man is found stabbed to death in a nearby room.

From humble beginnings in rural Tennessee to his heroic death defending the Alamo, frontiersman, adventurer, and politician David Davy Crockett embodies the spirit and ideals of the national character. Even during his lifetime, tales of the sharpshooting, skilled woodsman were - to his delight - told, retold, and elaborated on. As a US congressman, the former Creek War militiaman steadfastly opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act.

Sometimes the biggest ripples come from the smallest events. Like the day that Emma Guthrie, drop-out college student, walks into world-famous movie star Garrett Walker's trailer, and walks out on her way to becoming Mrs. Emma Walker, wife of an A-list actor. With her husband's encouragement, Emma pens a screenplay based on her life, which becomes a blockbuster sensation. Through it all, Garrett is her ally and her mentor... until Emma discovers an incriminating text message on Garrett's cell phone.

The first novel by James Joyce, this semi-autobiographical narrative depicts the life of Stephen Dedalus, a character created as an allusion to Daedalus, a craftsman in Greek mythology. Beginning by depicting the early stages of Stephen's life, the language of the novel grows with the main character as he awakens sexually and rebels against religion. When he realizes that Ireland is restricting him, he commits to a self-imposed exile and travels elsewhere to grow as an artist - but not before declaring Ireland his homeland.

Hunter, trapper, resourceful fighter, and scout, Hugh Glass was just a rugged man among other rugged American frontiersmen until he was mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead by his best friends. Hugh's rage drove him to crawl 200 miles across dangerous territory to seek revenge until he was no longer Hugh Glass but had become Lord Grizzly.