Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

Brought to you by Penguin. SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 & THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2021 Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He...

Celia Imrie and Toby Jones star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Gerald Durrell's much-loved comic gem. My Family and Other Animals is the classic tale of naturalist Gerald Durrell's magical 1930s childhood on pre-war Corfu. His descriptions of his eccentric family and his encounters with...

Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the twentieth century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, bestselling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which...

The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last Empress in China. In this audio book, Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rules during a time of intense turbulence. Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to...

From the author of The Other Einstein, the mesmerizing tale of what kind of woman could have inspired an American dynasty. Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's...

En 1893, à Saint-Jean-de-Matha, Émiliana Cyr, la fille unique de Louis Cyr, l’homme le plus fort de tous les temps, a six ans. Grâce à la force héritée de son père, que l’on prétend être un don de Dieu, elle marque son époque, présentée sur toutes les scènes comme l’enfant prodige du xixe siècle.

Hur kunde Pedro Alonso López nästan obemärkt våldta och mörda uppemot 300 unga flickor i Ecuador, Colombia och Peru på 1970-talet? Kan hans dåd förklaras av hans uppväxtmiljö, eller är han bara helt enkelt en produkt av ren och skär ondska? I ”Monstret från Anderna” målar...

Blending family drama with page-turning suspense, My Lethal Obsession confronts the eternal hatred one group has faced throughout history in very human, very personal terms, and honors the unbreakable will to survive and begin anew. Gideon Wistreich is haunted by visions of his family’s...

The first novel written about the enigmatic literary legend Australia, 1901. Miles Franklin, the young daughter of poor bush farmers, manages to publish her first novel against all odds. A work of remarkable boldness and passion, it becomes an immense success in the English-speaking world. While...

Nach einer schmerzhaften Trennung kehrt Sue in die Villa ihrer Familie am Gardasee zurück. Sie sucht Abstand, Klarheit und den Mut, endlich herauszufinden, wer sie wirklich ist. Da ist Michele, der im Hotel ihrer Schwester Jule wohnt und sie gleichermaßen anzieht, wie ihr Kopfschmerzen bereitet. Und Luca, der Pizzabäcker mit süditalienischen Wurzeln, der mit seiner Leidenschaft für Kulinarik etwas in ihr berührt, das sie nicht erwartet hätte. Als ihr Vater Christoph sie schließlich mit einer schockierenden Wahrheit konfrontiert, beginnt Sue ihre Pläne neu zu überdenken.

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.

Another action-packed mystery by Maurice LeBlanc! This story has to do with the final Will of a man named Mornington, who, in the year 1900, left behind the sum of $400 million francs. Of that, three-fourths went to his adopted country - which left $100 million francs to be distributed to his heirs. The executor of the estate was Mornington's friend, Don Luis Perenna (AKA Arsene Lupin). The problem, however, was that no one knew where (or even who) some of the heirs were. If no heirs were to be found within 3 months, the entire $100 million francs would go to Perenna.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of History of Violence by Edouard Louis, read by Joseph Kloska. The radical and urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He...

Hvor mange ved, at den franske impressionismes vugge var dansk og stod på Sankt Thomas i Dansk Vestindien? Maleren Camille Pissarro begyndte livet som Jacobo Pizzarro i en dansk-jødisk familie, der havde søgt tilflugt for jødeforfølgelserne på Sankt Thomas. Her bliver hans mor, Rachel, som...

La vida de una figura legendaria, y la historia de una democracia confiscada: la de Estados Unidos. «Sin duda, lo mejor que he leído sobre este legendario joven forajido.» Yannick Haenel, Charlie Hebdo «Un anti-western que ilumina admirablemente los excesos y la violencia de Estados Unidos...

Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed? When the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.” The most celebrated playwright...

A satori, in Kerouac’s own words, is “the Japanese word for ‘sudden illumination,’ ‘sudden awakening,’ or simply ‘kick in the eye.’” This is a story of philosophy, identity, and the powerful grip of travel, written by an iconic American author at the height of his fame, after...

En La última hermana María, una mujer de origen chileno sofisticada, alegre y superficial, asiste atónita a la ocupación alemana de París, que trunca para siempre su vida hasta entonces despreocupada e intranscendente. El azar la lleva a conocer la persecución a la que someten los nazis al...

Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade...

Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield is loosely based on the life of the author. It tells the story of David Copperfield’s life from childhood to adulthood with all of the hardships, changes, and good fortune that David encounters on his life journey. It focuses on the relationships he develops with a huge cast of characters who he meets as he travels from rags to riches and back again.