Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

The politics of empire-building and the hypocrisies, back-stabbings, and corruptions of Rome's first family come to light. First published in 1934, the book retains a marvelously modern and often comic tone, and is written in the form of Claudius' autobiography. This is gripping stuff, read by one of our finest actors, who also starred as Claudius in the classic television series.

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, a convicted killer becomes the first prisoner to be executed in the United States. The Executioner's Song follows the true story of cold-blooded murderer Gary Gilmore, who, after being tried and convicted, insisted on being executed for his crimes. To do...

In the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special...

Her beauty almost certainly saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated in everything else, she overheard the Third Reich's plans while at her husband's side, understanding more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, and the whirlwind escape landed her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.

Dall'Ungheria a Londra e ritorno, dal crollo della Cortina di ferro alla pandemia, passando per la seconda guerra del Golfo e l'ingresso nell'Unione Europea dei Paesi dell'ex blocco sovietico, la vita di István è la parabola di un uomo in balìa di forze che non è in grado di controllare. Tutto – i traumi e i lutti, i traguardi raggiunti e le potenziali soddisfazioni – lo lascia ugualmente impassibile, pronto a fronteggiare ogni accadimento, dal più fortunato al più tragico, con l'arma del suo laconico: «Okay».

The Diary of Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to epitomize English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "None of this is real and all of it is true." —Jim Carrey Meet Jim Carrey. Sure, he's an insanely successful and beloved movie star drowning in wealth and privilege—but he's also lonely. Maybe past his prime. Maybe even ... getting fat? He's tried diets, gurus...

India, 1947. Una familia de tres hermanas vive en una aldea rural de Bengala. Priya, inteligente e idealista, sueña con seguir los pasos de su padre y convertirse en médica, desafiando las normas que impone la sociedad. Deepa, la belleza de la familia, aspira a un matrimonio que eleve el estatus familiar. Jamini, devota y perspicaz, es una prodigiosa artesana de colchas, pero sus anhelos más profundos permanecen ocultos. La paz y el amor que comparten en su hogar son un refugio contra los violentos acontecimientos que se viven en la India.

Pablo, un aspirante a escritor sin muchos escrúpulos, viaja a Madrid para recuperar el manuscrito que Eduardo, su amigo y mentor, dejó al morir. Un libro que nunca culminó pero que pretendía explicar lo inexplicable: el infortunado destino de la Argentina, que durante el siglo XVII configuró su economía con un sistema de comercio clandestino tan sofisticado e institucional que se lo conocía como «contrabando ejemplar».

In den 1950er-Jahren wird die junge Ann in einer englischen Arbeiterfamilie groß, doch die Liebe zur Literatur ermöglicht ihr den sozialen Aufstieg und führt sie schließlich nach Paris. Die Literatur wird auch die verbindende Sprache zwischen Ann und ihrer Tochter Julia, die keine gemeinsame Muttersprache miteinander teilen. Julias Leben gerät unvermittelt ins Wanken, als sie Ann nach einem Schlaganfall findet.

1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, 23-year-old Anne Bonny faces the gallows. When writer Captain Charles Johnson enters the garrison, she strikes a deal: she’ll tell this opportunistic fool her story if he sends a doctor to her friend, Mary Read, who’s battling prison fever. Prior to their arrest, life at sea had offered Anne and Mary freedom that few women knew. Anne, born into scandal in Ireland, seeks home and elusive safety in South Carolina. Discovering the opposite, she makes a bitter bargain for emergency passage to the Bahamas.

In einer atemberaubenden Beichte bekennt im Amsterdamer Hafenviertel Jean-Baptiste Clamence, ehemals angesehener Anwalt, der sich stets für einen Wohltäter der Menschen gehalten hat, Selbstgefälligkeit und Opportunismus als Triebfedern seines einstigen Rechtsbewusstseins. Als er eines Nachts eine Frau auf einer Brücke stehen sah, im Begriff, in den Fluss zu springen, hat er sie nicht daran gehindert.

Over one million copies sold! The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A Good Morning America* Book Club Pick! Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR! Named a Notable Book of the Year by the Washington Post! “Historical fiction at its best!”* A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal...

G.I. Gurdjieff allows the reader in these narratives to become acquainted with a person that is up to this day to many, who have for instance read his Beelzebub, still an enigma. You will meet a person, who is more often than not, as the esteemed Mulla Nassr Edin would say "into the deepest galoshes that have ever been worn on sweaty feet." In other words, you will meet G.I. Gurdjieff, the human being. The spiritual messages are hidden inside breathtaking adventures and a colorful description of really remarkable men and women and the time before and after the Russian Revolution.

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.

A timeless story of isolation and inner torment, Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human follows Yozo Oba, a man who hides behind laughter while drifting toward self-destruction.

The Dalai Lama's cat is back - older, a bit wiser and as curious as ever. In this audiobook, the Dalai Lama sets for his lovable feline companion the task of investigating the art of purring. Whether it's the humorous insights gained from a visiting Ivy League Psychology Professor, the extraordinary research of a world-famous biologist, or the life-changing revelations of a mystical yogi, His Holiness's cat encounters a wealth of wisdom about happiness.

Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

This is A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories by Lu Xun, a renowned writer of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet who wrote both in Vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. He became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in the 1930s.