Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

In late March 1944, as Stalin’s forces push into Ukraine, young Emil and Adeline Martel must make a terrible decision: Do they wait for the Soviet bear’s intrusion and risk being sent to Siberia? Or do they reluctantly follow the wolves—murderous Nazi officers who have pledged to protect “pure-blood” Germans? The Martels are one of many families of German heritage whose ancestors have farmed in Ukraine for more than a century.

Mary Doria Russell, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Sparrow, returns with Epitaph. An American Iliad, this richly detailed and meticulously researched historical novel continues the story she began in Doc, following Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to Tombstone, Arizona, and to the...

Brought to you by Penguin. September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest...

Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army. In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence’s upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she’s pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony’s war.

For decades Hazie Coogan has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton, veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart - and boudoir. Soon, Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in an upcoming musical extravaganza. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans and for posterity. 

Brought to you by Penguin. A darkly funny account of family life from the author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery 'Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children' As well as being a master of the macabre, Shirley...

Rome, 63 BC. In a city on the brink of acquiring a vast empire, seven men are struggling for power. Cicero is consul, Caesar his ruthless young rival, Pompey the republic's greatest general, Crassus its richest man, Cato a political fanatic, Catilina a psychopath, Clodius an ambitious playboy...

In Flora Thompson's semi-autobiographical series Lark Rise to Candleford, she explores the Oxfordshire country life of her protagonist Laura in the 1880s and 1890s. This collection includes all three works in the trilogy, Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green.

Brought to you by Penguin. Listen. My one-time friend Maria did tell me once: "Make your own paradise, Tibb, since this world is no sweet place for people like us." Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the...

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.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Jeff Woodman and Scott Shina. THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING NOVEL ADAPTED INTO A FEATURE FILM WITH ELIJAH WOOD From the bestselling author of Here I Am, Extremely Loud...

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift, before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Robert Graves' brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome, starring Tom Goodman Hill as Claudius and Derek Jacobi as Augustus. The wickedly entertaining inside story of the lives and deaths of the Imperial dynasty from Augustus to...

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.

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.

Brought to you by Penguin. THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER! From Number One bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, an unforgettable story – by turns heartbreaking and life-affirming – of a renowned novelist facing a devastating diagnosis and learning to live and love anew. ‘What Does It...

BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick! Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who is charged with the brutal murder of her former master. Inspired by a true story, Burial Rites is perfect for fans of Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood and The...

'Gripping, heartbreaking and uplifting.' Christy Lefteri, author of the million-copy bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo THEIR STORY WILL BREAK YOUR HEART THEIR JOURNEY WILL FILL YOU WITH HOPE YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THEIR NAMES When they are little girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to...

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...

Winner of the Betty Trask Award, Never Mind is the first in Edward St Aubyn's highly acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch. This audiobook is read aloud by stage and screen actor Alex Jennings. At his mother’s family house in the...