Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Biographical Fiction

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Vivekanand and experience a cultural novel based on the life of Swami Vivekananda. 

Fantasy, love and an exuberant celebration of English life and literature, Orlando is a uniquely entertaining story. Originally conceived by Virginia Woolf as a playful tribute to the family of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, Orlando's central character, a fictional embodiment of Sackville-West, changes sex from a man to a woman and lives throughout the centuries, whilst meeting historical figures of English literature.

In the cold spring of 1936, Arthor Crandle, down-on-his luck and desperate for work, accepts a position in Providence, Rhode Island, as a live-in assistant for an unnamed shut-in. He arrives at the gloomy colonial-style house to discover that his strange employer is an author of disturbing, bizarre fiction. Health issues have confined him to his bedroom, where he is never to be disturbed. But the writer, who Crandle knows only as "Ech-Pi", refuses to meet him, communicating only by letters left on a table outside his room.

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.

Barney Panofsky - Canadian expat, wily lover of women, writer, television producer, raconteur - is finally putting pen to paper so he can rebut the charges about him made in his rival’s autobiography. Whether it’s ranting about his bohemian misadventures during the 1950s in Paris, his tumultuous three marriages, or his successful trashy TV company, Totally Unnecessary Productions, he quickly proves that his memory may be slipping, but his bile isn’t.

Love and Fatigue in America records an Englishman’s decade-long journey through his newly adopted country in the company of a mystifying illness and a charismatic dog. When he receives an unexpected invitation from an unfamiliar American university, he embraces it as a triumphant new beginning. Instead, on arrival, he is stricken with a persistent inability to stand up or think straight, and things quickly go wrong. Diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome he moves from state to state, woman to woman, and eccentric doctor to eccentric doctor.

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.

L’histoire d’Hélène Hannemann qui, grâce à son héroïsme, a rendu sa dignité à tout son village. Ce roman est inspiré de la véritable histoire d’une courageuse infirmière allemande chargée de prendre soin des prisonniers les plus jeunes d’Auschwitz. Berceuse d’Auschwitz rend hommage à Hélène Hannemann, une femme qui a tout sacrifié pour sa famille et farouchement lutté pour les enfants qu’elle espérait sauver. Par une matinée ordinaire de 1943, Hélène Hannemann prépare ses cinq enfants pour le jour où la police allemande débarquera chez elle.

Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late 20th century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between England and France yet a world away from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the story of those he has known.

Quella raccontata in Asmara, addio è una vicenda corale, grandiosa, la storia di una famiglia italiana che vive da lontano, dall'Eritrea, il periodo tra la prima e la seconda guerra mondiale. I fatti privati di Filippo e Lidia Conti, le scoperte e le avventure quasi magiche dei loro nipoti, la disillusione dei loro figli si intrecciano agli eventi della Grande Storia, quella che si consuma oltremare, mentre sullo sfondo serpeggia la violenza della guerra e la sotterranea vertigine della conquista coloniale.

In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. Lady Clementine is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

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.

It is 1556 and the queen's astrologer, the prophet Nostradamus has uncovered a secret that could destroy the kingdom of France. The queen, Catherine de Medicis, a dabbler in black magic, has decided to get rid of the king's mistress by seeking out the legendary Undying Head of Menander the Magus, known as the Master of All Desires. But she does not know that evil befalls all those who wish upon this accursed object. And the head, in its coffer, has fallen into the possession of a charming, wryly perceptive but stubborn young woman: Sybille Artaud de la Roche.

A writer resembling Zoé Valdés - a Cuban exile living in Paris with her husband and young daughter - is preparing a novel on the life of Dora Maar, one of the most promising artists in the Surrealist movement, until she met Pablo Picasso. The middle-aged Picasso was already the god of the art world's avant-garde. Dora became his lover, muse, and ultimately, his victim. She became The Weeping Woman captured in his famous portrait, the mistress he betrayed with other mistress-muses, and their affair ended with her commitment to an asylum at the hands of Picasso's friends.

Sicilia, 1989. In vacanza a Taormina nello svogliato tentativo di salvare la sua relazione con la giovane e forse troppo solare Marta, Alberto, talent scout e agente di spettacolo, vede in tivù Elmo X, il più sovversivo stand-up comedian della storia italiana, ardere in un rogo sulla spiaggia di Riccione.

Alla disperata ricerca di qualcuno che ascolti la sua storia, Karim Mensy, un rifugiato iracheno prende in ostaggio la funzionaria dell’Autorità per l’immigrazione che gli ha revocato il permesso di soggiorno. Dopo un interminabile barcamenarsi nel tentativo di ottenere lo status di rifugiato, infatti gli è stato appena comunicato che sarà rimpatriato, in quello stesso Iraq da cui è scappato, questo perché (ritengono le autorità tedesche) con la caduta di Saddam ormai il suo è un paese sicuro.

Questa è una storia fatta di chili: la storia di Palma, che cresce in una normalissima famiglia disfunzionale, tra una madre volubile, un padre lontano e una sorella fin troppo perfetta. Palma mangia, e nel suo turbolento percorso di formazione, in cui scorrono trent’anni di Roma e d’Italia, trova in un videogioco la via d’uscita dall’incubo delle relazioni, del giudizio, del peso. Attraverso il gioco scopre le chatroom: lì conosce Angelo, un ragazzo con la passione per le donne grasse, con cui inizia una storia vera e al quale ha il coraggio e la gioia di mostrarsi per come è.

Arrivato in paradiso, dopo l'attentato in cui ha perso la vita insieme alla sua scorta, Paolo Borsellino viene incaricato da Dio di risolvere casi particolari e delicati. Per un periodo, si occuperà di quelle anime che, per motivi diversi, hanno lasciato qualcosa di irrisolto sulla Terra. Un giorno, però, sulla scrivania del suo ufficio finisce il faldone di un caso inspiegabilmente rifiutato da tutti gli altri funzionari del paradiso. Non appena Borsellino legge il nome sulla cartella, ha come un mancamento. Quell'anima, infatti, appartiene a un bambino.

In una sontuosa villa di Buenos Aires, Maria Stella Pellegrini Ortiz de Rozas, avvenente cinquantenne di origine italiana, sposata al rampollo di una delle famiglie più potenti d'Argentina, conduce un'esistenza apparentemente perfetta. La sua vita scorre tra impegni mondani, cavalcate e lezioni di tango, che le riempiono le giornate, ma non colmano il vuoto della sua anima.

Nel secondo dopoguerra il barone di dubbia nobiltà Rodolfo Polizzi sposa Ottavia principessa di Bauci e la porta con sé a Leonforte, un paese dell’entroterra di Sicilia. In quell’estate del 1951 dove, poco lontano, sull’isola di Vulcano Roberto Rossellini s’innamorava di Ingrid Bergman e, a Capo d’Orlando, Lucio Piccolo con i fratelli Casimiro e Agata Giovanna – zii di Ottavia – ricevevano il jet set internazionale, a casa del candido Rodolfo arrivava Lucy Thompson, la compagna di college della moglie a svegliare i trascorsi di gioventù della principessa, tutti di strani riti e sabba studenteschi.