Showing results by publisher "Canongate Books" in Biographical Fiction

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 woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more. The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life. As Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes unravels through the heady days of their first summer in Devon together, Sylvia turns increasingly to writing to express her pain and loss, yet also her resilience and power. 

This charming short story is made available as an audio digital download, read by Dame Judi Dench, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Sweet Pea competition the story is based on In 1911, in the Scottish Border village of Sprouston, the young parish minister wrote to the Daily Mail for...

Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.

The Two Roberts is a fictional reimagining of the lifelong love between working-class artists Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. They met as students at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. They fell in love almost immediately and rarely left each other’s side - meeting great success and bitter failure but always staying committed to art and each other. They were at the heart of a social set that included Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart - living an out Bohemian life, whatever the consequences.