Biographical Fiction

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world....

1867, Richmond, Virginia: Though she wears the same low-cut purple gown that is the uniform of all the girls who work at Worsham's gambling parlor, Arabella stands apart. It's not merely her statuesque beauty and practiced charm....

Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all....

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph....

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager - obsessed with music, food, and girls....

In Prohibition-era Los Angeles, two women on opposite sides of the law must take control of their lives, make their marks, and try to survive. Even if it means crossing the line....

It is 1936, and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca....

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary....

This is the story about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune—a forbidden friendship that changed the world....

Her beauty 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 1580s England, during the Black Plague, a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction....

From the author of the number one best seller Beneath a Scarlet Sky comes a new historical novel inspired by one family’s incredible story of daring, survival, and triumph....

Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia....

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post comes an epic imagining of the life of Margaret Fuller—America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation....

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins....

Dan Freeman, the “spook who sat by the door,” is enlisted in the CIA’s elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as “Freedom Fighters” in this explosive novel....

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women....

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Garden of Evening Mists comes a spellbinding novel about love and betrayal, colonialism and revolution, storytelling and redemption....

Mitza Maric has always been a little different from other girls. Most 20-year-olds are wives by now, not studying physics at an elite Zurich university with only male students trying to outdo her....

Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling....

The Lioness of Boston is a portrait of what society expected a woman's life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her own terms....

First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans whose quest for Truth leads them on an odyssey....

From the author of The Other Einstein, the mesmerizing tale of what kind of woman could have inspired an American dynasty....

From Marie Benedict, the New York Times best-selling author of The Only Woman in the Room: An incredible novel that focuses on one of the people who had the most influence during World War I and World War II: Clementine Churchill....

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of 20 years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him....

In Code Name Bella Dawn, we deal with money and in particular gold being used as a weapon of war. After all, South Africa has 74% of the world’s gold reserves. It is a much more interesting topic than I first realised. Like many others, I was concerned about “perpetual small wars” that only benefit the Merchants of Death and cause tremendous problems for future generations. We love history in GMJ Books and always go back in time to see what we can learn. I made a few interesting discoveries. Did you know, for instance, that when Adolf Hitler seized Czechoslovakia, he also seized their...

Nantucket in 1846 is an island set apart not just by its geography but by its unique circumstances. With their menfolk away at sea, often for years at a time, women here know a rare independence—and the challenges that go with it. Eliza Macy is struggling to conceal her financial trouble as she waits for her whaling captain husband to return from a voyage. In desperation, she turns against her progressive ideals and targets Meg Wright, a pregnant free Black woman trying to relocate her store to Main Street.

In Code Name Mel’s Choice, we take a hard look on how to destabilise a neighbouring country. There are many ways to do so but the best is to create internal strife and pit one side against the other. If you can then start a civil war and your side wins, you have succeeded. In NATO terms this is called a “Regime Change” and highly illegal under international law. Even if you are unable to trigger a proper war, the internal strife is also good news, your enemy has to turn within to sort out its problems and then it is a lesser threat to you or so the theory goes. This is highly ...

Code Name Angelique looks at military gliders. When the subject was first broached, I thought this was an insane idea. Gliders were last used in 1965 when the Soviet Union got rid of theirs. But who among military history lovers do not recall the 1944 D-Day Allied glider landings? Or Germany’s attack on Crete the year before in 1943? As I examined the concept, I quickly realised that gliders can either be conventional or unconventional in use, i.e. the 1940 attack on the Belgian fort Eben Emael which opened the way for the German infantry, was done by assault pioneers who were delivered ...

Code Name Celery 50 - In this book, we deal with criminal drug laboratories being used to create weapons of mass destruction in the form of biological and bacterial weapons on behalf of terrorists. Have no doubt, such weapons will be used if terrorists gets hold of them. The Tokyo Sarin gas attack, in 1994, comes to mind. A week after this book was published, the mainstream reports came out of just such laboratories being found in Africa and were destroyed. I am not surprised, it happens often that what is revealed in GMJ Books are later confirmed by the media. The books are, after all, ...

Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

This book is a true-to-life collection of 30 short stories from physicist and electrical engineer Roman Litovsky chronicling his family’s harrowing emigration journey in 1989 from Ukraine to the United States during the height of the impending collapse of the USSR. It details his life in Kyiv, traveling throughout Europe to gain freedom from the oppressive Soviet regime, settling in the U.S., and his life after that with a great engineering career at a prominent U.S. electro-acoustic company.

Set in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Bombay, India, Mr. Monroe's journey into authenticity results in a series of failed relationships that reveal the dark, enigmatic recesses of his complex personality and eventually land him in a hellhole prison in Bombay. His tragedy unfolds into an ending that no one, especially Monroe, could have possibly predicted or imagined.

Surviving the job happens one day, one shift, and one call at a time. Having each other's backs sets a team apart from a crew. The Bag takes you on that journey for just one shift.

My narrative explores social and emotional complexities of my teenage years (17-18) being expelled from high school while facing family, justice involved and community issues that negatively impact so many young men and women of color today.

Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art.

It’s 1961, and for Margo Hightower, everything is about to change. True, her engagement is off, her family has fallen in scandal, and she's completely broke. But she’s just been hired as assistant to photographer Slim Aarons—famous for his vibrant pictures of high society, royalty, and Hollywood stars—and she knows this opportunity is her ticket to something better. From the bright beaches of Acapulco to glitzy parties in New York, Margo is thrown headfirst into the glamorous jet-set world she so covets, observing its ways from behind the camera as Slim’s sidekick.

November 1967. Dara and Silloo Baruchas' serene life is interrupted when the British occupation announces its swift exit from the country. Things take a violent turn when they are targeted by members of the revolution: the family business is seized, Dara is whisked away as a political prisoner, and Silloo is put under house arrest with her three young children and mother-in-law. As the couple embarks on their separate harrowing journeys, in the hopes of being reunited, they are bombarded by challenges. The looming question: Will they make it out alive? Based on a true story.

Yosseleh Karlinski was born to a family of great Jewish rabbis. Gifted with a keen mind and unique talent for chess, he earned the respect and admiration of those around him–especially his childhood friend, Christina. But everything changes when the Germans conquer Lublin, forcing Yosseleh into a new reality in the cramped Lublin Ghetto.

Living A Meaningful Life is a series for adults and teens of all ages. Book 10 of the series, "The Substitute," is a very amusing, inspiring, and touching installment which moves the series deeper into allowing the listener to experience the very deep, complex, and meaningful relationship between father and son. The themes are still very much about sacrificing to do what is right, but also shows us what a loving parent and child relationship can look like. This is a particularly fun and amusing installment, and Rudy does not disappoint.