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....

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....

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

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

Inspired by a true story, two teens kidnapped by an African warlord find salvation through love in a powerful and healing historical novel from the #1 bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley....

In the vein of The Paris Wife and The Personal Librarian comes this debut novel, a magnificent work of “biographical fiction” that reimagines the turbulent and triumphant early years of Ella Fitzgerald, arguably the greatest singer of the twentieth century.

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

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

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....

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....

Descended from Melusina, the river goddess, Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight....

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....

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....

From the New York Times best-selling authors of America's First Daughter comes the epic story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton - a revolutionary woman....

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

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....

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 National Book Award-winning and best-selling author of Let the Great World Spin comes an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss....

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....

My Sister, My Protector is based on the true story of one family. It covers three generations of abuse, starting with seventeen-year-old Mary. If you or anyone you know can relate to this story, there is help. Please talk to someone.

Growing up motherless in 1980's Miami Beach, Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha get by with their charismatic and capricious father, Jackson Jones. When a small windfall relocates them to a condemned mansion on the water, the siblings are forbidden traditional schooling and left to live off the land. As Jackson uses their new home to create a communal cult, the siblings are forced to raise themselves in a carefree, chaotic oasis. Living amidst the vagrant seekers who take up residence in Jackson's utopia, Sienna and Siddhartha strive to protect their unconventional family.

Intense and densely layered, Involuntary Bliss is the latest intriguing story from the award-winning young Canadian writer Devon Code. Situated in modern-day Montreal during a weekend in late August, two young men attempt to restore their friendship.

It’s 1927. Letty Hart’s father is long gone, but his old winery provides a meager wage and a legal livelihood for selling sacramental wine. But when that contract goes bust, Letty stumbles upon a desperate option: her father’s hidden cellar—and enough liquor to tempt Letty to bootleg the secret stash. In an underworld dominated by merciless men, Letty is building an empire.

A young, closeted TV newscaster tries to make his way during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Based on the true-life story of three-time Emmy award-winning anchorman and best-selling author turned actor, Mark Pettit.

Code Name Devorah deals with the use of armoured fighting vehicles in unconventional warfare scenarios. During my life, I have spoken to many South African armour officers, a breed apart and to be avoided if possible. They proudly follow something between the Russian and Prussian outlook on war. The Russians see war as a science, a mathematical exercise. The Prussians see war as an art where instinct plays a large role and the commander must have a “feeling” for the battle. The South African Armour officers combined the two doctrines to fit their needs; they see logistics, by God, and ...

Code Name Pour Angelique deals with the consequences of starting a fire you cannot control and how it may come back at you. When Special Forces or secret agents attack someone or something they better succeed, or the retaliation will follow you home. We see this happening every day in the current War on Terror. Traditionally, before 9/11, the terrorist activities were far away and something in the news, not in your neighbourhood if American or if from Western Europe. There were terrorist incidents, of course, especially in France where not all were Muslim related as such - Mossad taking out...

Code Name Odette deals with codes and cyphers as well as the dangers of radical penetration agents in Western Intelligence Agencies. What my research revealed was fascinating. I further wanted to explain the difference between a code and a cypher. I found that not many know the difference but I am sure after reading Code Name Odette, you will. We also found out that almost all the decrypted World War Two Bletchley Park cyphers were useless, as workable intelligence goes. On a tactical level, they were rarely used by those needing it most, the ground troops who were fighting the enemy. For ...

Code Name VFO565 - With everything in life, there is a beginning and the end is not always known. If you had told me that I would be at OATH OF EVIL - The War on Protestantism, GMJ 51, when I was writing Code Name VFO565 - the first GMJ novel, just after the unexpected passing of my wife in 2014, I would have shaken my head in disbelief. Writing the GMJ Books has kept me sane. They take me to another world and one that I thought I had left behind. But it was not to be. I now understand that it takes more than two roubles to get out of the Great Game. Of course, you are warned by the old ...

In Code Name Lise, we deal with the idea of sinking warships with shore-bound artillery. It can be done and was done before, but you need the ships to be near, at a dangerously close range. They must be ambushed unexpectedly and destroyed, or you will be in deep trouble, as they call in heavy airstrikes or use their long-range weapons to maximum effect. The major problem you may face in this scenario is the air threat. All modern warships are armed with helicopters and South African warships at times have the Denel Rooivalk attack helicopter on them. This helicopter is deadly and feared for...

Code Name Blue Tang is a startling book according to many, including myself. I was astounded at what my research revealed. For example, the buzz words for the F-22 / F35 Programs is “BVR” or “Beyond Visual Range Missile Technology” which is a dead-end street but one that is promoted by every “expert” you hear about. Let’s look at history; BVR was used in war, in Africa of all places and we will discuss this. BVR is not rated as worth much and you will read why. What shocked me was that NATO never had air superiority in the 1980s because of a stolen South African technology; ...

In Code Name Wrangler, we address the issue of CQB (Close Quarter Battle) and how to storm a hijacked aircraft to rescue hostages. What you are about to read is 100% technically correct. We also look in detail at other rescue attempts in Code Name Wrangler like the successful Entebbe Raid, the Lufthansa Mogadishu Rescue, and the ill-fated Operation Eagle Claw (Tehran Embassy) as well as the Munich Olympics, the last two mentioned were massive failures. Ironically, storming an aircraft to rescue hostages is bread and butter work for Special Forces. It has been successfully done in history ...

In Code Name Honey Bee, we look at how Intelligence Agencies help each other out on request. You may not know this, but the Great Game is in many ways a closed gentlemen’s club. The club members are known to each other and some may be called friends even if from different nations with vastly different political systems. Probably the only good reason to justify a spy agency’s existence is the ability to pass accurate messages between (at times enemy) governments. Therefore, spymasters constantly talk to each other. This does not make them traitors per se, they will not reveal more than ...

In Code Name Cadillac we deal with the typical double-crossing scenario we often find in espionage as well as the use of pseudo forces to create a false impression and trail on what actually happened or did not happen. Confusing the issue is a spy craft speciality which they all excel at, and alarming games are played all the time. It is all about deniability for the turds (politicians) and the spymasters themselves and it gets complicated because of the stupid games going on in the background. In a previous book, Code Name Sanford, I explained how different intelligence agencies work ...

In Code Name Missa 72 we deal with extracting an agent from a hostile environment which is no easy task. For background, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980 the war did not stop. It carried on with many Zimbabwean Army incursions into neighbouring Mozambique to find and kill RENAMO fighters. RENAMO was an anti-communist movement created by the Rhodesians to destabilise Mozambique, a Marxist country at the time. When the Rhodesians became Zimbabweans and the enemy of their creation, RENAMO, South African Special Forces stepped up and valiantly supported the anti-communist liberation ...