Showing titles in Biographical Fiction

Com 23 anos, a infanta Catarina de Bragança, filha de D. Luísa de Gusmão e de D. João IV, deixou para trás tudo o que lhe era querido e próximo para navegar rumo a uma vida nova. No coração, um misto de tristeza e alegria. Saudades da sua Lisboa, de Vila Viçosa, do cheiro a laranjas, dos seus irmãos que já haviam partido deste mundo e dos que ficavam em Portugal a lutar pelo poder. Mas os seus olhos escuros deixavam perceber o entusiasmo pelo casamento com o homem dos seus sonhos, Charles de Inglaterra, um príncipe encantado que Catarina amava perdidamente ainda antes de o conhecer.

Mary Ingles was 23, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre. For months they held her captive. But nothing could imprison her spirit. With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen.

La novela que influenció toda una generación. El Lobo estepario es una de las grandes novelas del premio Nobel de 1946 Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), por tratar en forma profunda el tema del antagonismo entre las dos naturalezas de un individuo, en este caso Harry Haller, una persona desilusionada de la vida, que alterna la que se considera naturaleza bondadosa del ser humano con la ferocidad que caracteriza al lobo estepario.

For more than three decades, Yugoslavia's history played out in the life of one man. That man was Josip Broz Tito. The fictional autobiography of a regime insider, K. Balej's thoroughly researched novel provides a revealing insight into the emergence and functioning of the Yugoslav socialist system from the time of the Vienna Congress in 1815 to Tito's own death in 1980. It is an immersive exploration of the changing nature of Tito's power and the fascinating symbiosis of man and state that Tito represents.

Like the creation myths they supersede, the revelations of science are seared into our collective imagination through storytelling. From Archimedes' bath to Newton's apple, vivid accounts of scientific discovery help us understand the principles behind each theory, and add to the larger narrative of how the universe works, and how we came to be here. This anthology draws out and distils science's love of narrative from a wide range of scientific disciplines, weaving theory into very human stories.

Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" ( Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.

There were so many terrifying stories about the Jews. People called them useless vermin, filthy, dangerous. Before I met Abram, I was afraid of them, too. But I am about to tell you a very different story—a forbidden story. My love for Abram defied all reason...as well as German law. Tonight our son giggles with excitement as he blows out the candles on his birthday cake. But our safety is nothing but an illusion. As his candles burn out, a window shatters outside. The room shudders as the synagogue down the street is engulfed in flames.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of History of Violence by Edouard Louis, read by Joseph Kloska. The radical and urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He...

Queen Elizabeth Tudor is wary of the cousins. Ever since the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey nearly wrested the throne from her family, Elizabeth has been keen to ensure the fate of England doesn't land in Grey hands. She has banished Catherine Grey from court, along with her two children, but her unwed sister Mary remains at Whitehall Palace as one of Elizabeth's courtiers.

Standing by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders...is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upends her life. Based on the intimate diaries Will Self's mother kept for over forty years, Elaine is a writer's attempt to reach the almost unimaginable realm of a parent's interior life prior to his own existence.

Eine Freundschaft als Spiegel einer Stadt, einer Nation, einer ganzen Generation. Im Alter von 66 Jahren erfüllt sich Lila einen Traum: Sie verschwindet von einem Tag auf den anderen. Zurück bleibt ihre beste Freundin Elena und schreibt ihre gemeinsame Geschichte nieder: In den 1950er Jahren wachsen sie am Rande Neapels auf. Elena erzählt vom Alltag der kleinen Leute, vom Zugschaffner Donato, der Gedichte schreibt, vom tyrannischen Don Achille, von den Solara-Brüdern, die sonntags mit ihrem Auto den Corso abfahren.

Lever les yeux vers les étoiles. Aussi, à défaut de pouvoir les approcher, dans un monde où le métier d'astronaute est réservé aux hommes, elle est devenue astrophysicienne. Mais le jour où elle apprend que la NASA recrute des scientifiques, consciente des sacrifices qui s'annoncent, elle saisit sa chance. Ce matin de décembre 1984, quand Joan arrive au centre de contrôle à Houston, elle s'attend à vivre une journée comme les autres.

A dazzling, shocking novel that speaks to our times, drawing on the 16th-century case of the witches of Warboys. Alice Samuel might be old and sharp-tongued, but she's no fool. Visiting her new neighbours in her Fenland village, she suspects Squire Throckmorton's household is not as God-fearing...

Elizabeth von Arnim, who is best known for her later novel The Enchanted April, married a Prussian aristocrat and, with their five children, lived in Nassenheide, Pomerania. Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a semi-autobiographical novel about the joy that the protagonist finds in the delights of her Pomeranian garden, which provides relief from the stifling environment of her household. The novel was originally published anonymously because von Arnim feared that her husband, whom she satirised in the book, would disapprove.

Alex Ehren is a poet, a prisoner and a teacher in block 31 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the children’s block. He spends his days trying to survive while illegally giving lessons to his young charges while shielding them as best he can from the impossible horrors of the camp. But trying to teach the children is not the only illicit activity that Alex is involved in. Alex is keeping a diary....

November 1539. Sent as a bride for the much-married King of England, Anna of Cleves has left her homeland and family behind to travel to England. There to be wed to a man who has killed one wife, and perhaps caused the deaths of two more, Anna fears her marriage and husband, yet she has been promised to Henry VIII to secure alliance for her country, and safety for her people. But will there be safety for Anna? Into a court of scandal and cutthroat politics she is thrown, and only by her wits will she survive.

1838, England: When eighteen-year-old Frances Dickinson impulsively marries Lieutenant John Geils, all her hopes for her future are quickly shattered as she finds there is much about her husband she did not know. A cruel and violent man, John keeps Frances in isolation on his family's estate, while spending her fortune and preying upon their maids. Frances yearns to break free from her marriage but the law is not on her side. Only when John's abuse escalates can she set in motion a daring plan to secure her freedom.

1857. Three women—once strangers—come together in unpredictable Utah Territory. Hopeful, desperate, and willful, they’ll allow nothing on Earth or in Heaven to stand in their way. Following the call of their newfound Mormon faith, Tamar Loader and her family weather a brutal pilgrimage from England to Utah, where Tamar is united with her destined husband, Thomas Ricks. Clinging to a promise for the future, she abides an unexpected surprise: Thomas is already wedded to one woman—Tabitha, a local healer—and betrothed to still another.

In 1911, in the Scottish Border village of Sprouston, the young parish minister wrote to the Daily Mail for entry forms for its sweet pea competition. The top prize was a staggering £1000 and organisers predicted that as many as 15,000 would enter. He could not foretell that the paper's estimate of the number of competitors would be more than doubled, or that a fortnight before the deadline a nation-wide drought would threaten the very existence of the sweet peas he was so painstakingly cultivating.

Brought to you by Penguin. The heartbreaking Japanese classic telling the story of two orphans fighting for survival at the end of World War Two, published in English for the first time In the dying days of the War, Seita and Setsuko must fend for themselves. Firebombs have obliterated their...