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Biographical fiction

  • Author:
    Toksvig, Sandi
    Summary:

    Ten-year-old Bamse and his Jewish friend Anton participate in the Danish Resistance during World War II.

  • Author:
    Gallaher, Bill
    Summary:

    High Rider is the historical novel based on the life of John Ware (1845–1905). Born a slave on a rice plantation in South Carolina, John Ware became one of the most successful independent ranchers in southern Alberta through the sheer force of his will and through his incredible skill at the cowboy trade.This fascinating historical novel details his adventures, as well as his trials and tribulations, on the long road that took him from South Carolina to Texas to Montana and finally north to Canada. High Rider is the compelling story of a truly great, yet unsung, Canadian hero.

  • Author:
    BRADBURY, Ray
    Summary:

    Based on the author's sojourn in Ireland in 1953 whilst writing the screenplay for the film "Moby Dick", this novel tells of a novice screenwriter coming to Ireland to confront a great director and a mythical beast.

  • Author:
    Austin, Lynn N.
    Summary:

    Shortly after the death of King Solomon in 931 B.C., the Promised Land is divided into two separate nations: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. Hezekiah is the second son of King Ahaz of Judah. As he comes to power, he must navigate a troubled path to reunite his wayward people with Yahweh.

  • Author:
    Johnson, Shelton
    Summary:

    Johnson pens a fictional memoir of a buffalo soldier--a black U.S. cavalryman and the son of slaves, who finds true freedom when he is posted to patrol the newly created Yosemite National Park in 1903.

  • Author:
    Chevalier, Tracy
    Summary:

    After earning a graduate degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, Tracy Chevalier was immediately recognized for her literary talent. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, she recreates the 17th-century world of Johannes Vermeer. This haunting work of historical fiction received rave reviews in publications as diverse as The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor. In 1664, sixteen-year-old Griet enters the Vermeer household as a servant. Daughter of a Delft tile maker, she has a natural eye for color and design. Daily, she cleans the studio, learning much about how Vermeer sees the people he paints. As his attention focuses on her, she slowly becomes one of his subjects. Tracy Chevalier fills this unusual love story with the shades, sounds, and textures of everyday life in Holland. Narrator Ruth Ann Phimister perfectly voices Griet's growing awareness of the intrigues surrounding her and the need to define the value of her life.

  • Author:
    Snyder, Carrie
    Summary:

    Aganetha Smart, a former Olympic athlete was famous in the 1920s, but now, at age 104, lives in a nursing home, alone and forgotten by history. When her quiet life is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of two young strangers, Aganetha begins to reflect on her childhood in rural Ontario and her struggles to make an independent life for herself in the city. The devastation of WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic, the optimism of the 1920s and the sacrifices of the 1930s play out in Aganetha's mind, as she wrestles with the confusion and displacement of the present.

  • Author:
    Fischbuch, Norman
    Summary:

    This story begins in the late 1890's and documents the life of an ambitious young man who grew up eagerly looking forward to a comfortable and sheltered life in an isolated community in Russia near the Polish border. In his youth this farm boy dreamed of becoming the best blacksmith in this community of ethnic German colonies in southern Russia. However, his plans for the future were interrupted when he was conscripted into the Russian Navy. Here he served as a stoker and rose in rank to become an astute marine engineer, and was decorated for bravery by Tsar Nicholas II in the disastrous Russo-Japanese naval Battle of the Yellow Sea, while he served on the flagship of Russia's First Pacific Squadron. Although he had diligently served his community, his country, and his Tsar, it is difficult to concieved how this dedicated citizen of a land which he loved and cherished, that he would end his life as a blind and destitute inmate in one of Stalin's slave labour camps.

  • Author:
    Leventoyannis Harvey, Stella
    Summary:

    A horrific betrayal sets the destiny of the Alevizopoulos family, farmers who dare to choose a side in WWI and the Greco-Turkish war. Survival might mean leaving what is most precious: home. Finding Callidora follows four generations of the family as they carry and pass on the scars of the past and their need to find the place where they belong.

  • Author:
    Chiaverini, Jennifer
    Summary:

    The New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker returns with a riveting work of historical fiction following the notorious John Wilkes Booth and the four women who kept his perilous confidence. The world would not look upon his like again. John Wilkes Booth-driven son of an acclaimed British stage actor and a Covent Garden flower girl, whose misguided quest to avenge the vanquished Confederacy led him to commit one of the most notorious acts in the annals of America-has been the subject of scholarship, speculation, and even obsession. Though in his plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln Booth did not act alone-"I am determined to be a villain," he tragically prophesized on the occasion of his acclaimed 1862 New York City debut in the role of Richard III-he is often portrayed as a shadowy figure, devoid of human connection. Yet four women were integral in the life of this unquiet American: Mary Ann, the mother he revered above all but country; his sister and confidante, Asia; Lucy Lambert Hale, the senator's daughter who loved him; and the Confederate widow Mary Surratt, to whom he entrusted the secrets of his vengeful wrath. In A Memoir of the Assassin John Wilkes Booth As Told by Four Ladies, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini renders for the first time as fiction the compelling interplay between these pivotal actors-some willing, others unwitting-who made an indelible mark on the history of our nation.

  • Author:
    Wideman, John Edgar
    Summary:

    Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) fought to free Algeria from French rule and rallied against the oppressive grip of colonialism. In this fictionalized view of the revolutionary's life, an African-American writer travels the world to do research for a biography of Fanon. In a tale that is part love story, mystery, and biography, Fanon examines how a political radical's views apply in a post-9/11 world.

  • Author:
    Parmar, Priya
    Summary:

    Following her discovery selling oranges outside of Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, Ellen "Nell" Gwyn leaves behind a life of poverty to become a theatre star. Soon she is mistress to the libertine King Charles II. And though their love is true, gossip-mongers and court politics threaten to tear their romance apart.

  • Author:
    Cole, Teju
    Summary:

    Every Day is for the Thief is an account of a Nigerian in the diaspora who returns home after many years abroad. The book gains its strength as much from its subject matter (contemporary Lagosian life as experienced by a visiting former resident) as from its prose style (reminiscent of John Berger and J.M. Coetzee). Teju Cole's nuanced book explores themes as diverse as the minor joys of daily Lagosian existence and the crudities of contemporary forms of corruption. His work is both a critique and a message of hope to a Nigeria rapidly in transformation.

  • Author:
    Chiaverini, Jennifer
    Summary:

    New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the fascinating life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace-Lord Byron's daughter, the world's first computer programmer, and a woman whose exceptional contributions to science and technology have been too long unsung. The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. Estranged from Ada's father, who was infamously "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," Ada's mathematician mother is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada's mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of imagination-or worse yet, passion or poetry-is promptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes. When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life. Little does she realize that her delightful new friendship with inventor Charles Babbage-brilliant, charming, and occasionally curmudgeonly-will shape her destiny. Intrigued by the prototype of his first calculating machine, the Difference Engine, and enthralled by the plans for his even more advanced Analytical Engine, Ada resolves to help Babbage realize his extraordinary vision, unique in her understanding of how his invention could transform the world. All the while, she passionately studies mathematics-ignoring skeptics who consider it an unusual, even unhealthy pursuit for a woman-falls in love, discovers the shocking secrets behind her parents' estrangement, and comes to terms with the unquenchable fire of her imagination. In Enchantress of Numbers, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini unveils the passions, dreams, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largely unheralded pioneer in computing-a young woman who stepped out of her father's shadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the new technology that would shape the future.

  • Author:
    Min, Anchee
    Summary:

    Seventeen-year-old Orchid belongs to an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times. Unexpectedly, she is chosen as one of the emperor's lesser concubines. Within the Forbidden City are thousands of women hoping to bear the emperor a son and become his empress. Orchid, determined and resourceful, schemes her way into the royal bed and seduces the emperor. But as the opium trade erodes the might of the Ch'ing dynasty, Orchid find herself at the center of a crumbling nation.

  • Author:
    Pearce, Jacqueline
    Summary:

    In the sequel to Discovering Emily, Emily Carr is determined to become an artist. But her parents have died, and she and her siblings are ruled by the iron-willed eldest, Dede. Dede is more concerned with decorum than with ridiculous dreams and is not averse to punishing Emily severely. In the face of such resistance, and in the conservative climate of nineteenth-century Victoria, Emily must find a way to make her dream come true.

  • Author:
    Elias, David
    Summary:

    A sweeping, cinematic novel about the life of the Winter Queen, Elizabeth Stuart October 1612. King James I is looking to expand England's influence in Europe, especially among the Protestants. He invites Prince Frederic of the Palatinate to London and offers him his sixteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth's hand in marriage. The fierce and intelligent Elizabeth moves to Heidelberg Castle, Frederic's ancestral home, where she is favored with whatever she desires, and the couple begins their family. Amid much turmoil, the Hapsburg emperor is weakened, and with help from Bohemian rebels, Frederic takes over royal duties in Prague. Thus, Elizabeth becomes the Queen of Bohemia. But their reign is brief. Within the year, Catholic Europe unites to take back the Hapsburg throne. Defeated at the Battle of White Mountain, Frederic, Elizabeth, and their children are forced into exile for a much-reduced life in The Hague. Despite tumultuous seasons of separation and heartache, the Winter Queen makes every effort to keep her family intact. Written with cinematic flair, this historical novel brings in key figures such as Shakespeare and Descartes as it recreates the drama and intrigue of 17th-century England and the Continent. Elizabeth's children included Rupert of the Rhine and Sophia of Hanover, from whom the Hanoverian line descended to the present Queen Elizabeth II.

  • Author:
    Lightman, Alan P.
    Summary:

    A fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds.

  • Author:
    Parent, Gilles
    Summary:

    Préface de Jean-Luc Brassard May O’Leary, fille d’un millionnaire de Vancouver, Patrick Murphy de la Baie James et Simon Latour un écorché vif de Montréal sont trois adolescents décrochés de la famille, de l’école et de la société. Ils plongent malgré eux dans la petite misère et la délinquance de la rue. Leur rencontre avec Benoît Craig, à la suite d’un cambriolage, va les mettre sur la piste du raccrochage qu’ils vont parcourir au milieu de défis à haut risque et à travers une tragédie en montagne où l’effort et la détermination leur apporteront un idéal de vie. Cette histoire est inspirée de faits réels et c’est par ses trois principaux personnages qu’elle nous révèle la détresse, l’abandon, la haine, l’amour et l’espoir dans un dédale de moeurs, de justice, de cadres scolaires et familiaux et aussi dans un fabuleux décor de montagne.

  • Author:
    Gordon, Richard
    Summary:

    Dr. Grimsdyke lands a job as ship's doctor on a passenger liner on which his current beloved is also travelling.

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