Biographical Fiction

History is full of fascinating people who led fascinating lives, but sometimes, we’re not always in the mood to learn about those lives from textbooks. That’s where biographical fiction comes in! These books are based on the lives of real people throughout history with some fiction and literary elements thrown in for your reading pleasure.

And They Called It Camelot

Stephanie Marie Thornton

An intimate portrait of the life of Jackie O… Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve

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Jackie & Me

Louis Bayard

In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is "not to be a housewife," but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetow

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Clara and Mr. Tiffany

Susan Vreeland

The famed Tiffany lamp, with its leaded glass, pulsing colors, and nature motifs, was actually developed by Clara Driscoll, head of Tiffany's women's division. It brought the company critical acclaim as well as a desperately needed financia

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American Duchess

Karen Harper

Before there was Meghan Markle, there was Consuelo Vanderbilt, the original American Duchess. Perfect for readers of Jennifer Robson and lovers of Downton Abbey. Karen Harper tells the tale of Consuelo Vanderbilt, her “The Wedding of the Century”

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The Lipstick Bureau

Michelle Gable

1944, Rome. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy's capital. One of the OSS's few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she's tasked with crafting fake stories and d

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Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

Therese Anne Fowler

When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen

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Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel Cover
Thomas Cromwell Series, Book 1

Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel

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 twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes hi

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Bloomsbury Girls

Natalie Jenner

But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans: Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiance was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant an

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The Secret Chord

Geraldine Brooks

The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or

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The Paris Wife

Paula McLain

In this fictional memoir, Hadley Hemingway chronicles the life and career of her husband, famed twentieth century writer Ernest Hemingway. Through Hadley's unique perspective, listeners get a behind-the-scenes look into the personal lives of the

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The Social Graces

Renée Rosen

1876. In the glittering world of Manhattan's upper crust, women are valued by their pedigree, dowry, and, most importantly, connections. They have few rights and even less independence--what they do have is society. The more celebrated the hoste

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Loving Frank

Nancy Horan

Fact and fiction blend in a historical novel that chronicles the relationship between seminal architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, from their meeting, when they were each married to another, to the clandestine affair that shocked Chicago so

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Finding Dorothy

Elizabeth Letts

Maud Gage Baum, widow of the man who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, intervenes to protect Judy Garland during the high-pressure shooting of the film while also recalling the hand-to-mouth life she and her husband led in South Dakota before Oz swep

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The Lindbergh Nanny

Mariah Fredericks

When the most famous toddler in America, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., is kidnapped from his family home in New Jersey in 1932, the case makes international headlines. Already celebrated for his flight across the Atlantic, his father, Charles, Sr., is the

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Her Hidden Genius

Marie Benedict

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider--brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that

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Strangers in the Night

Heather Webb

In the golden age of Hollywood, two of the brightest stars would define--and defy--an era... She was the small-town southern beauty transformed into a Hollywood love goddess. He was the legendary crooner whose voice transfixed the world. They were Av

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Memoirs of a Geisha

Arthur Golden

Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart of Gion - the

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Lady Clementine

Marie Benedict

In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not b

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Goodnight from Paris

Jane Healey

In Nazi-occupied France, an American film star takes on the most dangerous role of her life in a gripping novel about loyalty and resistance, inspired by a true story, from the Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Secret Steale

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The Invention of Wings

Sue Monk Kidd

In the antebellum South, ten-year-old slave Hetty "Handful" Grimke is given to Sarah Grimke (a real-life figure) on Sarah's 11th birthday. Over the next 35 years, Handful suffers loss but finds herself, while Sarah breaks away from her

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The Christie Affair

Nina de Gramont

A long time ago, in another country, I nearly killed a woman. It's a particular feeling, the urge to murder. It takes over your body so completely, it's like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. There's

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Carnegie's Maid

Marie Benedict

Clara Kelley is not the experienced Irish maid hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, so Clara is prete

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The Second Mrs. Astor

Shana Abe

After losing her husband on the RMS Titanic, Madeleine Astor, who is constantly surrounded by scandal, finds her status elevated to that of a virtuous, tragic heroine and must decide whether to accept the role assigned to her or carve out her own ext

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The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post

Allison Pataki

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. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michi

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A Gentleman in Moscow

Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand

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The Dictionary of Lost Words

Pip Williams

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 Eng

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The Personal Librarian

Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray

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

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Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Patti Callahan

When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-ma

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The Henna Artist Alka Joshi Cover
Jaipur Trilogy Series, Book 1

The Henna Artist

Alka Joshi

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist - and confidante - to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trust

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The Other Einstein

Marie Benedict

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

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