Biographical Fiction

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....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

On an otherwise ordinary morning in 1943, Helene Hannemann is preparing her five children for the day when the German police arrive at her home....

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....

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....

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

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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

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....

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

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....

Based on a true story, Queenie of Norwich is the compelling tale of one remarkable girl's journey to womanhood. Spanning the first half of the 20th century, Queenie's story is one of heartbreak and triumph, love and loss, and the power of family....

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

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

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France, a group of women determined to rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen - children's libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.

BLUE MOUNTAINS, 2024: Working on a documentary at the historic Carrington Hotel, videographer Emma Quinn discovers a box of handwritten letters belonging to Rose Carey, water dancer and golden girl of the silent film era. Intrigued, Emma begins to read through them, slowly uncovering a deadly secret. SYDNEY, 1923: Rose Carey has faced enough scandal to last a lifetime. After an accident and near-death experience, the threat of bankruptcy, and rumours of her romantic entanglements, Rose decides to take matters into her own hands and propose to her business manager, Walter.

Very few Westerners understand how far advanced South Africa was and still is in military technology. For instance, the entire US MRAP vehicle program is based on 1975 South African technology. The list is endless and superficially dealt with in the GMJ Intelligence Briefings. In Code Name Alphabet 32, I introduce the reader to yet another South African miracle of technology, the air-to-ground & surface-to-surface Mokopa anti-tank missile. The Mokopa outperforms the better-known US Hellfire in every possible way and is described in this book. It is faster, more accurate, penetrates 50% more...

In Code Name Halloween 38 we take a hard look at what is known as PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) or Black Propaganda. Thinking outside the box is a quality that Angelique Dawson has in great proportions and it is needed when you want to weaken your enemy from within. I wanted to know how far such operations are effective and thus dove into history to find the answers. This was an interesting book to write, the research that came out made me think hard on PSYOPS, a black art that few master. From my own service years, I knew the basics. I knew that we, as well as the enemy, were subjected...

Code Name Caribbean is about counter maritime-terrorism, a highly specialized form of counter-terrorism and the most difficult one of all. When a commercial vessel is taken over, hijacked by terrorists, you have a much more serious problem than with an aircraft standing on the apron. Aircrafts are actually quite easy to take back and is seen as “bread and butter” work for Special Forces. I explained the techniques on storming an aircraft in Code Name Wrangler, a book that is used by many SWAT Units as training material. Luckily, at the moment, maritime terrorist attacks are less than 1%...

In Code Name GSSP-40 we look at the troublesome Jesuit/Roman Catholic influence inside the CIA as well as the Hegelian Dialectic played on them and the rest of us. The Hegelian Dialectic comes down to using two total opposites to create enough fear to get people to do what you want them to do in a pre-determined way. This effect gives the spymaster a controlled solution. Angelique describes it much better as “imagine a sheep dog chasing the flock of sheep towards the pen, the dog is all over the place, this side and that side, and so the sheep are herded into the pen. Now, think of the ...

In Code Name Moonlight, we take a hard look at counter-espionage and not our usual subjects, counter-terrorism and espionage. It is seldom that you find someone liking both fields, the two groups don’t usually mix well. When Angelique Dawson inherited the counter-espionage desk (like a department), she was not overly impressed. She is at heart a spy, not a counter-espionage operator. But what Angelique likes most in life, professionally wise, is to prove that a woman is as good as, if not better than, any man and when playing chess with human lives, which is the game of spymasters, she is...

When I wrote Code Name Mel’s Choice, GMJ 25, I was asked by many readers about the character, Sir Dennis, as we call him, a legendary Rhodesian Air Force pilot that turned out to be a Soviet GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) penetration agent. A man that took the identity of a long-deceased RAF pilot and became a legend. After Angelique captured him, he was handed over to MI6 for questioning. It was either that or summary execution. In this book, we deal with Sir Dennis further - his subsequent “defection” from MI6 to DGSE, the French Spy Agency. However, you cannot just leave the ...

Code Name Oath 19 is mainly about Special Forces diving and more specifically, “technical diving”. This is where you must decompress before coming to the surface again, usually, depending on physical fitness levels, when you are deeper than 130 feet. This is not the same as Special Forces attack diving where rebreathers are used (they don’t give out bubbles and can be used for many hours at a time). The attack divers are never deep enough to need to decompress. This is the traditional method used when sabotaging something underwater, a Special Forces speciality, like a ship or barge (...

It was Winston S Churchill that stood out as the statesman that understood naval power more than anyone else. In all his books, he has the same message. The navy is what keeps enemy soldiers away from the mainland. Nothing has changed, without the US Navy, mainland USA is under severe threat of not only blockade but of invasion by a foreign army, i.e. the Chinese one. The rise of the Chinese Navy and the brutally frank political analyses in this book should be worrying, they are moving in relentlessly, cutting your sea routes as explained in many GMJ Books. In Code Name Ghost we take a hard...

Code Name Phantom looks at security at military installations and the state of the military ordnance which are kept on these sites. There are shocking statistics highlighted in this book regarding this state of affairs for all militaries and not only in South Africa. In 2010, in South Africa, there was 78,000 tons of immediate use ordnance available, 67% of which need immediate destruction. That is 52,260 tons. In simple terms, the old ordnance may explode at any time. The problem is getting worse since they are unsafe to move. They should have already been used in exercises, shot out or ...

Code Name Butterfly main focus is sniping, something that is frequently in the media these days. There is, however, a bizarre misconception in the US that police snipers are less trained, less deadly and shoot at much shorter distances. That may be true with Sheriff Departments where SWAT is seen as the ultimate but here in South Africa we don’t rate the US Police SWAT highly. The reason being, there is not one US-based SWAT Team that is rated by us as true Special Forces, they are rather seen as low percentage units and are barely able to deal with violent criminals. In South Africa, and...

Since the very first GMJ Novel, Code Name VFO565, was published in late 2014, I have spoken about the “Muslim Truce” which is something that is officially denied by the authorities. I stated that the new South African Government reached out to what many will call “Islamic Radicals” and offered or negotiated a deal that they will be welcomed to recuperate and be protected in this sphere but only if they behave. This is the spirit of Ubuntu. Because it is so important, you can read more about the ‘Muslim Truce” in the Intelligence Briefing available at www.georgemjames.com. From ...

Code Name Casselberry is about evacuating trapped citizens from hostile countries by unconventional means. In Africa, things are different than in the rest of the world and are often more confusing. A nation that seems peaceful and can be peaceful for years may explode into violence overnight. It is hard to predict such events because the signs of unrest are always there. If violence does erupt, one must act very quickly, and the usual Western way is to evacuate trapped citizens by securing an airport or airfield. Once this happens, the citizens are led onboard onto cargo planes or other ...

Code Name OST-M deals with deviousness. We show how a good man can end up working for the enemy and not even know it. The scenario is to run a red flag operation on him. You let the person working for you believe that he is working for someone else, someone he has sympathy with. Older readers will recall Sean Connery in “From Russia with Love.” In this film, the Russian female cypher clerk thinks she is working for the KGB but actually she is recruited by and is working for a criminal organisation. In another case, the FBI, before they became the “Clinton Whitewash Bureau,” ...