Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Biographical Fiction

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis' life were not always what they seemed. This wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown is told in stylish, elegant prose and endowed with lavish portions of Davies' wit and wisdom.

Renowned for her highly acclaimed and bestselling British histories, Alison Weir has in recent years made a major impact on the fiction scene with her novels about Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. In this latest offering, she imagines the world of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the beautiful twelfth-century woman who was queen of France until she abandoned her royal husband for the younger man who would become king of England.

London, 1926. American-raised Maisie Musgrave is thrilled to land a job as a secretary at the upstart British Broadcasting Corporation, whose use of radio - still new, strange, and electrifying - is captivating the nation. But the hectic pace, smart young staff, and intimidating bosses only add to Maisie's insecurity. Soon she is seduced by the work - gaining confidence as she arranges broadcasts by the most famous writers, scientists, and politicians in Britain.

Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer's chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.

A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.

In the long hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, a widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As an archaeological dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find, and the discovery leads to a host of jealousies and tensions.

The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.

In 1942, Kay Summersby's life is changed forever when she is conscripted to drive General Eisenhower on his fact-finding visit to wartime London. Despite Eisenhower's marriage to Mamie, the pair takes an immediate liking to each other, and he buys Kay a rare wartime luxury: a box of chocolates. So begins a tumultuous relationship that, against all military regulation, sees Kay traveling with Eisenhower on missions to far-flung places before the final assault on Nazi Germany.

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late 18th-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide" - a plain, simple child named Sophievon Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends.

Jesus is a fresh and inspirational re-imagining of a young man's transformational journey from carpenter's son to revolutionary leader to the man many believe to be the savior of the world. Very little is known or recorded about Jesus in his formative years. In the Gospel stories, we witness the birth of Jesus and then see him as a young boy of 12 intensely questioning the Rabbis in the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Told through the experiences of the four women who loved him, this imaginative account of Frank Lloyd Wright's raucous life blazes with Boyle's trademark wit and invention. Boyle's protean voice captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a masterful ode to the creative life in all its complexity and grandeur.

Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish-American War of the late 1890s.

From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation - certain to become the definitive version - of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.

In the ruins of Germany in 1945, at the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him. In America in 2010, Henry's niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after she experiences a devastating act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript.

This is A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories by Lu Xun, a renowned writer of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet who wrote both in Vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. He became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai in the 1930s.

In search of answers, Merivel sets off for the French court. But Versailles leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with a seductive Swiss botanist allows him to dream of an honorable future. But back home, his loyalty and medical skill are about to be tested to the limit, while the captive bear he has brought back from France begins to cause havoc.

Now remembered as the author of the world's most famous hymn, in the mid-18th century, as England and France stand on the brink of war, John Newton was a young sailor wandering aimlessly through life. His only duty was to report to his ship and avoid disgracing his father - until the night he heard Polly Catlett's enchanting voice caroling. He was immediately smitten and determined to win her affection.

Paleontologist Howard Beamish is flying to Nairobi when his plane is forced to land in Callimbia. Journalist Lucy Faulkner, on assignment to write a travel piece for a Sunday magazine, is on the same flight. What happens to Howard and Lucy in Callimbia is one of those accidents that determine fate, that bring love and take away joy, and that reveal the precariousness of our existence. With intelligence, grace, and gentle irony, Penelope Lively illuminates the age-old dance of myth and reality.

After the death of his prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, 22-year-old Louis steps in to govern France. He’s still a young man, but one who, as king, willfully takes everything he can get—including his brother’s wife. As the love affair between Louis and Princess Henriette burns, it sets the kingdom on the road to unmistakable scandal and conflict with the Vatican. Every woman wants him. He must face what he is willing to sacrifice for love.