Political Historical Fiction

In Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, novelist Jennifer Chiaverini presents a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history.

It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of General Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship.

It was the end of World War II. FDR's New Deal had redefined American politics. Taxes were at an all-time high. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had created a fear of total annihilation. The rise of secret government agencies and sanctions on business had many watching their backs. America's sense of freedom was diminishing... and many were desperate to take that freedom back.

When The Centurions was first published in 1960, readers were riveted by the thrilling account of soldiers fighting for survival in hostile environments. They were equally transfixed by the chilling moral question the novel posed: how to fight when the "age of heroics is over". As relevant today as it was half a century ago, The Centurions is a gripping military adventure, an extended symposium on waging war in a new global order, and an essential investigation of the ethics of counterinsurgency.

When the great Thomas Hardy published this heart-wrenching novel, he had no idea it would be his last. But the book stirred so much controversy and protest, Hardy vowed to never write fiction again. Jude the Obscure tells the story of a stonemason, tricked into a loveless marriage, who craves a formal education and a finer existence. Separated from his wife, Jude begins a new life with his cousin, and the couple defies social convention at every turn.

March 1917 tells the story of the Russian Revolution itself, during which not only does the Imperial government melt in the face of the mob, but the leaders of the opposition prove utterly incapable of controlling the course of events. The absorbing narrative tells the stories of more than fifty characters during the days when the Russian Empire begins to crumble. The anti-Tsarist bourgeois opposition, horrified by the violence, scrambles to declare that it is provisionally taking power, while socialists immediately create a Soviet alternative to undermine it.

Elegant, secretive Sabina may be empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband, Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly secret: Vix's beautiful son, Antinous, has become the emperor's latest obsession.

Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister Marcella is more aloof, content to witness history rather than make it. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside-down, both women must maneuver carefully just to stay alive.

In a time of shifting loyalties and trecherous alliances, young Dick Shelton is betrayed by his brutal guardian. Intent on rescuing the woman he loves, Dick joins forces with a mysterious fellowship intent on dispensing their own brand of justice.Through one trap after another, each choice Dick makes begins to have dire consequences—not only for himself, but for the fate of England!

En esta novela, Julia Álvarez recrea magistralmente la historia real de tres hermanas que fueron brutalmente asesinadas por oponerse a la dictadura de Rafael Trujillo en República Dominicana. Treinta años después del crimen, la autora dio voz a cada una de ellas en un sentido homenaje a su valentía. Incluyo también a Dedé, la hermana sobreviviente que cuenta un capítulo muy oscuro de la historia con ternura y bondad.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever...

Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), vanishes in New York City in 1940 amid personal and political turmoil. No one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. Not her close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner.

The year is 1939 and Europe is hurtling toward war. Paul Muller is an intelligence agent trying to fend off threats from Germany, but also from Britain and France. Secret agreements reveal unexpected danger and new menacing entanglements as Switzerland becomes a target in the impending conflict. Muller uncovers plots and schemes to gain advantage by ruse and ploy—and violence.

When army officer Chike Ameobi is ordered to kill innocent civilians, he knows it is time to desert his post. As he travels toward Lagos with Yemi, his junior officer, and into the heart of a political scandal involving Nigeria's education minister, Chike becomes the leader of a new platoon, a band of runaways who share his desire for a different kind of life.

The Golden Age is a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War II and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire.

On the first day, she met her match. Then she killed 16 men. Tossed into the gladiator arena, the delicate girl in the fancy pink dress should have been the first to die. Leyli had other plans. Surviving was at the top of her list. Revenge was a close second.

In 1913, a Russian ballet incited a riot in Paris at the new Theâtre de Champs-Elysees. A century later, in November 2013, thousands of Ukrainian citizens gathered at Independence Square in Kyiv to protest then-President Yanukovych's failure to sign a referendum with the European Union, opting instead to forge a closer alliance with President Vladimir Putin and Russia. The peaceful protests turned violent when military police shot live ammunition into the crowd, killing over a hundred civilians.

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a "brilliant...enchanting novel" (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in 18th-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition.

En la Florencia del siglo XV, la de Botticelli y Leonardo, se está preparando una conspiración política y religiosa que podría cambiar la Historia del Renacimiento italiano: la que instigaron los Pazzi y el papa Sixto IV contra el poder de los Médicis. Sólo asesinando a Lorenzo el Magnífico se podría dominar la economía de todo el orbe cristiano. En la Florencia del siglo XXI, una estudiante prepara su tesis sobre un pintor de turbio pasado.