579 results for "Historical Fiction"

The dwarfs: a novel

Pinter, Harold
Originally written in 1950, then revised and first published in 1992, The Dwarfs is Harold Pinter's only novel. Set in postwar Britain, The Dwarfs describes the intertwined lives and concerns of four young Londoners: Len, working at the Euston train station but fascinated by abstract mathematics; Mark, a sometime actor; and Virginia and Pete, a young couple trying to define their relationship amid the powerful, sometimes destructive forces at work among the four. In the evolution of this quadrilateral friendship and the strains it creates, Harold Pinter explores how ordinary lives are molded by the limitations and boundaries of sexuality, intimacy, and mortality. It is a world populated by dwarfs -- young people who have departed, only to leave emptiness. Funny, vivid, and haunting, The Dwarfs is a brilliantly intriguing and chillingly perceptive novel by a writer whose imagination has shaped our lives.
Grove Weidenfeld 1991 183 pages

Why We Never Danced the Charleston

Harlan Greene
The scene is Charleston, South Carolina; the time, the 1920s, when old ladies dream of the past and a strange new dance, "the Charleston," is seducing the youth of the city. Years later, whispers emerge of something baffling and tragic that happened back then. As an old man confronts those demanding the truth, we catch brilliant flashes of the confrontation between the dark, doomed Hirsch Hess, son of immigrants, and the fantastically ethereal Ned Grimke, a scion of the city. Told in intoxicatingly beautiful prose, this story of passion, beauty and the deadly effects of sexual repression takes us to a specific time and place, yet simultaneously blossoms as a universal tale of the human heart in conflict with its era. This cult classic, set in the most intriguing period of one of America's most beautiful cities, is now restored to print with an afterword by its author that traces the facts upon which it is based.
History Press 2005 128 pages

If You Awaken Love

Emuna Elon
After Yair Berman left her and shattered all her dreams, the devastated Shlomtzion Drore escaped as far as possible from him and her intensely religious life in Jerusalem, becoming an interior designer in secular Tel-Aviv. Twenty-one years later, her daughter has become engaged to his son, and Shlomtzion is forced to visit the controversial settlement in which Yair lives, not only to plan the wedding but to confront her former love and the mistakes of her life. Set in Israel between the Six Day War and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, If You Awaken Love is the intensely moving story of a stormy and spiritual young girl and her love-hate relationships with her childhood sweetheart, with her father, and with God. Translated by David Hazony.
Amazon Publishing 2012-03-20 240 pages

The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World

E.L. Konigsburg
Discoveries Amedeo Kaplan dreams of discovering something -- some treasure no one realizes is there until he finds it. And he would like to discover a true friend to share this with. Improbably, he finds the friend in aloof, edgy William Wilcox. And even more improbably, he finds his treasure among the memorabilia in the house of his eccentric neighbor, Mrs. Zender. But Amedeo and William find more than treasure -- they find a story that links a sketch, a young boy's life, an old man's reminiscence, and a painful secret dating back to the outrages of Nazi Germany. And they discover unexpected truths about art, friendship, history, heroism, and the mysteries of the human heart.
Atheneum Books for Young Readers 2009-03-10 256 pages

Songs for the brokenhearted: a novel

Tsabari, Ayelet
"1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha'ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren't supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man. 1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida's daughter, has been living in New York City-a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing her skin were lighter, her illiterate mother's Yemeni music quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn't looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni's childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket. Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family-including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future"--
Random House 2025-09-02 339 pages

Betrayal of Angels

Armin Shimerman
The Queen's conjurer, Doctor John Dee, is an Elizabethan mathematician, cryptographer, and mystic commissioned by Her Majesty's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, to suss out a noble Count who governs an island in the English Channel. Dee's mission? Uncover treason, reveal terrorists, and unveil threats to The Crown. Embarking, Dr. Dee is accosted by an eager acolyte. The unknown teen playwright, William, has just endured his first flop-Prince Amleth. Will solicits the renowned scholar's mentorship. A winter tide sees these unlikely collaborators set sail for the Channel Islands to sleuth out sedition on Protestant England's strategic outpost. On Illyria, clues appear as Dee comes to rely on the surprising ingenuity of his young companion. Clandestine powers collide as Queen Elizabeth's spy tracks each slim lead. When Dee is brought to the brink of destruction, can his incipient discovery of Count Orsino's recusants and loyalists be thwarted?
Jumpmaster Press 2020-11-05 442 pages

Traveler of the Century A Novel

Andrés Neuman
"The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman." —Roberto Bolaño Searching for an inn, the enigmatic traveler Hans stops in a small city on the border between Saxony and Prussia. The next morning, Hans meets an old organ-grinder in the market square and immediately finds himself enmeshed in an intense debate—on identity and what it is that defines us—from which he cannot break free. Indefinitely stuck in Wandernburg until his debate with the organ-grinder is concluded, he begins to meet the various characters who populate the town, including a young freethinker named Sophie. Though she is engaged to be married, Sophie and Hans begin a relationship that defies contemporary mores about female sexuality and what can and cannot be said about it. Traveler of the Century is a deeply intellectual novel, chock-full of discussions about philosophy, history, literature, love, and translation. It is a book that looks to the past in order to have us reconsider the conflicts of our present. The winner of Spain's prestigious Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, Traveler of the Century marks the English-language debut of Andrés Neuman, a writer described by Roberto Bolaño as being "touched by grace."
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013-05-07 576 pages

Mr. Mani

A. B. Yehoshua
Mr. Mani is a deeply affecting six-generation family saga, extending from nineteenth century Greece and Poland to British-occupied Palestine to German-occupied Crete and ultimately to modern Israel. The narrative moves through time and is told in five conversations about the Mani family. It ends in Athens in 1848 with Avraham Mani's powerful tale about the death of his young son in Jerusalem. A profoundly human novel, rich in drama, irony, and wit.
HarperCollins Publishers 1993-05-07 384 pages

Simon Wiesenthal

Tom Segev
This first fully documented biography of Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, is also a brilliant character study of a man whose life was part invention but wholly dedicated to ensuring both that the Nazis be held responsible for their crimes and that the destruction of European Jewry never be forgotten. Like most Jews in Eastern Europe on the eve of Hitler's invasion of Poland, twenty-four-year-old Simon Wiesenthal did not grasp the nature of the Nazi threat. But six years later, when a skeletal Wiesenthal was liberated from the concentration camp at Mauthausen, he fully fathomed the crimes of the Nazis. Within days he had assembled a list of nearly 150 Nazi war criminals, the first of dozens of such lists he would make over a lifetime as a Nazi hunter. A hero in the eyes of many, Wiesenthal was also attacked for his unrelenting pursuit of the past, when others preferred to forget. For this new biography, rich in newsworthy revelations, historian and journalist Tom Segev has obtained access to Wiesenthal's private papers and to sixteen archives, including records of the U.S., Israeli, Polish, and East German secret services. Segev is able to reveal the intriguing secrets of Wiesenthal's life, including his stunning role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann, his relationship with Israel's Mossad, his controversial investigative techniques, his unlikely friendships with Kurt Waldheim and Albert Speer, and the nature of his rivalry with Elie Wiesel. Segev's challenge in writing this biography was Wiesenthal's own complicated relationship to truth. Wiesenthal told many versions of his life, his suffering in the camps, and his involvement with the arrest of individual Nazis. Segev shows that in order to gain the information he sought and twist the arms of reluctant government figures, Wiesenthal needed to seem more influential than he really was. For two generations of Americans, Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish superhero--depicted on film by Ben Kingsley and Laurence Olivier--and the muse for a Frederick Forsyth thriller. Now Segev demonstrates that the truth of Wiesenthal's existence is as compelling as the fiction. "Simon Wiesenthal" is an unforgettable life of one of the great men of the twentieth century.
Jonathan Cape Ltd 2010-09 480 pages

Nero The End of a Dynasty

Miriam Griffin,Miriam Tamara Griffin
"Although Nero's personality has fascinated both historians and writers of fiction, it is the nature of his reign and its context within the Julio-Claudian dynasty that has even greater importance for historians of the Roman Empire. Nero's final collapse brought to an end the dynasty Augustus had founded and placed in jeopardy the political system he had devised. To what extent does Nero's failure reveal not only his own ineptitude but the tensions and problems inherent in that system? Why did this actor-emperor find the role of princeps so difficult to play? These are the questions confronted by Miriam Griffin in her wide-ranging study. Dividing her book into two distinct yet related parts, Griffin first analyzes the reign of Nero in terms of the Emperor's attitude and initiative and then provides a diagnosis of his fall in which his personality is seen interacting with the political institutions he inherited. The accent is on Nero, but he is never viewed in isolation: the example of his family and predecessors, the influence of his advisers and rivals, and the effect upon those who had to follow him--all give a broad focus to this work."--Jacket.
Yale University Press 1985 320 pages

Target Churchill

Warren Adler,James C. Humes
"As Great Britain and the United States celebrate a victorious end to WWII, Joseph Stalin's relentless Soviet Union is spreading across Eastern Europe leaving a trail of devastation and murder in its wake. Winston Churchill, the cigar-puffing icon of the British fighting spirit embarks on a crusade to lift the veil of secrecy that hangs over Stalin's Soviet Union. Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri sets the diplomatic stage upon which the world's political players grapple for supremacy as Churchill delivers his fated Iron Curtain speech on March 5th 1946. Soviet operatives have infiltrated British and American governments at the highest level. As Churchill prepares to deliver his Iron Curtain speech that will launch the cold war, Stalin unleashes his trained mole, an American Nazi who served in Hitler's SS. His mission: Assassinate Winston Churchill. Churchill travels with a lone bodyguard, W.H. Thompson, a former British police officer who protected Churchill faithfully through the turbulent years of war. Thompson alone senses danger, but will his trained instincts and vigilance be enough to protect the former Prime Minister from a ruthless killer? In this gripping historical thriller, battles are fought not on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, on the streets or in the hills, but behind closed doors in the shadows of espionage."--P. [4] of cover.
Stonehouse Press 2012-06-23 316 pages

After the Downfall

Harry Turtledove
From Harry Turtledove, the master of alternate history, comes After the Downfall, a novel of magic, epic warfare, and desperate choices. 1945: Russian troops have entered Berlin, and are engaged in a violent orgy of robbery, rape, and revenge. Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel, a career soldier on the losing end of the greatest war in history, flees from a sniper's bullet, finding himself hurled into a mysterious, fantastic world of wizards, dragons, and unicorns. There he allies himself with the blond-haired, blue-eyed Lenelli, and Velona, their goddess in human form, offering them his knowledge of warfare and weaponry in their genocidal struggle against a race of diminutive, swarthy barbarians known as Grenye. But soon, the savagery of the Lenelli begins to eat at Hasso Pemsel's soul, causing him to question everything he has long believed about race and Reich, right and wrong, Ubermenschen and Untermenschen. Hasso Pemsel will learn the difference between following orders... and following his conscience. Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Night Shade 2009-06-01 400 pages

Zero-G Green Space

William Shatner,Jeff Rovin
An exciting science fiction adventure from William Shatner—famous for his role as Captain Kirk on Star Trek —about the intrepid, eighty-year-old FBI deputy director Samuel Lord and his quest to stop the Chinese from using a weapon that (unknown to them) could destroy Earth. In the year 2050, the United States sends the FBI to govern its space station, the Empyrean. Under the command of former fighter pilot and FBI field agent Samuel Lord, the space-based “Zero-G” men are in charge of investigating terrorism, crime, corruption, and espionage beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and of keeping an eye on the rival Chinese and Russian stations. During the Zero-G team’s first days in space, a mysterious and beautiful scientist, Dr. May, shows up to the Empyrean claiming that important research has been stolen from her lab on the moon. Her arrival suspiciously coincides with timing of a tsunami that destroys part of the coast of Japan, and her unusual behavior makes Director Lord think that Dr. May might know more about the disaster than she’s letting on. Meanwhile, the Chinese space station has gone mysteriously silent. In this “tightly paced blend of police procedural, military SF, and space opera, set in an intriguing near-future world” ( Publishers Weekly ), Director Lord must connect the dots to discover who or what has caused the tsunami as well as subsequent disasters, and how Dr. May and the Chinese might be involved.
Simon & Schuster 2018-09-25 368 pages

Imaginary Lives

Marcel Schwob
Marcel Schwob (18671905) was one of the key symbolist writers, standing in French literature alongside such names as Stphane Mallarm, Octave Mirbeau, Andr Gide, Lon Bloy, Jules Renard, Rmy de Gourmont, and Alfred Jarry. His best-known works are Double Heart (1891), The King In The Gold Mask (1892), and Imaginary Lives (1896). Imaginary Lives contains twenty-two mythopoeic literary portraits of figures from ancient history, art history, and the history of crime and punishment. From demi-gods, sorcerers, incendiaries, wantons and philosophers of the ancient world, to the "poet of hate" Cecco Angiolieri and the painter Paolo Uccello, through to the pirates William Kidd and Major Stede-Bonnet, and finally Burke and Hare, the serial killers; Schwob presents a vivid array of characters who display all that is macabre, deviant and magnificently terrifying in human beings and in life. In Imaginary Lives, Schwob has created a "secret" masterpiece that joins other biographical glossaries such as Jorge Luis Borges' A Universal History Of Infamy and Alfonso Reyes' Real And Imagined Portraits in the pantheon of classic speculative fiction, of which Schwob's book is the dark progenitor. Livid with decadent imagery, Imaginary Lives resonates loudly today with its themes of temporality, myth, violence and sexuality, and stands as a major work of the fin-de-si]cle. Solar Nocturnal presents classic literature and art by key forerunners of modernism.
Solar Books 2009-04 141 pages

The Brothers Ashkenazi

I. J. Singer
The Brothers Ashkenazi by I.J. Singer is a multi-generational saga set in the tumultuous backdrop of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Poland. The novel follows the lives of two vastly different brothers, Meshulam and Asa Ashkenazi, as they navigate the complexities of family, business, and identity within the Jewish community. Meshulam, a shrewd and ambitious businessman, embraces modernity and capitalism to rise in society, even at the expense of his traditions. Asa, on the other hand, remains deeply rooted in his Jewish faith and studies, rejecting the pursuit of material success. The brothers' contrasting paths lead to a bitter rivalry that mirrors the social changes and political upheavals of their time, including World War I and the rise of antisemitism. Amidst personal struggles, power struggles, and shifting allegiances, the novel explores themes of assimilation, cultural transformation, and the enduring struggle to balance tradition with progress. Through intricate character development and vivid historical detail, Singer crafts a compelling narrative that illuminates the complexities of Jewish identity and the forces that shape a society in flux.
Toby Press LLC 2024-03-27 520 pages