KDL Recommends

Camila, whose mother, Salome, inspired a Dominican revolution with her poetry, spends most of her life trying to please her father and her brothers, all prominent men, before seeking a place for herself in the days following the Cuban revolution.

When a murder occurs on the grounds of West Point, retired NYPD detective Gus Landor is enlisted to solve the case, recruiting the assistance of an eccentric young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe to help him find the culprit.

Fiction
Re-creates an infamous serial killer case involving the 1910 Scotland Yard investigation into the murder of Bella Elmore, whose body is discovered in the cellar of her husband and killer Hawley Crippen, a doctor who has fled in disguise along with his mistress on a cruise ship bound for America.

Fact
A portrait of an American icon chronicles the rise of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis from “debutante of the year” in 1947 through her subsequent high-powered marriages to JFK and Aristotle Onassis.

Living in the shadow of her famous poet husband, Lidian Emerson, disillusioned by marriage and silenced by social conventions, is drawn to the erotic energy and intellect of family friend Henry David Thoreau, a situation that challenges her beliefs and results in overwhelming life changes.

David Chase has the task of writing a biography of Andrew Jackson in 1828, and when he uncovers information that would kill Jackson’s bid for the presidency, he must decide what to do.

Ned Kelly, the legendary nineteenth-century Australian folk-hero, describes how he, his brother, and two friends led authorities on a twenty-month manhunt, marked by widespread populist support, before his capture and execution.

Offers a fictional portrait of the life of Maria Anna Mozart, the older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a musical prodigy in her own right, who was forced by their father to put aside her talent and become a piano teacher to support his ambitious plans for her brother.

Presents a sweeping and romantic tale set against the historical backdrop of William Blake’s London.

A poor seventeenth-century servant girl knows her place in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, but when he begins to paint her, nasty whispers and rumors circulate throughout the town.

A story inspired by first woman pilot Sophie Blanchard traces her hydrogen balloon journey from the humble seaside village of La Saliere to the battlefields and court of Napoleon, where she hides the pain of her loveless arranged marriage.

Awaiting her execution, Marie Antoinette writes the story of her life, describing her privileged childhood as an Austrian archduchess, years as the glamorous mistress of Versailles, and imprisonment during the French Revolution.

Surviving a violent past to become the wife of the much-younger General Bonaparte, Josephine, an exotic Caribbean-Creole woman, rises even further in status when her husband crowns himself emperor but is unable to forget a mysterious stranger who won her heart in girlhood.

Hiding her identity as the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, Daria Gradov looks back on her luxurious childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, the machinations of an illiterate monk, and the circumstances that forced her to assume another life.

Fact
Describes the life of Marie Antionette from her betrothal as a fourteen-year-old girl to the future King Louis XVI, through her life in the French court, to her courage in the face of revolutionaries who sent her to the guillotine.

A tale based on the early eighteenth-century scandal that inspired Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” finds an impoverished Alexander Pope gaining entry into society and following a forbidden affair between the rakish Lord Petre and the coquettish Arabella.

An only survivor of the ambitious Boleyn family, lady-in-waiting Jane Boleyn testifies against Henry VIII’s latest queen, Anne of Cleves, and conspires to place her young cousin, Katherine Howard, on the throne.

A fictional portrait of Henry VIII’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon, follows her through her youthful marriage to Henry’s older brother, Arthur, her widowhood, her marriage to Henry, and the divorce that led to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Fiction
The daughters of a ruthlessly ambitious family, Mary and Anne Boleyn are sent to the court of Henry VIII to attract the attention of the king, who first takes Mary as his mistress, in which role she bears him an illegitimate son, and then Anne as his wife.

A fictional portrait of the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I follows the young queen as she copes with intrigues aimed at placing Mary, Queen of Scots, on the British throne, and her passion for the traitorous Robert Dudley.

A fictionalized account based on the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean seeks to convey what was happening in the minds of the explorers and to bring life to the collision of white and Native American cultures of the period.

In 1865, in the wake of her husband’s assassination, Mary Todd Lincoln struggles to cope amid the animosity and confusion that surrounds her, in a historical novel that captures the saga of one of the most misunderstood women in American history.

A tale inspired by the writings of Tiro, Cicero’s confidential secretary, traces the life of the ancient Roman orator from his beginnings as a young lawyer through his competitions with Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus in the political arena.

Meeting painter Gustav Klimt at the age of twelve, Emilie Floege, the youngest daughter of a Viennese businessman, matures into a sanguine adult and becomes the artist’s mistress as well as the owner of an exclusive fashion house.

A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine finds Carrie McGavock witnessing the bloodshed of the Battle of Franklin, falling in love with a wounded man, and dedicating her home as a burial site for fallen soldiers.

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 society.

Fact
A portrait of the Edwardian era recounts two parallel stories — the case of Dr. Hawley Crippen, who murdered his wife and fled to America, and Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless communication — as the new technology is used to capture a killer.

The dime novelist Ben Sippy tells the story of Billy Bone whom he named Billy the Kid after meeting him in 1878.

Amelia Earhart discusses her fate on a remote Pacific island in the log she writes after she and Fred Noonan crash in 1937.

Fiction
A fictional portrait of the infamous last empress of China follows the life of Orchid, a beautiful teenager from an aristocratic but impoverished family, who is chosen to become a low-ranking concubine of the emperor and who uses her seductive talents and intelligence to rise to a position of power in the Chinese court.

Based on historical records, a novel presented as a journal written by Jane Austen follows the author’s life from her first love affair at age twenty until she is a respected author in her late thirties.

A fictional account of the last months of Sylvia Plath’s life and the painful creation of her Ariel poems finds her moving with her two children to London after divorcing Ted Hughes, who works to remind her about happier times.

A historical novel centered around the life of Frido Kahlo—the colorful, contentious Mexican painter who married Diego Rivera—introduces readers to Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century and the characters that shaped Kahlo’s life.

Fiction
A fictional tale inspired by the life of Marie Antoinette presents the story of a teenage empress’s daughter who is forced to leave her family home to marry the future king of France and who rebels against the formality and rigid protocol of court life.

A fictional re-creation of the life and times of Bert Williams, the first black entertainer in the United States to achieve success, a man who dons blackface to become a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Fiction
An evocative historical novel chronicles the life of Henry VIII’s first wife, Katharine of Aragon, from her early days in England after being sent from Spain to marry Henry’s sickly older brother, through her subsequent marriage to Henry, to the divorce that ignited a storm of controversy that changed history.

Fiction
A tale based on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis finds the widow of an assassinated president remembering her childhood, struggling privately with her late husband’s philandering, and embarking on a controversial new marriage.

Presents the story of the great Athenian warrior and general Alcibiades, from his great victories on behalf of Athens to his later alliances with Sparta and Persia and his role in the eventual downfall of Athens.

A novel focusing on the life of Frederick Douglass explores the romantic passions that drove the abolitionist to love two women—one black and one white.

Fiction
During the summer of 1841, High Constable Jacob Hays, New York City’s first detective, finds himself investigating a series of brutal crimes, including the rape and murder of Mary Rogers, a young clerk at a Manhattan tobacco shop.

This novel unveils the life and times of the sixteenth-century master as Bruegel and his companions, the cartographer Ortelius and Williblad Cheroo, an American Indian, make their way from Antwerp and Brussels to Rome.

Fact
Reappraises the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi and portrays a strong, complex woman struggling to keep her country from unraveling.

Nine people are brutally murdered on a double-decker bus. The clues suggest a motiveless crime of violence.

Sir William Hamilton lives in Naples with his wife Emma, mistress of Admiral Nelson, while serving as the British envoy to the Bourbon Ferdinand IV.

Fact
Traces the July 1841 murder investigation into a twenty-year-old saleswoman whose demise was marked by sensational media coverage and the debut of Edgar Allen Poe, whose short stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” associated him with the crime.

A fictional retelling of the lives of Chang and Eng Bunker—the original “Siamese twins”—from their lives of poverty in Siam to their success in the United States.

Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity.

Considering whether he will accompany his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to America, a personal cook remembers his youth in French-colonized Vietnam and his days cooking for the doyennes of the Lost Generation.

Chronicles the 1892 arrival of a nearly penniless Rudyard Kipling and his pregnant young wife in Vermont, and his struggle to bring to life his story of a feral child raised by wild animals, a work that became “The Jungle Books.”

Presents a fictional portrait of pioneering artist Emily Carr, whose independence, boldly original artwork, and unconventional approach to life overcame Victorian restrictions to blaze a new path for twentieth-century women artists.

Fact
Describes the 1911 fire that destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York’s Greenwich Village, the deaths of 146 workers in the fire, and its implications for twentieth-century politics and labor relations.

Jack Burden, a young journalist, becomes involved with Willie Stark’s quest for power while serving as a Southern governor.

Fiction
The last living survivor of a 1911 sweatshop fire, 106-year-old Esther Gottesfeld passes away leaving numerous questions about the fire, the truth of which is investigated by her granddaughter Rebecca, Rebecca’s composer partner, and a zealous feminist historian with a personal agenda.

A fictional portrait of Lady Jane Grey, the great-niece of Henry VIII, follows her turbulent life against the backdrop of Tudor power politics and religious upheaval, from her youth, to her nine-day reign as Queen of England, to its tragic aftermath.

Fact
Profiles each of Henry VIII’s six wives, describing their backgrounds, personalities, relationship to the king, and ultimate demise, and shows how each reflected the perceptions of women and marriage at the time.

A fictional account based on the life of Fanny Wright is presented from the perspective of social critic and biographer Frances Trollope, who remembers young Wright’s utopian idealism and move to mid-nineteenth century America.

A series of tales about a photographer’s developing relationship with the Native Americans he astonishes by showing them pictures of themselves is interspersed with parallel tales about an unsung soldier, a husband, and a father.