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Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumour growing in her brain. As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again — and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children — she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights and always buying that dress when she sees it.

Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind.

Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of Maria von Trapp: a novice nun sent to teach a widowed baron's sickly child. Yet much of Maria's life will have to be reinvented for THE SOUND OF MUSIC. When Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he's busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary Fran instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life.

Connie Fitzwalter never imagined that her passion for music would lead her into a world of danger and intrigue. When her old family friend, Stephen, who works for the foreign office, tells Connie the true scale of the violence against Jewish people in Germany and Austria, she can stand aside no longer. Together, Stephen and Connie devise a daring mission to help families escape the clutches of Nazi persecution. Under their cover as music enthusiasts traveling to high-society concerts in Europe, Connie and her sister Dottie begin by smuggling money and valuables for families over the border.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister's lavish Caribbean wedding, she's unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have peppered her unremarkable career.

12th century, England: A penniless young knight with few prospects, William Marshal is plucked from obscurity when he saves the life of Henry II's formidable queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In gratitude, she appoints him tutor to the heir to the throne, the volatile and fickle Prince Henry. But being a royal favorite brings its share of danger and jealousy as well as fame and reward.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death. An aristocratic woman in 18th century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society's expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for equality, as well as endless, often scandalous, letters to her many powerful friends. However, Mary wants more from the world. Using her charm and connections, she engineers a job offer for her husband as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

In the scorched city of Rome, the cobbled streets hum with gossip and sin. Costanza Piccolomini is a respectable young wife - until she meets Gianlorenzo Bernini, the famed sculptor and star of Roman society, whose jet-black gaze matches his dark temper. From the second they set eyes upon each other, a fatal attraction is born. Their secret love burns with a passion that consumes them. But with every stolen kiss and illicit tryst, Costanza's reputation is at stake. Meanwhile, Bernini has a dangerous desire: he wants to make Costanza immortal.

1461. Through blood and battle Edward has gained England’s throne – king by right and conquest – eighteen years old and unstoppable. Cecily has piloted his rise to power and stands at his shoulder now, first to claim the title King’s Mother. But to win a throne is not to keep it and war is come again. As brother betrays brother, and trusted cousins turn treacherous, other mothers rise up to fight for other sons. Cecily must focus her will to defeat every challenge. Wherever they come from. Whatever the cost. For there can be only one King, and only one King’s Mother.

Based on the life of cornet player Buddy Bolden, one of the legendary jazz pioneers of turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans, Coming Through Slaughter is an extraordinary recreation of a remarkable musical life and a tragic conclusion. Through a collage of memoirs, interviews, imaginary conversations and monologues, Ondaatje builds a picture of a man who would work by day at a barber shop and by night unleash his talent to wild audiences who had never experienced such playing. But Buddy was also playing the field with two women, and inside his head was a ticking time-bomb.

1821: Thirteen-year-old Àjàyí is snatched from the Nigerian village of Òsogùn by slave raiders who burn the town and enslave its people. Shackled and taken to Lagos, he is certain he will never see his family again. Freed by English warships, Àjàyí is put in the care of the Church Missionary Society and baptised Samuel Crowther. Quickly rising through the ranks of the church, Crowther never forgets the driving passion of his life: to end the slave trade, by any means necessary.

It is 1191 and King Richard the Lionheart is on crusade to pitch battle against Saladin and liberate the city of Jerusalem and her lands. His mother, the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine and his promised bride, Princess Berengaria of Navarre, make a perilous journey over the Alps in midwinter. They are to rendezvous with Richard in the Sicilian port of Messina. There are hazards along the way - vicious assassins, marauding pirates, violent storms and a shipwreck. Berengaria is as feisty as her foes and, surviving it all, she and Richard marry in Cyprus and continue to the Holy Land.

It is 1901, and Dr Gallagher has just pronounced Murray Hall dead. New York politico, gambler, womaniser - Hall is all these things, but when the press break the news of his death to the world, they reveal a side to his identity he never wanted known, a secret no one could have guessed. One journalist is determined to uncover the truth of Hall's past, but his search leads him down winding alleys of fact and fiction. From humble beginnings in Glasgow's tenements to a life spent rubbing up against New York's political elite, Murray Hall is the definition of a self-made man.

An awkward misfit, nine-year-old Fulke FitzWarin leaves his family for the household of Joscelin de Dinan, Lord of Ludlow. Once there, he begins to learn the knightly arts which he desperately hopes will free him from the shadows of his past. Joscelin’s youngest daughter, Hawise, befriends Fulke when he most needs it. But as the years pass, an enemy to Ludlow changes their friendship unalterably, forcing them onto opposite sides of a cruel divide.

In the 1950s, after the publication of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel reconsidering the life of one of the most well-known Biblical figures, Herod the Great, reimagining him in a very different light than his villainous portrayal in the New Testament. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is a forerunner of Christ, a religious and philosophical man who enriched Jewish culture and lived a life of adventure.

It’s the 1970s, and from hippie London to Warhol’s Factory in New York, reluctant aristocrat Loulou de la Falaise is desperately seeking adventure. She’s escaped an early, unhappy marriage, and arrives on a whim in Paris—the champagne-soaked heart of the fashion world, where the old world of haute couture and the new world of ready-to-wear are vying for supremacy. Glamour, sex, and cocaine nights fuel the Paris fashion scene. Its crown prince is the soulful and intensely gifted Yves Saint Laurent.

William Marshal’s prowess and loyalty as a knight in the English royal household has been rewarded by marriage to Isabelle de Clare, heiress to great estates in England, Normandy and Ireland. But their contentment and security is shattered when King Richard dies and is succeeded by his brother John, who takes the Marshals’ sons hostage and seizes their lands.

The spirited daughter of England's greatest knight, Mahelt Marshal, lives a privileged medieval life. But when her beloved father falls out with the volatile and dangerous King John, her world is shattered. The king takes her brothers hostage and Mahelt's planned marriage to Hugh Bigod, heir to nobility, takes place sooner than she expected.

At age fourteen, Princess Salome knows she will soon be ready for marriage - one that will satisfy the ambitions of her mother Herodias. But it is Herodias's own sudden remarriage that will change Salome's life in a way she did not expect. Uprooted to Judea, Salome finds herself in a land full of strange people - none more so than the prophet John 'the Baptiser', who condemns her mother and stepfather for their respective divorces. When John is imprisoned for inciting rebellion, Herodias forces Salome to ask for his head as a gift for her dancing.

Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London.