Following a forty-year career in journalism, fifteen of those years as a foreign correspondent, I started writing fiction and historical fiction. In the fifteen years, I’ve been at it, I’ve written a family memoir, Misfortunes of Wealth; a newspaper novel, The Paris Herald; and my first venture into historical fiction, Waiting for Uncle John, the story of our first attempt to invade Cuba, in 1851. As one commentator said of Uncle John: “If only President Kennedy could have read this book.” My latest work of historical fiction, Blood and Oranges, tells the story of Los Angeles in the 20th Century through the eyes of a family, two brothers and two sisters, whose members have a hand in the city’s seminal events.
I wrote...
Blood and Oranges: The Story of Los Angeles: A Novel
An action-packed historical novel of twentieth-century Los Angeles that follows three generations of the Mull family, from the roaring twenties to the fiery nineties. Mulholland’s aqueduct unleashes unimagined wealth, growth, crime, death, and destruction in valley of the angels. There are oil derricks on the beaches, highways covering the orchards, buses mysteriously replacing the world’s best trolley system, gilded church domes in place of brick and ivy, floating casinos in Santa Monica Bay. Hollywood. Murder in the hills; fires in the mountains; riots in the hoods.
The Mull brothers, identical twins from Salinas, rise with the water that nourishes the new city. Willie is a fiery preacher who, like Augustine, can’t quite shake his delight in the opposite sex; Eddie makes a fortune in oil and real estate and a few enemies along the way. Eddie’s daughters, Maggie and Lizzie, set out to right the wrongs of their father, but then must answer to their own children.
Most of us want to know more about the Roman Empire than Shakespeare gives us in Julius Caesar, though probably not as much as Gibbon offers us in six volumes. Robert Graves’ I, Claudius does what historical fiction does best: it is a brilliant narrative about a complex and important period of history that most of us want to understand. The emperor Claudius is the narrator, brutally honest, marvelously flawed, tragically situated as emperor between Caligula and Nero. Whew, such company!
A work of historical fiction which recreates the life and times of Emperor Claudius, who lived from 10 BC to AD 41, a time when poisoning, blasphemy, treachery, incest and unnatural vice were commonplace. From the author of CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA.
Arundel is the compelling story of Col. Benedict Arnold’s march to Quebec in 1775 on Gen. Washington’s orders to take Canada and the St. Lawrence from Britain at the start of the Revolutionary War. I’ve long admired Kenneth Roberts’ ability to navigate the treacherous path between history and fiction. One must stick to the history yet bring it alive through characters the author imagines to give the story drama and narrative power. Few writers of historical fiction have done it better or chosen better themes. Like Emperor Claudius, Benedict Arnold is a man of history worth understanding.
This is the classic series from Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, all featuring characters from the town of Arundel, Maine. Arundel follows Steven Nason as he joins Benedict Arnold in his march to Quebec during the American Revolution.
As more contemporary writers of historical fiction go, Herman Wouk is at the top. The Winds of War does with the beginnings of World War II what Barbara Tuchman did with The Guns of August, her history of events on the eve of World War I. This is a story that can best be told by a narrator who, Zadig-like, is present at the key events of the period. In other words, it is a story best told through the devices of historical fiction. The story takes place in 1939-’41, three of the most dramatic years of the Twentieth Century.
Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with THE WINDS OF WAR and continues in WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - the drama, the romance, the heroism and the tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very centre of the maelstrom.
"First-rate storytelling." - New York Times
"Compelling . . . A panoramic, engrossing story." - Atlantic…
Caleb’s Crossing is a stunning piece of research and recreation into the lives of Puritans and Native Americans in and around Martha’s Vineyard in the 17th Century. Brooks, a master of the art, weaves together a detective story and a love story about how a young English woman and the son of a chieftain strive to overcome the failure of the Puritans to convert the Wampanoag tribe to Calvinism. Her investigation into this little-known period is a triumph of sleuthing.
A bestselling tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha's vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's father is a Calvinist minister who seeks to convert the native Wampanoag, and Caleb becomes a prize in the contest…
So you thought you knew all about Thomas Cromwell, the devious and manipulative chief minister behind some of Henry VIII’s most heinous deeds. History has treated him generally as beyond redemption for his hand in the murders of some of England’s finest, including his relentless war against England’s Catholics. And let’s not forget poor Anne Boleyn. Hilary Mantel’s research tells a more complex story of a far more complex man.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the the Orange Prize
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
`Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good'
Daily Mail
'Our most brilliant English writer'
Guardian
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor.
Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and history that laid tracks for the North America of today.
Leaving behind ancestral Chinese homelands and their family, brothers Yang and Lee face harrowing challenges as they join countless immigrants seeking a better life in the 1860s.
This story follows their remarkable journey across the ocean to San Francisco, then into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where they'll labor to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Surrounded by California's new marvels, and carrying their cultural traditions in their hearts, Yang and Lee find themselves in precarious situations. Their passions, struggles, dreams, and…
