Book picks similar to
Daughter of Paris: The Diary of Marie Duplessis, France's Most Celebrated Courtesan by A.G. Mogan


biography
historical-fiction
_france_belgique_<br/>francophonie
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The Brigandshaw Chronicles Box Set: Books 1 to 3


Peter Rimmer
    Two best friends. Both fighting for their country. Against each other.Sebastian Brigandshaw arrives at the Cape of Good Hope and upon arrival is welcomed by a Boer hunter, Tinus Oosthuizen. The pair forms an unlikely friendship, spending many days in the vast wilderness, carving out a future from a savage land.For Sebastian - resourceful and well-adjusted - he falls in love with Africa and decides to live a simple life. But his days of peace are numbered. War is looming. What was so peaceful now becomes volatile and unsettled. Read this unforgettable, accurate account of the Boer War and how their families were dragged through some of Africa’s most aggressive and remarkable days. Ready for a journey back into the past? Then buckle up…Thousands of copies sold WORLDWIDE. Discover what all the fuss is about.“Very balanced view on the Boer War. I could feel real emotions.”“As my grandkids would say, it got betterer and betterer. Worth all five stars.”“One of the most amazing reads I have had for a long time, it takes one back to the day, you can smell the African bush.”“What a wonderful book! Full of history and philosophy. A book that I will read again after a while.”“Superb! All Rimmer’s books are such great reading!”“Excellent African history. Wilbur Smith fans will be pleased.”

Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor


Rebecca Rosenberg - 2019
    Little did she expect that she’d be abandoned and pregnant and left to manage the gold mine alone. But that didn’t stop her! She moved to Leadville and fell in love with a married prospector, twice her age. Horace Tabor struck the biggest silver vein in history, divorced his wife and married Baby Doe. Though his new wife was known for her beauty, her fashion, and even her philanthropy, she was never welcomed in polite society. Discover how the Tabors navigated the worlds of wealth, power, politics, and scandal in the wild days of western mining.

The Chanel Sisters


Judithe Little - 2020
    Abandoned by their family years before, they’ve grown up under the guidance of pious nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.

The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte


Ruth Hull Chatlien - 2013
    When she falls in love with and marries Jerome Bonaparte, she believes her dream has come true—until Jerome’s older brother Napoleon becomes an implacable enemy. Based on a true story, The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte is a historical novel that portrays this woman’s tumultuous life. Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, known to history as Betsy Bonaparte, scandalized Washington with her daring French fashions; visited Niagara Falls when it was an unsettled wilderness; survived a shipwreck and run-ins with British and French warships; dined with presidents and danced with dukes; and lived through the 1814 Battle of Baltimore. Yet through it all, Betsy never lost sight of her primary goal—to win recognition of her marriage.

Too Soon the Night: A Novel of Empress Theodora (The Theodora Duology Book 2)


James Conroyd Martin - 2021
    

The Queenmaker


Maureen Peters - 1975
    Her name is Bess Hardwick — and this is only the beginning of an astonishing foray into the glittering world of royalty and politics.Married young to her beloved, but sickly, Robert Barlow, Bess learns at the age of twelve what it is to be a widow and alone in the world.She would not take another husband for fourteen years — and he would not be her last.Enriched and advanced by her successive marriages, Bess finds herself increasingly part of exalted company.When she asks the disgraced Lady Elizabeth Tudor to act as godmother to her firstborn son, those around her question the wisdom of her decision. However, Bess knows that Elizabeth is bound for greatness and one day she will remember this act of kindness.As she moves from obscurity to fame and fortune, Bess counts the Queen of England and the Queen of Scots as her closest acquaintances.But having such powerful friends can be dangerous.Her actions are subject to intense scrutiny, and more than once innocent decisions lead to suspicions of treason and the ever looming threat of execution. In spite of this, Bess prevails time and time again, turning her hand and accumulating wealth to rebuilding estates across England.But with her granddaughter descended from royal blood on both sides, Bess’s ambitions have reached new heights and she seeks to have her officially named as the successor to Elizabeth I’s throne.In times to come, she dreams, they will call her the Queenmaker…Maureen Peters was born in Caernarvon, North Wales. She was educated at grammar school and attended the University College of North Wales, Bangor, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree and a diploma of Education. She taught disabled children before taking up writing under her own name and many pseudonyms. Peters has produced many books and contributed short stories to many magazines and her writing normally focuses on royalty, the War of the Roses and the Tudor period. Apart from biographical fiction on royalty she also wrote Gothic romances, family sagas, Mills & Boon series titles and contemporary mysteries. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

A Child al Confino: A True Story of Escape in War-Time Italy


Eric Lamet - 2010
    Five days after Hitler marches Eric and his parents flee for their lives. His mother hides out in Italy, taking her son deeper and deeper into the mountains to avoid capture. This book tells his story.

Her Hidden Genius


Marie BenedictMarie Benedict - 2022
    Christie and The Only Woman in the Room.Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture―one more after thousands―she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'd rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her.Then it finally happens―the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.Marie Benedict's powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.

Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution


James Tipton - 2007
    Spoiled by the novels of Rousseau, she refuses to be married unless it is for passion. Yet the love she finds with a young English poet will test Annette in unexpected ways, bringing great joy and danger in a time of terror and death.Told in sparking prose, Annette Vallon captures the courage and fearlessness of a woman whose dramatic story illuminates a turbulent and fascinating era.

The Life of Cesare Borgia


Rafael Sabatini - 1912
    The illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, he was a cardinal at age 22. He lived hard and died hard, murdering his enemies, seizing power in Florence, and marrying off his sister Lucretia for political gain, not once but three times. This is his remarkable story.

Beautiful Exiles


Meg Waite Clayton - 2018
    Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution


Michelle Moran - 2011
    but who was this woman who became one of the most famous sculptresses of all time? In these pages, her tumultuous and amazing story comes to life as only Michelle Moran can tell it. The year is 1788, and a revolution is about to begin.Smart and ambitious, Marie Tussaud has learned the secrets of wax sculpting by working alongside her uncle in their celebrated wax museum, the Salon de Cire. From her popular model of the American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson, to her tableau of the royal family at dinner, Marie's museum provides Parisians with the very latest news on fashion, gossip, and even politics. Her customers hail from every walk of life, yet her greatest dream is to attract the attention of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI; their stamp of approval on her work could catapult her and her museum to the fame and riches she desires. After months of anticipation, Marie learns that the royal family is willing to come and see their likenesses. When they finally arrive, the king's sister is so impressed that she requests Marie's presence at Versailles as a royal tutor in wax sculpting. It is a request Marie knows she cannot refuse - even if it means time away from her beloved Salon and her increasingly dear friend, Henri Charles. As Marie gets to know her pupil, Princesse Élisabeth, she also becomes acquainted with the king and queen, who introduce her to the glamorous life at court. From lavish parties with more delicacies than she's ever seen to rooms filled with candles lit only once before being discarded, Marie steps into a world entirely different from her home on the Boulevard du Temple, where people are selling their teeth in order to put food on the table. Meanwhile, many resent the vast separation between rich and poor. In salons and cafés across Paris, people like Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre are lashing out against the monarchy. Soon, there's whispered talk of revolution... Will Marie be able to hold on to both the love of her life and her friendship with the royal family as France approaches civil war? And more important, will she be able to fulfill the demands of powerful revolutionaries who ask that she make the death masks of beheaded aristocrats, some of whom she knows? Spanning five years, from the budding revolution to the Reign of Terror, Madame Tussaud brings us into the world of an incredible heroine whose talent for wax modeling saved her life and preserved the faces of a vanished kingdom

Phantom Warrior: The Heroic True Story of Private John McKinney's One-Man Stand Against the Japanese in World War II


Forrest Bryant Johnson - 2007
    On May 11, 1945, McKinney returned fire on the Japanese attacking his unit, using every available weapon-even his fists-standing alone against wave after wave of dedicated Japanese soldiers. At the end, John McKinney was alive-with over forty Japanese bodies before him. This is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and fortitude in battle saved many American lives, and whose legacy has been sadly forgotten by all but a few. Here, the proud legacy of John McKinney lives on.

Little


Edward Carey - 2018
    After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and... at the wax museum, heads are what they do.In the tradition of Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, Edward Carey's Little is a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel—a story of art, class, determination, and how we hold on to what we love.

Papillon


Henri Charrière - 1969
    Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who simply would not be defeated.