Top 10 Books Based On True Story

Books based on true stories have the power to engross the readers. Knowing that whatever happens in the book is based on reality can make the reading experience even more thrilling, heart-breaking and exciting. These are top 10 books based on true story:

Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl by Anne Frank

Anne Frank: Diary Of A Young Girl is a compelling personal account of the Holocaust by Anne Frank. In 1942, the Nazis were occupying Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding in an attic. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived confined in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Isolated from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.

In her diary Anne Frank wrote of her impressions of her experiences during this period. Anne Frank: Diary Of A Young Girl is a thoughtful, moving, and sometimes shockingly humorous account that offers a captivating commentary on human courage and fragility. It is a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was devastatingly cut short. 

Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup

Twelve Years a Slave is one of the books based on true story written by Solomon Northup. He was citizen of New-York and kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana. Twelve Years A Slave is a memoir by Solomon Northup which was edited by David Wilson and published in 1853. It is a tale of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C. and sold into slavery, and was a slave for 12 years in Louisiana. In this book Solomon Northup provides details of slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and also describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana. Twelve Years A Slave was adapted was adapted into an Academy Award winning film in 2013 by director Steve McQueen.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Truman Capote in his book ‘In Cold Blood’ traces the murders that took place on November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. Four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by shotgun that was held a few inches from their faces. The crime had no motive and there were almost no clues. Truman Capote details the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers. He creates a captivating suspense and astonishing empathy. Capote shows the young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock to be deplorable and yet fully and scarily human.

Red Joan by Jennie Rooney

Red Joan is also one of the books based on true story inspired by the life of Melita Norwood who got away with treason. Melita Norwood was a British civil servant who provided Russians intelligence with private information before retiring and going into hiding. Melita Norwood used the alias Red Joan and acted as a British double agent giving wartime secrets to the KGB. However, in 1999, at the age 87, Norwood was found.

Red Joan by Jennie Rooney is a fictionalized novel based on her life. Author Jennie Rooney begins the novel with Red Joan’s late-in-life questioning by the MI5 and flashes back to when she made the life-defining decision to work with the Russians. Red Joan follows the story of Joan Stanley who is a disillusioned Cambridge undergrad who makes dangerous new friends that take her down an unlikely career path. Norwood was the longest-serving Soviet spies in Britain, and her identity wasn’t revealed until 1999.

Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton

Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton is true story of the legendary war reporter Martha Gellhorn. How she fell in love with Ernest Hemingway, while she was covering the Spanish Civil War in Madrid. War correspondent Martha Gellhorn met Ernest Hemingway in 1936, when Hemingway was married to journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, and soon their flirtatious friendship became romantic.

Their friendship is forged over writing, talk, and family dinners. Their relationship flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War. As they both tour the world together 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. Based on a real-life love affair, Clayton gives a fictionalized account of their relationship in her book Beautiful Exiles.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle is a deeply moving memoir by Jeannette Walls. This is a true story of resilience and redemption, of a family that is dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant and lived life of nomads. Jeannette’s father was an alcoholic when he was sober he was charismatic and he captured his children’s imagination, taught them physics, geology, and told them how to embrace life fearlessly. However, when he was drunk, he was dishonest and destructive. Jeannette’s mother was a free spirit who hated the idea of family life and didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children became successful.  

Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue is a distressing story of a mother and her five year old son Jack who are held captive for 24 years in a room. The story follows their journey, how they defeat their captor, Old Nick and finally gain freedom after which Jack experiences the outside world for the first time. The story is told through the point of Jack. Room by Emma Donoghue is a poignant novel influenced by a horrific true story.

In 1984, in Austria a 18-year-old girl named Elisabeth Fritzl was locked in a secret basement by her father, who kept her imprisoned for 24 years, assaulting and abusing her and forcing her to conceive seven children without leaving the room. After hearing the story of Elisabeth, Donoghue wrote the story of young mother and her son who were held captive and were later released in the modern world. Room by Emma Donoghue is an unnerving story of hope.

Wintering: A Novel Of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses

Wintering: A Novel Of Sylvia Plath by Kate Mosses is a book that tries to clear the mystery around the life of Sylvia Plath. This is one of the books based on true story. It is about her last few days in the life of Sylvia before her suicide. Sylvia Plath has left us with many of her journals, but she often appears to be cloaked in mystery. Kate Moses in her book Wintering tries to tackle the end of Plath’s life.

The final two weeks of Sylvia Plath’s life were dark, and Kate Moses’ novel brings some of the many questions surrounding them into the light. The novel focuses on December 1962, before her suicide, when Plath moved with her two children to London from the Ted Hughes’s home in Devon. It follows the weeks after their arrival in London, but also flashes back through the years of Plath’s marriage. Wintering by Kate Moses is a portrait of the moments of bravery and exhilaration that Sylvia Plath found among the isolation and terror of her depression.

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a true story based on the life of Chirstopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp. In April of 1992, a young McCandless from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given all his savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, a party of moose hunters found his decomposed body. Into The Wild is the story of how McCandless came to die.

After graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a dream quest his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He gave himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, free of financial liability and belongings, he indulged himself in the raw, unfiltered experiences presented by nature.  Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is an unforgettable story of Christopher McCandless who left behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Wild is a remarkable memoir by Cheryl Strayed. It follows Cheryl from the age of twenty-two when she thought she had lost everything after her mother’s death, as her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed to four years later in her life. Four years later Cheryl had nothing more to lose and she made the impulsive decision to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State alone. In Wild Cheryl Strayed powerfully tells the terrors and pleasures of one young woman moving ahead against all odds on a journey that healed her.

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