Hastings' Greater Men and Women of the Bible, which recently went through Community Pricing, will be a valuable resource for biographical study, teaching and preaching. I hope you got it for the final $9.00 bid it cost.
No less useful will be Alexander Whyte's Bible Characters: http://www.logos.com/communitypricing/details/6733
Whyte's volume is very different from Hastings'. He is a more devotional writer; his character studies have the feel of having once been sermons. He uses his imagination and his thinking about the times in which characters lived to help illuminate and bring alive their setting and actions. He wants you to hear the clink of the glasses (OK they weren't glass) at Simon's house when he dined with Jesus, or the wideness and wildness of the desert of Arabia where Paul spent three years. You might not fully agree with the way he sets things forward, but he is not fanciful in his efforts.
For those unfamiliar with him I encourage you to read one of his expositions. The link below will take you to his volume on Paul. Let me recommend you use the Contents to jump to the above referenced exposition on Paul's three years in Arabia - a subject probably few of us have ever attempted to preach on or have ever heard anyone else preach on (you might want to after reading it). You can find most, if not all, of the rest of this six volume work at the same site.
http://books.google.com/books?id=1_IOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Bible%20Characters%20Whyte&source=gbs_slider_thumb#v=onepage&q=Bible%20Characters%20Whyte&f=false
I think you will find these brief expositions enjoyable to read and worth the small investment it will cost you to obtain them in Logos format.
