So you want to read a different kind of historical novel...
Discover captivating historical novels beyond the mainstream—from royal intrigue in *The Bad Queen* and *The 19th Wife* to the gritty romance of *Water for Elephants* and the sweeping saga *One Thousand White Women*. This curated book list for avid readers explores art, mystery, and untold lives across centuries, featuring celebrated authors like Lisa See (*Snow Flower and the Secret Fan*), Tracy Chevalier (*The Lady and the Unicorn*), and Alan Brennert (*Moloka'i*). Perfect for fans of rich, immersive fiction—find your next unforgettable read in this eclectic collection of historical gems.
Book
Moloka'i
by Alan Brennert
This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place---and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end---but instead she discovers it is only just beginning. With a vibrant cast of vividly realized characters, Moloka'i is the true-to-life chronicle of a people who embraced life in the face of death. Such is the warmth, humor, and compassion of this novel that "few readers will remain unchanged by Rachel's story" (mostlyfiction.com).
Book
The Food Taster
by Peter Elbling
"When the starving peasant, Ugo DiFonte and his eleven-year-old daughter Miranda are snatched from their farm by the despot Duke Federico Basillione DiVincelli, Ugo thinks life can't get any worse. He is sadly mistaken. The Duke orders Ugo to be his new foodtaster, a hazardous job made even more so by the Duke's many enemies."--Jacket.
Book
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
Lily is haunted by memories–of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness. In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (“women’s writing”). Some girls were paired with laotongs, “old sames,” in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become “old sames” at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.
Book
As Above, So Below
by Rudy Rucker
Peter Bruegel's paintings---a peasant wedding in a barn, hunters in the snow, a rollicking street festival, and many others---have long defined our idea of everyday life in sixteenth- century Europe. They are classic icons of a time and place in much the same way as Norman Rockwell's depictions of twentieth-century America. We know relatively little about Bruegel, but after years of research, novelist Rudy Rucker has built upon the what is known and has created for us the life and world of a true master who never got old. In sixteen chapters, each headed by a reproduction of one of the famous works, Rucker brings Bruegel's painter's progress and his colorful world to vibrant life, doing for Bruegel what the best-selling Girl with a Pearl Earring did for Vermeer. We follow the artist from the winding streets of Antwerp and Brussels to the glowing skies and decaying monuments of Rome and back. He and his friends, the cartographer Ortelius and Williblad Cheroo, an American Indian, are as vivid on the page as the multifarious denizens of Bruegel's unforgettable canvases. Here is a world of conflict, change, and discovery, a world where Carnival battles Lent every day, preserved for us in paint by the engaging genius you will meet in the pages of As Above So Below.
Book
The Painter
by Will Davenport
In the tradition of possession and girl with a pearl earring, this suspenseful, erotic novel seamlessly weaves fact and fiction into a brilliant tapestry of love, art, deception, and danger--at the center of which lies a centuries-old secret… The Painter In an old manor house on the legendary river Hull, Amy Dale has discovered a journal that holds the account of a thrilling duel of seduction--and the key to a missing year in the life of a great artist. Over three hundred years ago, Rembrandt van Rijn challenged the poet Andrew Marvell for the affection of Amy’s ancestor Amelia Dahl. But the fierce competition between those two men for Amelia’s heart has repercussions for the new inhabitants of the manor. Now, as Amy reads the pages of her namesake’s intimate diary and plans the restoration of the old house, she finds herself engaged in her own game of wit, seduction, and desire with a scarred and enigmatic laborer. As their attraction explodes in intensity, the secrets of the past escape from history into the present with consequences they could never expect...and may not survive.
Book
Life Mask
by Emma Donoghue
In a tale set against a backdrop of revolution-imminent eighteenth-century England, the eccentric widow Mrs. Damer works as the period's only woman sculptor, the horse race innovator Lord Derby endures public mockery in spite of his wealth, and a Drury Lane actress endeavors to gain entry into aristocratic circles. By the author of Slammerkin. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.
Book
One Thousand White Women
by Jim Fergus
Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of May Dodd—a remarkable woman who, in 1875, travels through the American West to marry the chief of the Cheyenne Nation. One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd’s journey into an unknown world. Having been committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope for freedom and redemption is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from “civilized” society become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What follows is a series of breathtaking adventures—May’s brief, passionate romance with the gallant young army captain John Bourke; her marriage to the great chief Little Wolf; and her conflict of being caught between loving two men and living two completely different lives. “Fergus portrays the perceptions and emotions of women...with tremendous insight and sensitivity.”—Booklist “A superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph.” —Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump
Book
Artemisia
by Alexandra Lapierre
Artemisia Gentileschi, a significant female artist of the late 1600s, is brought to life as Lapierre captures the flavor of Baroque Italy as well as the emotional life of this fascinating woman. A major exhibition of the artist's paintings opens in February 2002 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. of color photos.
Book
Push Not the River
by James Conroyd Martin
A panoramic and epic novel in the grand romantic style, Push Not the River is the rich story of Poland in the late 1700s--a time of heartache and turmoil as the country's once peaceful people are being torn apart by neighboring countries and divided loyalties. It is then, at the young and vulnerable age of seventeen, when Lady Anna Maria Berezowska loses both of her parents and must leave the only home she has ever known. With Empress Catherine's Russian armies streaming in to take their spoils, Anna is quickly thrust into a world of love and hate, loyalty and deceit, patriotism and treason, life and death. Even kind Aunt Stella, Anna's new guardian who soon comes to personify Poland's courage and spirit, can't protect Anna from the uncertain future of the country. Anna, a child no longer, turns to love and comfort in the form of Jan, a brave patriot and architect of democracy, unaware that her beautiful and enigmatic cousin Zofia has already set her sights on the handsome young fighter. Thus Anna walks unwittingly into Zofia's jealous wrath and darkly sinister intentions. Forced to survive several tragic events, many of them orchestrated by the crafty Zofia, a strengthened Anna begins to learn to place herself in the way of destiny--for love and for country. Heeding the proud spirit of her late father, Anna becomes a major player in the fight against the countries who come to partion her beloved Poland. Push Not the River is based on the true eighteenth century diary of Anna Maria Berezowska, a Polish countess who lived through the rise and fall of the historic Third of May Constitution. Vivid, romantic, and thrillingly paced, it paints the emotional and unforgettable story of the metamorphosis of a nation--and of a proud and resilient young woman.
Book
The Sinner's Tale
by Will Davenport
Her successful career in British politics destroyed by scandal, ambitious Beth Beth Battock returns to her hometown, a remote English village, where she confronts the mystery of her own past and the legacy of Sir Guy de Bryan, a fourteenth-century knight whose story is immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer. 15,000 first printing.
Book
Women of the Silk
by Gail Tsukiyama
Spanning the years between the world wars, this tale of a young Chinese girl forced to work in a silk factory describes the sisterhood of workers she discovers there.
Book
Forever Amber
by Kathleen Winsor
The adventures of Amber St. Clare, the willful and beautiful illegitimate daughter of noble parents who was raised on a farm by people she knew as her aunt and uncle.
Book
White Doves at Morning
by James Lee Burke
A riveting evocation of the Civil War, drawn from the true family history of "America's best novelist" (The Denver Post), JAMES LEE BURKE 1861. Two young Southerners, friends despite their differing political views and backgrounds, enlist in the 18th Louisiana regiment of the Confederate Army: Robert Perry, wealthy and privileged, and irreverent Willie Burke, the son of Irish immigrants, face the trials of battle and find redemption in the love of a passionate and committed abolitionist, Abigail Downing, and in the courageous struggle of Flower Jamison, a beautiful slave. Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters, and penetrating a landscape of shattering Civil War bloodshed as few novels have, this epic from an American literary giant endows readers with the gift of experiencing the past through new eyes, while its timeless prose style -- at once luminous and brutal -- ensures the legacy of this bloodiest of conflicts will never be lost.
Book
Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
Book
The Lady and the Unicorn
by Tracy Chevalier
A tour de force of history and imagination, The Lady and the Unicorn is Tracy Chevalier’s answer to the mystery behind one of the art world’s great masterpieces—a set of bewitching medieval tapestries that hangs today in the Cluny Museum in Paris. They appear to portray the seduction of a unicorn, but the story behind their making is unknown—until now. Paris, 1490. A shrewd French nobleman commissions six lavish tapestries celebrating his rising status at Court. He hires the charismatic, arrogant, sublimely talented Nicolas des Innocents to design them. Nicolas creates havoc among the women in the house—mother and daughter, servant, and lady-in-waiting—before taking his designs north to the Brussels workshop where the tapestries are to be woven. There, master weaver Georges de la Chapelle risks everything he has to finish the tapestries—his finest, most intricate work—on time for his exacting French client. The results change all their lives—lives that have been captured in the tapestries, for those who know where to look. In The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier weaves fact and fiction into a beautiful, timeless, and intriguing literary tapestry—an extraordinary story exquisitely told.
Book
The Chrysalis
by Heather Terrell
An international thriller that spans centuries, this stunning debut traces a mysterious Dutch masterpiece through the clutches of the Nazis and into the dark underbelly of today's art world.
Book
The Eight
by Katherine Neville
Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years...In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful....
Book
Uprising
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Newly arrived in New York City in 1910, Bella is desperate to send money home to her family in Italy, and becomes one of the hundreds of workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. But one fateful March night, a spark ignites some cloth in the factory, resulting in a fire that will become one of the worst workplace disasters in history.
Book
The Miracles of Prato
by Laurie Albanese
A gorgeously imagined tale of a brilliant and tortured artist and a young nun, "The Miracles of Prato" is a breathtaking story of undying devotion, both spiritual and sensual, set at the height of the Italian Renaissance.
Book
The 19th Wife
by David Ebershoff
The story of Ann Eliza Young's crusade against polygamy interwines with a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah.
Book
The Bad Queen
by Carolyn Meyer
Drowning her unhappiness in luxurious parties and scandalous fashions when she falls short of impossible court standards and expectations, Marie-Antoinette incites the wrath of her impoverished French subjects and her disapproving mother. By the award-winning author of Doomed Queen Anne.
