Splendid Historical Fiction
Discover splendid historical fiction books that transport you to the past. Explore our curated list of captivating novels filled with rich storytelling and vivid historical settings.
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Year of Wonders
by Geraldine Brooks
"When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated mountain village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes, we follow the story of the plague year, 1666, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice. Convinced by a visionary young minister, they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease. But as death reaches into every household, faith frays. When villagers turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As she struggles to survive, a year of plague becomes, instead, annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders.' Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged mountain spine of England. Year of Wonders is a detailed evocation of a singular moment in history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.
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All He Ever Wanted
by Anita Shreve
"A marriage is always two intersecting stories." This realization comes perhaps too late to the husband of Etna Bliss-a man whose obsession with his young wife begins at the moment of their first meeting, as he helps Etna and her companions escape from a fire in a hotel restaurant, and culminates in a marriage doomed by secrets and betrayal. Written with the intelligence and grace that are the hallmarks of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, this gripping tale of desire, jealousy, and loss is peopled by unforgettable characters as real as the emotions that bring them together.
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Lucy
by Ellen Feldman
An utterly absorbing novel about a famous political marriage and an epic infidelity. On the eve of World War I, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fiercely ambitious and still untouched by polio, falls in love with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor stumbles on their letters and divorce is discussed, but honor and ambition win out. Franklin promises he will never see Lucy again. But Franklin and Lucy do meet again, and again they fall in love. As he prepares to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turns to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor is unable to give. Ellen Feldman brings a novelist's insight to bear on the connection of these three compelling characters. Franklin and Lucy did finally meet, across the divide of his illness and political ascendancy, her marriage and widowhood. They fell in love again. As he prepared to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turned to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor was unable to give. Drawing on recently discovered materials to re-create the voice of a woman who played a crucial but silent role in the Roosevelt presidency, Lucy is a remarkably sensitive exploration of the private lives behind a public marriage. Reading group guide included.
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People of the Sea
by W. Michael Gear
The story of life and love, death and adventure in North America eleven thousand years ago.
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Savannah, Or, A Gift for Mr. Lincoln
by John Jakes
As Sherman's army marches across Georgia in 1864, the Lester ladies of Savannah struggle to save their family's rice plantation.
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The Magic of Ordinary Days
by Ann Howard Creel
Near the end of World War II, pregnant Olivia Dunne is forced into marriage and banished to a remote Colorado farm, where she develops a relationship with her new husband and with two Japanese-American sisters living in a nearby internment camp. Reprint.
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March
by Geraldine Brooks
From Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women," Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, and has added adult resonance to portray the moral complexity of war and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism.
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Folly and Glory
by Larry McMurtry
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author concludes his frontier epic about the Berrybenders, an English family making their way across the America in the 1830s, with this novel of triumph, tragedy, and destiny.
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Great Train Robbery
by Michael Crichton
Contains excerpt from State of fear by Michael Crichton (2002).
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Follow the River
by James Alexander Thom
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “It takes a rare individual not only to see that history can live, but also to make it live for others. James Thom has that gift.”—The Indianapolis News Mary Ingles was twenty-three, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre. For months they held her captive. But nothing could imprison her spirit. With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. Her story lives on—extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people.
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Oh My Stars
by Lorna Landvik
In a novel set during the early days of rock 'n' roll, Violet Mathers, a down-and-out woman, becomes embroiled with a handsome musical pioneer.
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Fortune's Rocks
by Anita Shreve
Everywhere hailed for its emotional intensity and unflagging narrative momentum, this magnificent novel transports us to the turn of the twentieth century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results.
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Chancellorsville
by James Reasoner
After finding Lucille Farrell, Cory Brannon considers supplying the South with food and weapons, while his brothers enjoy a brief visit home before returning to fight with the Confederate army in Fredericksburg.
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Waterloo (#11)
by Bernard Cornwell
June 1815: The Duke of Wellington, the Prince of Orange, and Napoleon will meet on the battlefield--and decide the fate of Europe With the emperor Napoleon at its head, an enormous French army is marching toward Brussels. The British and their allies are also converging on Brussels--in preparation for a grand society ball. It is up to Richard Sharpe to convince the Prince of Orange, the inexperienced commander of Wellington's Dutch troops, to act before it is too late. But Sharpe's warning cannot stop the tide of battle, and the British suffer heavy losses on the road to Waterloo. Wellington has few reserves of men and ammunition; the Prussian army has not arrived; and the French advance wields tremendous firepower and determination. Victory seems impossible.
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Alibi
by Joseph Kanon
In a historical thriller set in postwar Venice, Adam Miller, a U.S. Army war crimes investigator, confronts a city still at war with itself and haunted by the atrocities of the recent past when he falls in love with a Jewish woman.
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Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Tells of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana and shows how one man's dream to create an empire affects others.
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The Last Kingdom
by Bernard Cornwell
In this epic novel, bestselling author Cornwell follows King Alfred the Great and his desperate quest to keep England from falling into the hands of the Danish conquerors.
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The Wicked Day
by Mary Stewart
Born of an incestuous relationship between King Arthur and his half sister, the evil sorceress Morgause, the bastard Mordred is reared in secrecy. Called to Camelot by events he cannot deny, Mordred becomes Arthur’s most trusted counselor -- a fateful act that leads to the "wicked day of destiny" when father and son must face each other in battle.