Twenty-Five Critically Acclaimed Historical Novels
Explore twenty-five critically acclaimed historical novels that bring the past to life. Discover masterpieces praised for their rich storytelling, vivid settings, and unforgettable characters.
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Salammbo
by Gustave Flaubert
Translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant. Introduction and Notes by Harold Tarrant.
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I, Claudius
by Robert Graves
Considered an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survived the intrigues and poisonings of the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and the Mad Caligula to become emperor in 41 A.D. A masterpiece.
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Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott
In 1166, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a Saxon knight, returns from the Crusades to a chaotic England ruled by the enemies of the absent King Richard the Lion-Hearted. He finds himself disowned and dishonored, forced to fight for his name and the people he loves.
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The Betrothed
by Alessandro Manzoni
“The great plague novel.” —The New Yorker Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters—the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister "Unnamed"—in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed's exploration of love, power, and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A young woman, publicly scorned for bearing an illegitimate child, refuses to be vanquished by the seventeenth-century Boston community.
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Burr
by Gore Vidal
For readers who can’t get enough of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, Gore Vidal’s stunning novel about Aaron Burr, the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel—and who served as a successful, if often feared, statesman of our fledgling nation. Here is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most complicated—and misunderstood—figures among the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. But he is determined to tell his own story, and he chooses to confide in a young New York City journalist named Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. Together, they explore both Burr's past—and the continuing civic drama of their young nation. Burr is the first novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series, which spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to post-World War II. With their broad canvas and sprawling cast of fictional and historical characters, these novels present a panorama of American politics and imperialism, as interpreted by one of our most incisive and ironic observers.
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The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels
by Patrick O'Brian
This set collects all twenty-one of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels about the Royal Navy involving Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
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War and Peace
by graf Leo Tolstoy
Presents the classical epic of the Napoleonic Wars and their effects on four Russian families
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The Confessions of Nat Turner
by William Styron
Presents a fictionalized account of the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia.
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The March
by E. L. Doctorow
In the last years of the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, cutting a 60-mile wide swath of pillage and destruction. That event comes back in this magisterial novel. High school & older.
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Lincoln
by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers. To most Americans, Abraham Lincoln is a monolithic figure, the Great Emancipator and Savior of the Union, beloved by all. In Gore Vidal's Lincoln we meet Lincoln the man and Lincoln the political animal, the president who entered a besieged capital where most of the population supported the South and where even those favoring the Union had serious doubts that the man from Illinois could save it. Far from steadfast in his abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln agonizes over the best course of action and comes to his great decision only when all else seems to fail. As the Civil War ravages his nation, Lincoln must face deep personal turmoil, the loss of his dearest son, and the harangues of a wife seen as a traitor for her Southern connections. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed, Gore Vidal's Lincoln allows the man to breathe again.
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Ragtime
by E. L. Doctorow
Doctorow's big bestseller, made into a major movie and now repackaged, was first published in mass market paper by Bantam.
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The Cairo Trilogy
by Najīb Maḥfūẓ
A series of historical fiction based on the life of a family living in Cairo during the British Colonial period and afterward.
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The Plot Against America
by Philip Roth
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The chilling bestselling alternate history novel of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president whose government embraces anti-Semitism—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral. “A terrific political novel.... Sinister, vivid, dreamlike...You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” —The New York Times Book Review One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.