Genre
The best Historical Fiction books
Other eras rendered concrete. Battlefield details, court politics, kitchen smells. The best of it teaches you something true while doing the job of fiction.
76 reviews in this genre.
Editor's picks
Highest-rated historical fiction on the shelf
11/22/63
by Stephen King
11/22/63 by Stephen King 2011 review. An English teacher discovers a portal to 1958 and decides to stop the Kennedy assassination. The single best late-King novel and the rare time-travel book that earns its 849 pages.
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.
Blood Meridian
by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 1985 review. A nameless teenager joins a band of Indian-hunters along the Texas-Mexico border in 1849. The most violent American novel of the late twentieth century and the rare McCarthy book that demands the prose attention it requires.
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel 2012 review. Thomas Cromwell engineers the fall of Anne Boleyn and the rise of Jane Seymour. Booker Prize 2012, the second volume of the Cromwell trilogy, and the rare novel that exceeds an already-canonical predecessor.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 2023 review. A 1972 skeleton found at the bottom of a Pottstown, Pennsylvania well sends the novel back to a 1930s neighborhood where Black, Jewish, and immigrant families lived alongside each other. The most important American novel of 2023.
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 review. Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation, escapes north via an actual underground railroad, a literalized version of the metaphor. Pulitzer Prize 2017 and the National Book Award winner that defined the contemporary Black literary moment.
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 2009 review. Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son who rose to serve Henry VIII, reorganizes the English state at the cost of his own soul. Booker Prize 2009 and the most important historical novel of the twenty-first century.
The Women
by Kristin Hannah
The Women by Kristin Hannah 2024 review. A California debutante follows her brother to Vietnam as an Army nurse in 1967. Kristin Hannah's structural masterwork and the best-selling adult novel of 2024.
Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange 2024 review. The historical-and-contemporary follow-up to There There. The Red Feather ancestral chain from Sand Creek 1864 through the present.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
by Stuart Turton
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 2018 review. Aiden Bishop wakes in eight different bodies at a 1920s country house and must solve a murder. Costa First Novel Award winner.
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 2023 review. A 1962 Mi'kmaq blueberry-picking family loses a four-year-old daughter in rural Maine. Andrew Carnegie Medal winner 2024.
The Marriage Portrait
by Maggie O'Farrell
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell 2022 review. Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici recognizes that her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, intends to kill her. O'Farrell's Hamnet follow-up.
Harlem Shuffle
by Colson Whitehead
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead 2021 review. A Harlem furniture-store owner navigates three crime arcs across 1959-1964. Whitehead's pivot from Pulitzer-winning literary fiction to a Harlem crime trilogy.
The Women of Troy
by Pat Barker
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker 2021 review. Briseis narrates the days after the fall of Troy as the Greeks wait for favorable winds. Barker's sequel to The Silence of the Girls.
Crossroads
by Jonathan Franzen
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 2021 review. The Hildebrandt family across the first months of 1971 in suburban Chicago. Franzen's structural return to form and first book of the Key trilogy.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
by Anthony Marra
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra 2013 review. Five days in 2004 Chechnya - a doctor hides an eight-year-old girl whose father has just been disappeared. Marra's debut.
In the Time of the Butterflies
by Julia Alvarez
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez 1994 review. The four Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic navigate the Trujillo dictatorship. Alvarez's structural masterwork.
Let Us Descend
by Jesmyn Ward
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward 2023 review. An enslaved teenage girl walks from a Carolina rice plantation to the New Orleans slave market. Ward's structural follow-up to Sing Unburied Sing.
The Fraud
by Zadie Smith
The Fraud by Zadie Smith 2023 review. A Scottish housekeeper becomes obsessed with the 1860s Tichborne case. Smith's structural pivot into Victorian historical fiction.
Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 1981 review. Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment of Indian independence, narrates the first three decades of his life. Booker Prize winner.
The Night Watchman
by Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich 2020 review. A Turtle Mountain Chippewa night watchman fights the 1953 federal termination policy. Pulitzer Prize winner.
Held
by Anne Michaels
Held by Anne Michaels 2023 review. Four generations of an English family across the twentieth century, organized as twelve fragmentary chapter-vignettes. Booker Prize shortlist 2024.
Kairos
by Jenny Erpenbeck
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck 2023 review. A 1986 East Berlin affair between a nineteen-year-old student and a fifty-three-year-old novelist. International Booker Prize 2024.
Matrix
by Lauren Groff
Matrix by Lauren Groff 2021 review. The twelfth-century Anglo-Norman poet Marie de France becomes prioress of a destitute English abbey. National Book Award finalist.
A Brief History of Seven Killings
by Marlon James
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James 2014 review. The 1976 attempt on Bob Marley's life and its aftermath across Jamaica, Miami, and New York. Booker Prize 2015 and the most structurally ambitious novel from the Caribbean in a generation.
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
Atonement by Ian McEwan 2001 review. On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses something she does not understand and tells a lie that destroys her sister's life. Booker shortlist 2001 and one of the canonical novels of the twenty-first century.
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.
Sharpe's Rifles
by Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell 1988 review. Richard Sharpe, a hard-drinking officer of the 95th Rifles, leads a desperate retreat through Galicia in 1809. The entry point to the Sharpe series and one of the strongest military-historical novels of its decade.
The Mirror & the Light
by Hilary Mantel
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel 2020 review. The final volume of the Cromwell trilogy, covering Thomas Cromwell from the execution of Anne Boleyn to his own arrest and execution four years later. The eight-year-awaited closure of the most important historical-fiction project of the twenty-first century.
The Nickel Boys
by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead 2019 review. Two boys at the segregated Nickel Academy reform school in 1960s Florida, based on the real Dozier School. Pulitzer Prize 2020 and the canonical contemporary American novel on institutional violence against Black children.
The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 1989 review. The building of a twelfth-century English cathedral against the backdrop of civil war. The 1,024-page novel that defined the modern epic historical fiction.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 2017 review. An aging Hollywood icon agrees to tell the true story of her career and her seven marriages, but only to an unknown journalist. The TikTok-era literary fiction novel that defined contemporary Hollywood-memoir-fiction.
Circe
by Madeline Miller
Circe by Madeline Miller 2018 review. The witch-goddess of the Odyssey narrates her own life. Miller's second novel and the canonical contemporary feminist mythic re-telling.
Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2020 review. Noemi Taboada is summoned to the remote Mexican mountain town of El Triunfo to rescue her cousin from her new husband's family. The canonical contemporary Latin American gothic horror novel and the 2020 Bram Stoker winner.
The Song of Achilles
by Madeline Miller
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 2011 review. The Trojan War retold from Patroclus's perspective, written by a classicist with the patience the source material deserves. The novel that defined the contemporary feminist mythic re-telling subgenre and rebuilt Miller's audience for Circe.
Babel
by R. F. Kuang
Babel by R. F. Kuang 2022 review. An alternate 1830s Oxford where the British Empire is powered by silver bars enchanted with the lost meaning between translated words. Nebula and Locus Award winner.
Hamnet
by Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 2020 review. The death of William Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son and the four years before Hamlet is written. The Women's Prize winning novel about marriage, grief, and the play that came out of it.
All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 2014 review. A blind French girl and a German orphan radio specialist meet briefly in occupied Saint-Malo at the end of World War II. Pulitzer Prize 2015 and the canonical contemporary World War II novel.
North Woods
by Daniel Mason
North Woods by Daniel Mason 2023 review. Three centuries of one house in the western Massachusetts forest, told through a chain of inhabitants whose lives connect across time. National Book Award finalist.
The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 2020 review. Identical twin sisters from a small light-skinned Black Louisiana town diverge in the 1960s: one returns with her daughter, the other passes for white in California. Bennett's second novel and one of the canonical 2020s American literary novels.
Trust
by Hernan Diaz
Trust by Hernan Diaz 2022 review. Four narratives about a Gilded Age financier, his wife, the ghostwriter of his memoir, and the woman who finally tells the true story. Pulitzer Prize 2023 and the canonical contemporary literary novel about American capitalism.
Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 2017 review. Abraham Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie dies and Lincoln returns to the Georgetown cemetery. The Bardo is populated by the cemetery's reluctant dead. Man Booker Prize 2017.
The Covenant of Water
by Abraham Verghese
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese 2023 review. Three generations of a Christian family on the Malabar Coast of Kerala, connected by a generational drowning condition. Verghese's second major novel.
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015 review. A communist double agent flees with the South Vietnamese government to Los Angeles in April 1975. Pulitzer Prize 2016 and the canonical contemporary Vietnamese-American novel.
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 2016 review. Seven generations of two half-sister bloodlines, one in Ghana and one in America, from eighteenth-century Fanteland to present-day Stanford. Gyasi's debut and one of the canonical contemporary American diaspora novels.
The Good Lord Bird
by James McBride
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride 2013 review. A twelve-year-old enslaved boy falls in with John Brown in 1856 Kansas and is dressed as a girl named Onion through Harpers Ferry. National Book Award 2013.
Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1997 review. A wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Civil-War-era Carolinas to return home. National Book Award 1997 and the basis for the 2003 Minghella film.
My Brilliant Friend
by Elena Ferrante
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante 2012 review. Two girls grow up in a poor neighborhood of 1950s Naples. The first Neapolitan Novel and one of the canonical contemporary European literary novels.
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