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.

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.

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Highest-rated historical fiction on the shelf

11/22/63

Beloved

Blood Meridian

Bring Up the Bodies

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The Underground Railroad

Wolf Hall

The Women

Wandering Stars

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The Berry Pickers

The Marriage Portrait

Harlem Shuffle

The Women of Troy

Crossroads

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

In the Time of the Butterflies

Let Us Descend

The Fraud

Midnight's Children

The Night Watchman

Held

Kairos

Matrix

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Atonement

Pachinko

Sharpe's Rifles

The Mirror & the Light

The Nickel Boys

The Pillars of the Earth

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Circe

Mexican Gothic

The Song of Achilles

Babel

Hamnet

All the Light We Cannot See

North Woods

The Vanishing Half

Trust

Lincoln in the Bardo

The Covenant of Water

The Sympathizer

Homegoing

The Good Lord Bird

Cold Mountain

My Brilliant Friend

Looking for a specific kind of historical fiction?

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