Best Historical Fiction Books

In 1940s Ohio, a young Black girl named Pecola Breedlove prays for blue eyes, believing beauty — as defined by the white standards she has absorbed — is the one thing that could save her from her world's cruelties.

In 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is released from a juvenile work farm, intending to drive west with his brother and start a new life — until two unexpected companions redirect his journey to New York.

Based on a true story, a Slovakian Jew assigned to tattoo numbers on prisoners at Auschwitz falls in love with a woman he marks, and the two survive the Holocaust through luck, courage, and each other.

Twin sisters from a small Black town in Louisiana take radically divergent paths — one stays in the community, one passes as white — and their daughters' lives intersect decades later.

In 1935, a thirteen-year-old girl's false accusation destroys two lives — and she spends the rest of hers trying to atone for it through the act of writing.

Tennis legend Carrie Soto comes out of retirement at 37 to protect her all-time Grand Slam record from being broken by the sport's rising star.

In an alternative Napoleonic England where magic was once commonplace, two very different magicians attempt to restore English magic — with dangerous and unforeseen consequences.

A sweeping family epic set across one legendary night in 1983 Malibu, tracing the four Riva siblings through their sun-soaked, complicated lives.

A medieval monk and his novice investigate a series of mysterious deaths in a fourteenth-century Italian abbey, where the labyrinthine library may hold the answer — and a secret someone will kill to protect.

A man awakens with no memory in the body of a different person each morning, forced to relive the same day at a country house party until he can identify the killer of Evelyn Hardcastle — or be trapped forever.

A communist spy embedded in the South Vietnamese army narrates his journey from the fall of Saigon through Los Angeles exile to reeducation camp, examining what it means to be perpetually between worlds.

Daphne Bridgerton and the Duke of Hastings enter a fake courtship to mutual benefit — and discover that playing at love is a dangerous game when real feelings get involved.

On the night of Willie Lincoln's death in 1862, Abraham Lincoln visits his son's crypt as the dead in the Bardo surrounding it attempt to guide the boy to his next passage.

In 1950s Mexico, glamorous socialite Noemí Taboada investigates her cousin's mysterious illness at a decaying English family's remote estate — and uncovers something monstrous.

Four characters — a widow, a student, and two tailors — are brought together in 1975 India during Indira Gandhi's Emergency, finding in each other a fragile refuge against catastrophe.

Set during the Nigerian-Biafran War of the late 1960s, the novel follows three characters — twin sisters and a British writer — through one of Africa's most devastating postcolonial conflicts.

Thomas Cromwell orchestrates the fall of Anne Boleyn so that Henry VIII can pursue Jane Seymour — a second act of court destruction more morally troubling than the first. Winner of the Man Booker Prize.

Elena pursues academic success and marriage while Lila works in brutal factory conditions; their lives diverge further as political upheaval grips 1970s Naples.

Hyacinth Bridgerton recruits the roguish Gareth St. Clair to translate his grandmother's Italian diaries — and discovers that the diaries contain a secret that changes both their lives.

A Regency Cinderella: Benedict Bridgerton dances with a mysterious masked woman at a masquerade ball and cannot forget her — but Sophie Beckett is a servant who knows their worlds can never meet.

Gregory Bridgerton falls for a woman who loves someone else — and must stop a wedding to claim his own happy ending in the final chapter of Julia Quinn's beloved Regency series.

While vacationing in London, CIA analyst Jack Ryan foils an IRA assassination attempt on the Prince of Wales and becomes the target of a vengeful splinter faction determined to kill him and his family on American soil.

In Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet 'A' for adultery — but it is the hidden guilt of her lover, the Reverend Dimmesdale, that slowly destroys him.

Eloise Bridgerton has been writing letters to a widowed botanist for months. When she decides to meet Sir Phillip Crane in person, she discovers that a man on paper and a man in a home are not the same man at all.