Historical fiction Books

Winner of the Dzanc Prize for Fiction A work of brilliant and innovative historical fiction, Asylum delves into the disturbing and seductive relationship between a young hysteric named Augustine and renowned nineteenth-century French neurologist J.M...

In August of 1844, a man named Leonard Reed takes violently ill at his home near Heathsville, Illinois, and four days later he is dead. The cause? Arsenic poisoning.The suspect? His wife, Betsey.The chief witnesses against her? A hired girl, Eveline...

Brilliant debut author with strong connections in the literary world, whose work will appeal to fans of Lindsey Drager, Matt Bell, Brian Evenson, and Jenny Offill. Quinn's accolades include the Meridian Editor's Prize inProse, The Cupboard Pamphlet's...

Haunted by the loss of her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna cloisters herself in a Northeastern village where the snow never stops. When she discovers the body of a young woman at the edge of the forest, she's plunged into the mystery of a...

New illustrations by Tim Foley and a new foreword by author Robert Wheeler catapult this timeless classic by Ernest Hemingway into the twenty-first century with vigour.For nearly a century, The Sun Also Rises has endured as one of Hemingway's...

2023 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award Long List2023 Book of the Year, Southern Literary ReviewNamed a 2023 Great Group read, Women's National Book AssociationA South Carolina family endures one life-shattering day in 1961 in a town that lies in the shadow...

How do you turn old gold into priceless treasure? At the turn of the twentieth century, Sigurlina finds herself in a hopeless situation. She is themotherless daughter of an eccentric father, who expects her to spend her life helping himcatalogue...

A claim of justice for the losers of history with echoes of authors as different as Joseph Conrad, Alejo Carpentier, and David Mitchell.The conquest of Mexico is over, and Juan de Toanes is one of so many soldiers without glory who roam like beggars for...

Above all, Berthe Morisot yearns to be a professional artist. Despite the skepticism of her parents and the male-dominated conservatism of the Parisian art world, Berthe pursues her artistic passion. Chafing under the tutelage of traditional masters,...

A shattering biographical novel of J.D. Salinger in combatSalinger, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a reclusive misanthrope. Jerome Charyn's Salinger is a young American WWII draftee assigned to the Counter...

"A perfect book."Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and Genet: A BiographyIn June 1897, the young Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris on the last stop of a long European tour, a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic...

From debut novelist Maris Lawyer, The Blue Line Down is a breakneck tale of betrayal, loyalty, and unexpected homecoming.Jude Washer wants to run: away from the coal mines where he is destined to work, away from his father's abuse of his little brother,...

A woman's feminist awakening drives a hypocritical village to madness in rural Uruguay in this "wild, brutal paean to freedom" (NPR.org). Shortlisted for the National Translation Award "Somers' feminism is profound, and complicated." -NPR.org "A...

There's No Story There is about the lives of conscripted workers at Statevale, an enormous rural munitions factory somewhere in England during the Second World War.The workers are making shells and bombs, and no chances can be taken with so much...

The forbidden love story of a slave woman and an Irish immigrant, inspired by the author's great-great-grandparents.Henry O'Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape poverty and famine in Ireland, only to find anti-Irish prejudice awaiting him. Determined...

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner comes a delicious Victorian crime novel based on a real murder. The Murder of Harriet Monckton is based on an unsolved true crime. On 7thNovember 1843, 23 year-old...

Berlin, July 1944, a few weeks before the attempted assassination of Hitler by Claus von Stauffenberg. Bora is ordered to investigate the murder of Walter Niemeyer, a dazzling clairvoyant, a star since the days of the Weimar Republic. For years...

Historical novel about the untold lives of Abyssinian slaves in Iran A tale of political intrigue, following a precarious time of growing public dissent and foreign interference, in 1890's Iran. Lush descriptions of palace life

In May 1941, Wehrmacht officer Bora is sent to Crete, recently occupied by the German army, and mustinvestigate the brutal murder of a Red Cross representative befriended by SS-Chief Himmler. All the clueslead to a platoon of trigger-happy German...

Further exciting instalments of the popular aerial combat story from the classic war comic, Battle!Johnny Redburn has just led Falcon Squadron on a successful mission over Stalingrad. But Major Rastovitch has a new mission for Johnny: to fly an...

'For three minutes you will turn your eyes inward into the darkness of the mind which I have taught you to make. Then I will give the sign you will look at the paper. There you will see words written, but only for one second. Bend all your powers to...

IT'S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591.On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still...

Summer, 1522. In a wave of pomp, Henry VIII's court welcomes the Imperial emperor, Charles V. Anthony Blanke, the son of the king's late 'black trumpet', John Blanke, is called to Hampton Court by his former employer, Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal is...

London, 1943.Across the city prominent figures in science and the military are bursting into flame and being incinerated. Convinced that the Germans have deployed a new terror weapon, a desperate government turns to the one man who can track down the...

LONDON, 1942.A killer going by the name of 'Crimson Jack' is stalking the wartime streets of London, murdering women on the exact dates of the infamous Jack the Ripper killings of 1888. Has the Ripper somehow returned from the grave? Is...

When you look at a painting, what do you really see?When eighteenth-century poet Alison Cockburn accepts a light-hearted challenge from her friend Katherine Hume to live as a man, in order to infiltrate Edinburgh's all-male skating club, little do they...

It is 1938 and the final days of the British Empire. In a bungalow high up in the green hills above the plains of Ceylon, under a vast blue sky, live the Ferguson family: Bella, a precocious eight-year-old; her father Henry owner of Pitlochry, a tea...

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of The Hunger and The Deep comes a new psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the...

Spring, 1840. In the Dorset market town of Wimborne Minster, a young choirboy drowns himself. Soon after, the choirmaster-a belligerent man with a vicious reputation-is found murdered, in a discovery tainted as much by relief as it is by suspicion. The...

'All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had.' Ernest HemingwayTo escape from his abusive father, 13-year-old Huckleberry Finn fakes his own death and floats away on a raft down...

"Full of memorable images and singing lines of prose."on Donald S. Murray's previous workFrom the author of the multi award-winning Scottish bestsellerAs the Women Lay Dreaming comes the remarkable "unreliable biography" of serial swindler Karl Einarsson...

Based on actual events, this story is set in a newspaper office in Eastern Montana in 1926. A time when the American public was obsessed with newspaper horror stories of what most today would consider ordinary murders or other man-made catastrophes...

"Enthralling ... A great read."-Philippe de Montebello, former director, Metropolitan Museum of ArtOctober 16, 1943, inside the Vatican as darkness descends upon Rome. Having been alerted to the Nazi plan to round up the city's Jewish population the next...

*Captivating historical fiction set on Cape Cod and North Carolina's Outer Banks, spanning the 1860s to the 1940s, perfect for readers of Where the Crawdads Sing and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping *Debut novelist with strong ties to the indie...

Set on a single day in 1927, My Red Heaven imagines a host of characters - some historic, some invented - crossing paths on the streets of Berlin. The subjects include Robert Musil, Otto Dix, Werner Heisenberg, Anita Berber, Vladimir Nabokov, Kthe...

The story can now be told.The shocking details of Caesar's visit and its effect on subsequent events have been protected by draconian nondisclosure agreements....until now.

It's Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party, secure in her private chambers. She doesn't know that her Palace is surrounded - that, right now, an army of...

'a tour de force work of art' The Wall Street Journal, Best Books of the YearIt's Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She's hosting a supper party, secure in her private...

A coming-of-age debut novel, by the mother of Zadie Smith, about a young Jamaican girl faced with the trauma of immigration, estrangement from her family, and the emotional upheaval of moving to London in the 1960s.The Day I Fell Off My Island tells the...

For those that lived there, Neverland was a children s paradise. No rules, no adults, only endless adventure and enchanted forests all led by the charismatic boy who would never grow old. But Wendy Darling grew up. She has a husband and a young daughter...

June 1945. Hitler has triumphed, Britain is under German occupation and America cowers under the threat of nuclear attack.In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the...

A young piper, Donald Peter (DP) Gillies, brought up in a remote community in the West Highlands, signs up to join the famous Lovat Scouts. He and his childhood friend are destined for the horrors of Gallipoli and the deprivation of the First World War...

Finalist for the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award"When I'm dead and buried . . . you get the hell out of here . . . Make a life somewhere else . . . a life that I can't even imagine."Jo has a gift. She is a mathematical prodigy-a woman who sees...

A 2023Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist forBest First Novel"Debut novelist Tector captures European life and her characters beautifully as she interweaves the perspectives of four women seeking fulfillment and success in this satisfying adventure...

Southern Fiction: Terry Robert's debut novel with the same main character, A Short Time to Stay Here, won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction and received endorsements from critically-acclaimed authors including Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer,...

"Jos [Barreiro] writes the true story in Tano-the Native view of what Columbus brought. Across the Americas, invasion, and resistance, the Tano story repeated many times over." Chief Oren Lyons (Joagquisho), Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation The story of what...

In 1859. the lashing of young Buford Hobbs on the streets of Gonzales, Texas, led to the murder of Doctor John Brantley, and this ignited the historic Brantley-Baltzell feud. The nation's newspapers widely reported the resulting carnage that came out of...

Brimming with automotive action, history, intrigue, love, and skullduggery, "Race to War" casts a spell as it tells the story of power, intrigue, and what it means to be a man of purpose and self-sacrifice. On a cold day in January 1938, two men climb...