New Historical Fiction
Check out all of the great historical fiction we’ve added since July!
December 1, 2020
Spies, Civil War veterans, Pilgrims—even a young Shakespeare—and more. Check out all of the great historical fiction we’ve added since July!
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The Abstainer
Ian McGuire
An Irish-American veteran of the Civil War, Stephan Doyle, returns to England where he joins a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland by any means necessary and must choose sides when his nephew arrives on his doorstep from America, imperiling his new life.
Against the Loveless World
Susan Abulhawa
From the internationally bestselling author of Mornings in Jenin, a sweeping and lyrical novel that follows a young Palestinian refugee as she slowly becomes radicalized while searching for a better life for her family throughout the Middle East.
Atomic Love
Jennie Fields
Recruited by the FBI to spy on her former lover, a guilt-riddled Manhattan Project physicist becomes torn between lingering feelings for her ex and her growing attraction to a special agent, a former prisoner of war.
The Bass Rock
Evie Wyld
The lives of three women become interwoven across centuries by the men in their lives on Scotland’s Bass Rock island, including a daughter in mourning, a World War II bride and a woman fleeing from witchcraft accusations.
Beheld
TaraShea Nesbit
The best-selling author of The Wives of Los Alamos retraces the story of the Pilgrims from the perspectives of the rebel Billington family, whose disputes with Puritan neighbors under the influence of a newcomer escalate into Plymouth’s first murder.
Belladonna
Anbara Salam
Relocating from her Connecticut Catholic school to a prestigious Italian art college in 1957, Bridget reinvents her identity to avoid discrimination over her Egyptian heritage before discovering that her best friend and secret crush is hiding a life-changing secret.
Betty
Tiffany McDaniel
Born to a Cherokee father and white mother in the Appalachians of 1954, Betty endures poverty and violence in a wild natural refuge before she is forced to reckon with the historical influences that shaped dark family secrets.
Bonnie
Christina Schwarz
A reimagining of the life of Bonnie Parker traces the experiences of a young woman from a desolate region of Depression-era Texas whose consuming love for Clyde Barrow culminates in a violent and ultimately fatal crime spree.
The Book of Lost Names
Kristin Harmel
The best-selling author of The Winemaker’s Wife draws on true events in the story of a Polish graduate student in World War II who uses her forgery talents to help hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis.
Bronte’s Mistress
Finola Austin
A meticulously researched debut by the award-winning “Secret Victorianist” blogger follows the scandalous 1843 love affair between a grieving Lydia Robinson of Thorp Green Hall and her son’s erratically unconventional tutor, Branwell Bronte.
The Brothers of Auschwitz
Malka Adler
This extraordinary biographical novel, told in a poetic style reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, follows the harrowing journey of two brothers, separated by the Holocaust, as they find their way back to each other.
Cartier’s Hope
M. J. Rose
Determined to make her mark in Gilded Age New York, a woman journalist investigates rumors and curses swirling around Pierre Cartier’s recently acquired Hope Diamond, before attracting the attention of the blackmailer behind her father’s death.
Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey
Kathleen Rooney
A tale based on true events follows the experiences of an army officer who answers the call to service during World War II before his life is astonishingly reshaped by his battlefield encounters with a messenger pigeon.
The Cold Millions
Jess Walter
Enduring the corruption of their union employment, two young day laborers are respectively drawn to a feminist activist and a vaudeville singer whose experiences reflect an unjust world on the brink of upheaval.
The Collaborator
Diane Armstrong
It is 1944 in Budapest and the Germans have invaded. Jewish journalist Miklos Nagy risks his life and confronts the dreaded Adolf Eichmann in an attempt save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the death camps. But no one could have foreseen the consequences…
The Color of Air
Gail Tsukiyama
A young doctor finds his arrival home to Hawai’i coinciding with the awakening of the Mauna Loa volcano and its dangerous path toward their village, unearthing long-held secrets simmering below the surface that meld past and present.
Crooked Hallelujah
Kelli Jo Ford
A first collection by an award-winning Cherokee writer traces four generations of Native American women as they navigate cultural dynamics, religious beliefs, the 1980s oil bust, devastating storms and unreliable men to connect with their ideas about home.
Crossings
Alex Landragin
A debut in three parts designed to be read straight through or in alternating chapters finds a Jewish-German bookbinder in occupied Paris discovering links between poet Charles Baudelaire, a Walter Benjamin-like exile and a seven-generation woman monarch.
The Dazzling Truth
Helen Cullen
In the courtyards of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1978, aspiring actress Maeve meets pottery student Murtagh Moone. As their relationship progresses, marriage and motherhood come. Decades later, on a small Irish island, the Moone family are poised for celebration but instead are struck by tragedy.
Dear Ann
Bobbie Ann Mason
A woman facing a life crisis reflects on her past as a naïve graduate student who set aside her educational ambitions at the height of the Summer of Love to pursue an obsessive relationship.
An Elegant Woman
Martha McPhee
A meditation on memory, history, and legacy — and an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves and what we leave out — follows four generations of women in one American family.
Eli’s Promise
Ronald H. Balson
The National Jewish Book Award-winning author of The Girl From Berlin explores the human cost of war and the consequences of survival in the story of a Polish business owner who seeks justice for a wartime betrayal.
A Fall of Marigolds
Susan Meissner
Two women living one hundred years apart who experience similar tragic losses of love—Clara’s in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and Taryn’s in the collapse of the Twin Towers—are connected through time by a scarf.
Fast Girls
Elise Hooper
Traces the lesser-known stories of such athletes as Betty Robinson, Louise Stokes and Helen Stephens to detail the barriers they overcame to become the first integrated women’s Olympic team at the 1936 games in Berlin.
Fifty Words for Rain
Asha Lemmie
Abandoned by a mother who instructs her never to fight or ask questions, an illegitimate child of mixed heritage in 1948 Kyoto forges a powerful bond with her older half-brother against the wishes of their formidable grandparents.
Florence Adler Swims Forever
Rachel Beanland
Renting out their 1934 Atlantic City home and crowding into the apartment above their bakery with their daughters and a mysterious emigrée, a family constructs an elaborate web of lies to cover up a devastating tragedy.
The Forgotten Daughter
Joanna Goodman
An assassin’s daughter fights for 1992 Quebec’s independence at the side of the man she loves, a separatist-opposing journalist whose Duplessis Orphan sister joins a reparations coalition.
Fragments of Light
Michele Phoenix
After cancer takes nearly everything away from Ceelie, except the support and love of her quirky elderly friend, Darlene, she decides to help her bestie find a WWII paratrooper who was the father she never knew.
Hamnet
Maggie O’Farrell
The award-winning author of I Am, I Am, I Am presents the evocative story of a young Shakespeare’s marriage to a talented herbalist before the ravaging death of their 11-year-old son shapes the production of his greatest play.
Her Last Flight
Beatriz Williams
Investigating the fate of a forgotten aviation pioneer, a 1947 war correspondent tracks down the pilot’s former student before learning the remarkable story of their complicated and passionate relationship. By the best-selling author of The Golden Hour.
I Give It To You
Valerie Martin
Renting a Tuscan apartment where she plans to spend the summer writing, an American academic becomes captivated by her hostess’ family heritage and the unsolved death of a relative from World War II.
If I Were You
Lynn Austin
Leaving her English manor to seek support for her young son from the in-laws she has never met, a widowed war bride arrives in America only to discover that her longtime friend has been impersonating her for years.
The Illness Lesson
Clare Beams
Interpreting a mysterious flock of red birds as an omen to pursue his newest venture, a once-famous philosopher opens a revolutionary school to shape the intellectual development of women, before his students’ bizarre symptoms reveal otherworldly secrets.
An Irish Country Welcome
Patrick Taylor
In Ballybucklebo, Ireland, young doctor Barry, eagerly awaiting the arrival of his first child, and his fellow physicians, including a fledgling doctor, deals with a range of medical issues while still finding time to share the comforting joys and pleasures of this very special place.
Jackie and Maria
Gill Paul
A story of love, passion, and tragedy as the lives of Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas are intertwined and they become the ultimate rivals, in love with the same man.
The Key To Everything
Valerie Fraser Luesse
After WWII and a family tragedy, Peyton seeks connection with his troubled veteran father by retracing the trip he’d taken at the same age. The adventure forces Peyton to come to terms with his identity and decide how much he’s willing to risk for the girl he loves.
The Lehman Trilogy
Stefano Massini
This dramatic story of immigration, ambition and success spans three generations and 150 years, following the rise of modern capitalism through the eyes of the infamous Lehman brothers and their descendants.
The Librarian of Boone’s Hollow
Kim Vogel Sawyer
A traveling librarian who delivers books on horseback to the superstitious coal-mining communities of Depression-era Kentucky bonds with a local man who has been shunned for pursuing an education. By the best-selling author of A Silken Thread.
The Lions of Fifth Avenue
Fiona Davis
A New York Public Library superintendent’s wife reevaluates her priorities upon joining a woman’s suffrage group in 1913, decades before her granddaughter’s efforts to save an exhibit expose tragic family secrets.
The Lost Diary of Venice
Margaux DeRoux
Navigating her attraction to a married customer who has brought her a 16th- century treatise, a book restorer uncovers the story of a forbidden romance between a courtesan and a Renaissance artist who is losing his sight.
The Lost Jewels
Kirsty Manning
An American jewelry historian discovers her unexpected ties to a fortune in jewels discovered under the floor of a London tenement house where an impoverished Irish immigrant once attempted to change her family’s fortunes.
The Lost Shtetl
Max Gross
A tiny Jewish shtetl that has peacefully escaped the devastations of the Holocaust and Cold War is wrenchingly forced into the 21st century by a marriage dispute that spins out of control.
The Mercies
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
In Finnmark, Norway, 1617, after 40 fishermen are drowned in the sea, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardo must fend for themselves especially when a sinister figure arrives, bringing with him a mighty evil that threatens their very existence.
Miss Benson’s Beetle
Rachel Joyce
Leaving London behind, Margery Benson, a schoolmarm and spinster in 1950, embarks on a quest to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: “the golden beetle of New Caledonia” with the help of a fun-loving assistant who changes her life forever.
Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook
Celia Rees
Recruited as a spy for the OSS for her educational background and brother’s Oxford connections to help find a war criminal in occupied post-World War II Germany, a young British schoolteacher finds herself surrounded by civilians hiding dubious agendas.
Miss Iceland
Auður A. Ólafsdóttir
Moving to 1960s Reykjavik to pursue her literary ambitions, an aspiring novelist moves in with her gay childhood friend only to be confronted by a small male-dominated community that does not believe women belong in the art world.
The Nesting Dolls
Alina Adams
Spanning 1930s Siberia to contemporary Brighton Beach, a family saga finds three generations of women in a Jewish-Russian family making fateful choices in their respective efforts to break free from historical dynamics and pursue personal fulfillment.
The Night Portrait
Laura Morelli
A tale told in two historical periods follows da Vinci’s ambitious 1492 creation of Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine and a conservator’s life-risking effort to save the painting from Nazi destruction centuries later.
Nine Shiny Objects
Brian Castleberry
Chronicles the unexpectedly, eerily intersecting lives of a line of utopia-seekers over the course of half a century that reveals the divided heart of modern America itself.
The Operator
Gretchen Berg
A 1950s Ohio switchboard operator who eavesdrops on her neighbors’ conversations uncovers unexpected secrets when she decides to investigate a malicious rumor that threatens to upend her carefully ordered life.
The Orphan Collector
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Ellen Marie Wiseman, acclaimed author of What She Left Behind and The Life She Was Given, weaves the stories of two very different women into a page-turning novel as suspenseful as it is poignant, set amid one of history’s deadliest pandemics.
The Paper Daughters of Chinatown
Heather B. Moore
Based on true events, follows the story of one of many young, Chinese women who traveled to 19th century San Francisco for an arranged marriage, but were sold into prostitution, and the pioneering advocate who helped them.
Paris Never Leaves You
Ellen Feldman
Living through WWII working in a Paris bookstore with her young daughter, Vivi, and fighting for her life, Charlotte is no victim, she is a survivor. But can she survive the next chapter of her life? Alternating between wartime Paris and 1950s New York publishing, it is a story of resilience, love, and impossible choices, exploring how survival never comes without a cost.
The Paris Secret
Natasha Lester
Discovering a priceless collection of Dior gowns in her grandmother’s vacant cottage, a fashion conservator delves into the mystery of their origins in the years following World War II while uncovering her beloved grandmother’s remarkable story.
The Pull of the Stars
Emma Donoghue
A novel set in 1918 Dublin offers a three-day look at a maternity ward during the height of the Great Flu pandemic.
Royal
Danielle Steel
Sent into hiding during World War II, headstrong 17-year-old Princess Charlotte assumes an alias and enjoys the freedoms of a normal life in Yorkshire before her ill-fated romance with her guardians’ son leads to the orphaning of a royal infant.
The Royal Governess
Wendy Holden
Accepting the position of a lifetime tutoring the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, young Marion Crawford defies protocol to introduce the princesses to the experiences of everyday people while witnessing some of the 20th century’s most seismic events.
Run Me to Earth
Paul Yoon
Three children orphaned in 1960s Laos meet a dedicated doctor who enlists them as motorcycle couriers in his effort to rescue civilians and find medical supplies in a novel from the award-winning author of Snow Hunters.
Simon the Fiddler
Paulette Jiles
Conscripted into the Confederate Army after nearly escaping the American Civil War, an itinerant fiddle player joins a ragtag regimental band playing for both sides of the conflict before falling in love with an indentured Irish governess.
Sisters of War
Lana Kortchik
In 1941 Kiev, two sisters, as the German army occupies the city, must fight to protect their loved ones while facing the dark horrors of war and the pain of betrayal.
Something Worth Doing
A Novel of an Early Suffragist
Jane Kirkpatrick
A historical tale based on true events follows the experiences of a mid-19th-century pioneer and mother of six who denies herself the joys of a simpler life to run a newspaper about women’s rights and lead suffrage efforts.
Summer Darlings
Brooke Lea Foster
Set during the splendid summer days of 1960s Martha’s Vineyard, a historical novel pulls back the curtain on a mysterious and wealthy family, as seen through the eyes of their nanny—a college student who, while falling in love on the elegant island, is also forced to reckon with the dark underbelly of privilege.
A Tender Thing
Emily Neuberger
Running away to New York City for an open-call Broadway audition, an aspiring musical actress lands a major role in a controversial new production that tests the cultural boundaries of the late 1950s.
A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom
John Boyne
From the award-winning, best-selling author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies comes an epic tale of humanity, a novel that aims to tell the story of all of us.
Tsarina
Ellen Alpsten
A narrative tale based on the true story of Peter the Great’s second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, recounts how she used her extraordinary intelligence to escape poverty and assume her unstable husband’s responsibilities in 18th-century Russia.
The Two Mrs. Carlyles
Suzanne Rindell
Rendered unexpectedly wealthy by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Violet reinvents herself as the second wife of the city’s most eligible widower only to find her happiness overshadowed by the specter of her predecessor and her own violent past.
Universe of Two
Stephen P. Kiernan
From the critically acclaimed author of The Baker’s Secret and The Curiosity comes a novel of conscience, love, and redemption—a fascinating fictionalized account of the life of Charlie Fisk, a gifted mathematician who was drafted into Manhattan Project and ordered against his morals to build the detonator for the atomic bomb.
Utopia Avenue
David Mitchell
The members of a music band in 1967 London navigate the era’s parties, drugs and politics as well as their own egos and tragedies while exploring transformative perspectives about youth, art and fame.
V2
Robert Harris
A World War II German rocket engineer under orders to launch V2 rockets at London from Occupied Holland and an actress-turned-English Intelligence officer who would neutralize the bombings land on opposite sides in a desperate hunt for a saboteur.
The Vanishing Sky
L. Annette Binder
A mother in a rural 1945 German community protects her traumatized soldier son from her husband’s escalating nationalism, while her younger son flees the Hitler Youth to embark on a perilous journey home.
The Wedding Dress
Danielle Steel
A treasured wedding gown made in 1928 Paris is handed down through four generations of women in a family shaped by the San Francisco social scene, two world wars, the Civil Rights era and the rise of Silicon Valley.
When We Were Young & Brave
Hazel Gaynor
Enduring privation when Japan declares war on England, a teacher at a British missionary school is sent to a distant internment camp, where she provides support and instruction to incarcerated children taken from their parents.
The Woman Before Wallis
Bryn Turnbull
A debut based on the story of the woman loved by Edward, Prince of Wales, before his infamous abdication follows the story of a diplomat’s daughter whose five-year royal affair is upended by a sister’s custody trial.
The Woman in the Green Dress
Tea Cooper
In 1919 Sydney, New South Wales, London tea-shop waitress Fleur Richards inherits an old curio shop, which draws her deep into the past to unravel a mystery surrounding an opal and a woman in a green dress.
The Wright Sister
Patty Dann
After Wilbur passed away, Katharine lived with and took care of her increasingly reclusive brother Orville, who often turned to his more confident and supportive sister to help him through fame and fortune. But when Katharine became engaged to their mutual friend, Harry Haskell, Orville felt abandoned and betrayed. As the years went on, the siblings grew further and further apart.
The Yellow Bird Sings
Jennifer Rosner
A mother who goes into hiding when Nazis begin arresting Jewish citizens in Poland considers an impossible choice while struggling to keep her 5-year-old daughter, a musical prodigy, from being overheard. By the award-winning author of The Mitten String.