Curated lists of the best historical fiction books by theme, period, and genre.
Rome and Greece fill most of the ancient history shelf. The civilisations that came before them, and the empires that rose beside them, get far less attention. Yet Uruk, Babylon, Nineveh and Persepolis shaped the whole ancient world, and the…
For a long time, historical fiction told the past through kings, generals and the men who made the decisions. But women were always there: ruling, spying, healing, writing, running farms and households, and surviving wars they had no say in…
There’s something uniquely satisfying about diving into a historical fiction series. Unlike standalone novels, series allow you to spend years, sometimes decades, with beloved characters as they navigate the sweeping events of history. You watch them grow, struggle, triumph, and…
The Second World War is the most popular setting in historical fiction, and it is easy to see why. It reached every continent, it forced ordinary people into impossible choices, and its stories of courage, collaboration, and survival still feel…
The Viking Age runs roughly from the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 to the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. In those centuries, Norse sailors from Scandinavia raided, traded, and settled from Ireland to the Volga, served emperors in Constantinople,…
Rome lasted for more than a thousand years, from a village of shepherds on the Tiber to an empire that stretched from Scotland to Syria. Along the way, it produced some of history’s greatest drama: the fall of the Republic,…
The Middle Ages span a thousand years, from the fall of Rome in the West to the end of the Wars of the Roses, and historical fiction has found great stories in every century of that period. Warlords and saints,…