Complete reading orders for popular historical fiction series.
The Giordano Bruno series by S.J. Parris turns one of the Renaissance’s most dangerous thinkers into a reluctant spy. Its hero is a real man: an Italian philosopher and runaway friar who reached Elizabethan England with the Inquisition behind him…
The Grail Quest series by Bernard Cornwell brings the brutal reality of 14th-century warfare to life through the eyes of Thomas of Hookton, an English archer whose skill with the longbow makes him both a deadly warrior and a reluctant…
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell offers a dark, gritty, and historically grounded reimagining of the Arthurian legend. Stripping away the medieval romance and magic, Cornwell presents Arthur as a pragmatic British warlord fighting to preserve Roman civilization against Saxon…
Blood, brotherhood, and the brutal glory of the Viking Age await in Giles Kristian’s acclaimed Raven trilogy, a visceral journey from the shores of ninth-century England to the glittering streets of Constantinople. The Raven series by Giles Kristian is a…
Flavia Albia is the sharp-tongued, fiercely independent daughter of legendary Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco, and in Lindsey Davis’s acclaimed spin-off series, she carves out her own path as a private investigator in the darker, more dangerous Rome of Emperor…
Marcus Didius Falco is a private informer in Vespasian’s Rome: underpaid, overworked, sarcastic, and far more principled than he lets on. Across twenty novels, Lindsey Davis sends him from the backstreets of the Aventine to Britain, Germany, Spain, Greece, Egypt…
The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon is one of the most beloved time-travel historical romance sagas ever written, blending Scottish history, epic romance, and adventure across centuries. With over 50 million copies sold worldwide and a hit Starz television adaptation…
The Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom is one of the finest achievements in historical crime fiction. Across seven novels, published between 2003 and 2018, Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked London lawyer, investigates murders at the heart of the most dangerous years…
Philippa Gregory‘s Plantagenet and Tudor novels are the best-known historical fiction about the women of England’s royal courts. Seventeen novels, published from 2001 to 2026, follow queens, princesses, mistresses and courtiers from the Wars of the Roses to the reign…
The Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris is a complete series of 3 political thrillers set in Ancient Rome during the final decades of the Roman Republic. Narrated by Cicero’s loyal secretary Tiro, the trilogy chronicles the extraordinary life of Marcus…