Richard Sharpe is one of the great heroes of historical fiction: a London gutter child who joins the army to escape the hangman and rises from the ranks to become an officer in Wellington’s army. Across 24 novels and three…
Elizabeth Chadwick is one of Britain’s most acclaimed medieval historical fiction authors, hailed by the Historical Novel Society as “the best writer of medieval fiction currently around.” With over 33 novels spanning the 11th to 14th centuries, she has brought…
The Last Kingdom series (also known as The Saxon Stories or The Saxon Chronicles) is Bernard Cornwell’s epic tale of England’s birth. Spanning 13 novels and over 6,000 pages, this is the story of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon nobleman…
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels follow two friends, Royal Navy officer Jack Aubrey and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, through the wars against Napoleon. Reviewing the series in The New York Times Book Review in 1991, Richard Snow called them “the best…
The Asian Saga by James Clavell stands as one of the most ambitious and sweeping historical fiction series ever written, transporting readers across four centuries and multiple Asian nations. These epic novels blend meticulous historical research with unforgettable characters, political…
Patrick O’Brian wrote the Aubrey-Maturin novels, twenty completed books and one unfinished, about a Royal Navy captain and his ship’s surgeon during the Napoleonic Wars. Richard Snow, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1991, called them “the…
James Clavell stands as one of the most influential historical fiction authors of the 20th century, bringing Asian history and culture to Western readers through epic, meticulously researched novels. His Asian Saga series, spanning four centuries across Japan, Hong Kong,…
Alison Weir is one of the best-known popular historians writing in Britain today, and one of the few who moves between history and historical fiction with equal success. Her biographies of Henry VIII’s wives, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the medieval…
S.J. Parris is the pen name of British novelist and journalist Stephanie Merritt, and the author of the Giordano Bruno novels, one of the best-loved Elizabethan spy thriller series in print. Her books take a real Renaissance philosopher, a fugitive…
Lindsey Davis is the leading name in Roman historical mysteries. For more than 35 years, she has brought first-century Rome to life through two linked detective series, a handful of ambitious standalone novels, and a narrative voice that makes the…