Great Historical Fiction
Top 10 Great Historical Fiction
: Shōgun, Lonesome Dove, Tai-Pan, The Source, I, Claudius, Eaters of the Dead, The Three Musketeers, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, Remarkable Creatures, The Persian Boy
| Author | James Clavell |
| ISBN | 0440178002 |
So sorry, I am not worthy of the honor of reviewing this novel. If however, my Lord insists it, then I shall endeavor to offer up some humble thoughts regarding its mighty, even epic narrative. Neh? The scope is so vast, the characters and settings are so many, the head is liable to spin at times, so sorry....
A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize— winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America.
Journey to the dusty little Texas...
| Author | James Clavell |
| ISBN | 0440184622 |
An Alternate Cover of this edition can be found here.
Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler - the Tai-Pan - of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. He is also a pirate, an opium smuggler, and a master manipulator...
| Author | James A. Michener |
| ISBN | 0375760385 |
In the grand storytelling style that is his signature, James Michener sweeps us back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago. Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the...
Into the 'autobiography' of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, soon to culminate in the deified insanity...
| Author | Michael Crichton |
| ISBN | 0060891564 |
It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape...
Alexandre Dumas’s most famous tale— and possibly the most famous historical novel of all time— in a handsome hardcover volume.
This swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, set in France during the 1620s, is richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines,...
Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina
| Author | Robert Graves |
| ISBN | 0679725733 |
Miracles do happen ask Claudius the unread historian the idiot, the clown, as his family perceives him, the people also yet becomes Emperor ( one of the best too) of the Roman Empire... These events unfold with the assassination of his mad nephew Caligula, the Praetorian Guard needs a ruler or else they...
| Author | Tracy Chevalier |
| ISBN | 0007178379 |
In 1810, a sister and brother uncover the fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs on the south coast of England. With its long snout and prominent teeth, it might be a crocodile – except that it has a huge, bulbous eye.
Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent...
| Author | Mary Renault |
| ISBN | 0394751019 |
“It takes skill to depict, as Miss Renault has done, this half-man, half Courtesan who is so deeply in love with the warrior.”–The Atlantic Monthly
The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander’s life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was...
| Author | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| ISBN | 0543896609 |
From the beloved author of Treasure Island
Originally serialized in a periodical of boys' adventure fiction, The Black Arrow is a swashbuckling portrait of a young man's journey to discover the heroism within himself. Young Dick Shelton, caught in the midst of England's War of the Roses,...
Mistress of the Art of Death
| Author | Ariana Franklin |
| ISBN | 0399154140 |
A chilling, mesmerizing novel that combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of historical fiction. In medieval Cambridge, England, four children have been murdered. The crimes are immediately blamed on the town's Jewish community, taken as evidence that Jews sacrifice...
| Author | Ellis Peters |
| ISBN | 0446400513 |
In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden into a battlefield of passions, deceptions, and death. Not far from the safety of the abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the empress...
| Author | Sara Donati |
| ISBN | 0553578529 |
Weaving a tapestry of fact and fiction, Sara Donati's epic novel sweeps us into another time and place...and into the heart of a forbidden affair between an unconventional Englishwoman and an American frontiersman.
It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English...
This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN13: 9780440164845.
The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan...
| Author | Leon Uris |
| ISBN | 0553258478 |
Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept...
| Author | James Clavell |
| ISBN | 0385333765 |
The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses,...
| Author | Mary Doria Russell |
| ISBN | 0449004139 |
Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God.
It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are...
| Author | Joy Kogawa |
| ISBN | 0385468865 |
The Government makes paper airplanes out of our lives and flies us out the windows. Some people return home. Some do not. War they all say, is war, and some people survive.
Out of all the countries in the world, Canada is the one I have most seriously considered for emigration purposes. The stereotypes...
| Author | Cecelia Holland |
| ISBN | 0939149842 |
I began writing a review and then forgot to save it when I had to leave the PC. I still intend writing one, but I'm out of time for the moment. But to say in the interim that I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this work. It has stood the test of time and it is very different from the norm. The voice is very powerful...
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of 9780765356154.
Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred...
| Author | A.E.W. Mason |
| ISBN | 0142180017 |
Just before sailing off to war in the Sudan, British guardsman Harry Feversham quits his regiment. He immediately receives four white feathers—symbols of cowardice—one each from his three best friends and his fiancée. To disprove this grave dishonor, Harry dons an Arabian disguise and leaves...
| Author | John Steinbeck |
| ISBN | 0141185538 |
Taken by surprise, a small coastal town is overrun by an invading army with little resistance. The town is important because it is a port that serves a large coal mine. Colonel Lanser, the head of the invading battalion, along with his staff establishes his HQ in the house of the democratically elected...
| Author | Leon Uris |
| ISBN | 0060827882 |
Leon Uris’s beloved Irish classic, available in Avon mass market.
From the acclaimed author who enthralled the world with Exodus, Battle Cry, QB VII, Topaz, and other beloved classics of twentieth-century fiction comes a sweeping and powerful epic adventure that captures the "terrible...
| Author | Alexandre Dumas |
| ISBN | 0140448926 |
'To have discovered the black tulip, to have seen it for a moment...then to lose it, to lose it forever!'
Cornelius von Baerle, a respectable tulip-grower, lives only to cultivate the elusive black tulip and win a magnificent prize for its creation. But after his powerful godfather is assassinated,...
| Author | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| ISBN | 0684197367 |
For nearly a century, Scribner has exemplified the very best in publishing by pairing classic texts with the illustrative giants of the time, such as N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. With the same commitment to the high standards established by the series' founders, Atheneum Books for Young Readers...
| Author | Herman Wouk |
| ISBN | 0316954411 |
Herman Wouk is one of this century's great historical novelists, whose peerless talent for capturing the human drama of landmark world events has earned him worldwide acclaim. In The Hope, his long-awaited return to historical fiction, he turns to one of the most thrilling stories of our time - the...
| Author | Naomi Novik |
| ISBN | 0345481283 |
Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life...
