Adult Historical Fiction

These historical fiction books are new to our shelves in the last 30 days (most recent on top).

You may also be interested in what we have On Order in this category.

List

Kissing the sky : a novel / Lisa Patton.
"It's the summer of '69. While her peers revel in free love and rock and roll, Suzannah is home from college, sequestered inside her conservative Southern home. Her domineering father has condemned rock music and driven away her best friend. She's countin…
The house of hidden letters / Izzy Broom.
"Skye MacKinnon is desperate for an escape. When she wins a lottery to buy a run-down cottage on a Greek island for only one euro, Skye jumps at the chance to get out of England and start over. As she unlocks the tattered blue door of her whitewashed new …
Bad seeds / Mary Monroe.
"The daughter of a hardworking restaurant owner, Louise Brooks always sees the best in people—and in helping them no matter how difficult her own life gets. She’s lived through tragic loss and working in the family business, even after enduring a failed m…
The hired man : a novel / Sandra Dallas.
"The Dust Bowl sweeps a handsome stranger into a small Colorado town to dangerous effect 1937. It's been seven years since the dust storms started in Colorado. Folks can barely remember a time when the clouds were filled with rain instead of dirt, and whe…
Fatherland : a novel / Victoria Shorr.
"Martin and Lora Brier, with three young children, possess all the trappings of a perfect life . . . except Martin is having yet another affair. Without warning, he abandons the family for his mistress and a new house on the other side of town. Set in a p…
The other Moctezuma girls : a novel / Sofia Robleda
"Tenochtitlan, 1551. Thirty years after the Spanish Conquest destroyed everything she loved, the last Aztec empress has passed and left behind a pristine yet tenuous legacy for her children. As her last will and testament is read out, her daughter Isabel …
Son of nobody : a novel / Yann Martel.
Son of Nobody is a "retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar. The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family…
Almost life : a novel / Kiran Millwood Hargrave
"Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, a…
The beheading game : a novel / Rebecca Lehmann.
"The Beheading Game begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees. Discarded by King Henry VIII for being unable to give him a m…
The dreadfuls / A. Rae Dunlap.
"London, 1888. Committed to the Whitechapel Hall Reform School for "incurable delinquency," Adelaide "Dell" Morton is a precocious, defiant misfit. She's also a voracious reader of the sordid, sensationally popular Penny dreadful stories. In a stroke of l…
The shock of the light : a novel / Lori Inglis Hall.
"Twins Tessa and Theo are roots of the same tree, in tune with one another’s every thought and desire. As World War II takes hold across Europe, both are eager to do their part. Theo is recruited by the RAF and disappears into the skies, while Tessa jumps…
Paradiso 17 : a novel / Hannah Lillith Assadi.
"All his life, exile has been the shadow stitched to the sole of Sufien’s shoe. Born in Palestine on the precipice of 1948’s Nakba, Sufien is forced to leave the only home he’s ever known, the one on the hill with a beautiful blue door. This is the precis…
Daughter of Egypt : a novel / Marie Benedict.
"Known for her "delightful blend of historical fiction and suspense" (People), New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict, returns with a sweeping tale of a young woman who unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharaoh-rewriting both of their legacie…
The mapmaker's daughter / Clare Marchant.
"Could a rediscovered map show her the way? Present day: When thirty-six-year-old Robyn Willoughby discovers an exquisite yet blood-stained Tudor map in her father’s antique map shop, desperate for a distraction from her problems, she decides to investig…
Nonesuch : a novel / Francis Spufford.
"A spellbinding tale about an ambitious young woman who must thwart an occult plot by time-traveling fascists during the chaos of the London Blitz-from "one of our most powerful writers of wayward historical fiction" (The Washington Post).Following the ac…
Where the girls were : a novel / Kate Schatz.
"It's 1968, and the future is bright for seventeen-year-old Elizabeth "Baker" Phillips: She's the valedictorian of her high school, with a place at Stanford in the fall and big dreams of becoming a journalist. But the seductive free-spirited San Francisco…
It girl : a novel / Allison Pataki.
"At the dawn of the twentieth century, New York's streets teem with change: electricity, automobiles, the brash young President Teddy Roosevelt—and the It Girls. As artists' muses and working models, these independent young women soar to stardom not becau…
Ludsecke / J.C. Jarvis.
"In the third chapter of the Fernsby's War Series, Ludsecke, readers are catapulted into the darkening storm over Europe at the end of 1939, where the drum beats of World War II are getting louder. Amidst the chaos and destruction, we meet Michael Fernsby…
On living stone : Salome's story / Heather Kaufman.
"Every stone sings as it finds its purpose. This is the lesson restless Salome learns from her father as she grows up by the Sea of Galilee. Known as the wild girl with the quick tongue, Salome is determined to silence the critics who claim she has no fut…
Rotterdam / J.C. Jarvis.
"Rotterdam, 1940: A city's last stand. In the heart of war-torn Rotterdam, the latest instalment of the Fernsby's War Series unfolds in a gripping saga of espionage, love, and sacrifice. Rotterdam finds Michael Fernsby in a deadly game of cat and mouse, s…
Frida's cook : a novel / Florencia Etcheves ; [English translation by Beth Fowler].
"Mexico City, 1939: Young and determined Nayeli Cruz flees from her Oaxaca home to arrive in Mexico City with neither friends nor prospects. Alone and armed only with her sharp wit and extraordinary talent in the kitchen, she finds herself in front of La …
A deeper well : the story of the woman at the well / Jill Eileen Smith.
"In ancient Israel, soon after Nessa is of marriageable age, her father gives her to a wealthy widowed friend, capitalizing on her beauty to bring in the highest bride-price he can find. Nessa is devastated, as she had begged to marry Lavi, who returned h…
The determined / Rachel Rueckert.
"1721, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Captured, convicted, and pregnant, 23-year-old Anne Bonny faces the gallows. When writer Captain Charles Johnson enters the garrison, she strikes a deal: she'll tell this opportunistic fool her life story if he sends a doctor…
White River crossing : a novel / by Ian McGuire.
"A ragged fur peddler arrives at a remote outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company in the winter of 1766 with a lump of gold, claiming that there is plenty more like it further north at a place called Ox Lake. The outpost’s chief factor, Magnus Norton, dreams …
Railsong : a novel / Rahul Bhattacharya.
"In a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the shackles of her impoverishment and meagre prospects. As diesel engines replace steam and the calamitous churn of dro…
Everything lost returns : a novel / Sarah Domet.
"1986. The Earthshine Soap Company has given Nona Dixon everything, from making her the brand’s first Earthshine Girl to launching her acting career. It also threatens to be the very thing that causes her to unravel when a group of Jane Does file a class …
The woman and her stars : a novel / Penny Haw.
"She must find her own place amongst the stars. Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself--one where she can go u…
Now I surrender / Álvaro Enrigue ; translated by Natasha Wimmer.
"A visionary novelist imagines the fiercely fought end of an epoch of almost unimaginable freedom and radically recasts the story of how the West was "won." In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert a…
She made herself a monster : a novel / Anna Kovatcheva.
"We make monsters in order to destroy them. For thousands of years, we’ve named witches and burned them, suspected demons and exorcised them. When crops die and children fall ill, who better to blame than a monster? Yana rides from one desolate town to th…
Sisters of book row : a novel / Shelley Noble.
"1915: Manhattan’s Book Row, an eclectic jumble of forty bookshops along Fourth Avenue, is the mecca for rare book buyers from around the world, and the haunt of locals looking for a bargain. It is also the target of the most vicious censor in American hi…
No friend to this house : a novel / Natalie Haynes.
"This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been forgotten, by everyone but me . . . Jason and his Argonauts set sail to find the Golden Fleece. The journey is filled with danger, for him and eve…
All in her hands : a novel / Audrey Blake.
"1849. Dr. Nora Gibson is the only female surgeon in London. In all of England, even. After earning her medical degree and overcoming the prejudice of those who wished to see her fail, she's finally earned her place at the Great Queen Street Hospital alon…
Luminous bodies : a novel of Marie Curie / Devon Jersild.
"In the vein of Georgia (Dawn Tripp) and Matrix (Lauren Groff), the narrative follows Marie from girlhood in Poland to the battlefields of World War I, focusing on her marriage, widowhood, and love affair with physicist Paul Langevin—after which she was o…
A crown of stars / Abé Shana.
"In turn of the century England, the Jolivet family lives a charmed existence. Daughter of a wealthy vineyard owner and a French pianist, vivacious Marguerite, the eldest of three, loves spinning stories and entertaining her family’s well-connected friend…
Where the false gods dwell : a novel / Denny S. Bryce.
"Chicago, 1935. Othella is an orphaned con-artist who needs to escape the city's brutal underworld... or else. Vivian Jean is a wealthy wife, student, and anthropologist eager to prove herself professionally and personally. Zinzi is a Jamaican labor union…
The midnight carousel / Fiza Saeed McLynn.
"1920, Chicago: Maisie Marlowe has come to America for a fresh start. After discovering an antique fairground carousel, she is seized by the idea of running a glittering amusement park. But little does she know that the wondrous object has a sinister past…
The innkeeper of Ivy Hill / Julie Klassen.
"The lifeblood of the village of Ivy Hill is its coaching inn, The Bell. When the innkeeper dies suddenly, his genteel wife, Jane Bell, becomes the reluctant landlady. Jane has no idea how to manage a business, but with the town's livelihood at stake and …
I hope you find what you're looking for : a novel / Bsrat Mezghebe
"The year is 1991. Eritrea is on the verge of liberation from Ethiopian rule and in Washington, D.C.’s tight-knit Eritrean community, change is in the air. Thirteen-year-old Lydia and her family are grappling with what peace after decades of war might mea…
Cleopatra : a novel / Saara El-Arifi.
"Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love’s thrall. Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves. Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children. How wilfully they refuse to…