The 10 Best Historical Fiction Books

Anyone who wants one prize-winning war novel to start with should try All the Light We Cannot See. Anthony Doerr follows a blind French girl and a German orphan with a gift for radios, and their paths cross during the 1944 siege of Saint-Malo. The chapters are short, often a page or two, so it reads faster than its heft suggests. The jumping timeline in the first third can feel slow, and some readers give up early.

For a book club that wants something to argue about, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is a strong choice. Two French sisters take opposite paths under German occupation: one hides Jewish children, the other guides downed Allied pilots over the Pyrenees. The escape line echoes a real Belgian resistance network. It aims straight for the heart and the ending lands hard, though the melodrama and modern-sounding dialogue can feel heavy-handed.

Readers who need a break from grim war stories tend to find it in A Gentleman in Moscow. In 1922, a Soviet court sentences Count Alexander Rostov to spend his life inside the grand Hotel Metropol, and Amor Towles follows him for three decades of friendships, fine dinners and quiet defiance. It's warm, witty and full of small pleasures. The pace is slow, though, and readers who want battles or big twists may drift.

Death tells the story in The Book Thief, and that odd choice is what readers remember. Markus Zusak follows Liesel, a foster girl in a small town in Nazi Germany who steals books, learns to read and watches her new family hide a Jewish man in the basement. It's published for teens, around age 11 and up, but it's read just as widely by adults. It's long, and the sad ending is heavy for younger readers.

The Underground Railroad takes the escape network literally: Colson Whitehead builds a real train under the ground. Cora flees a Georgia cotton plantation, and each state she reaches shows a different face of American racism. The book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and its lean chapters move quickly. The violence is graphic and frequent, and readers who want strict history should know the facts are bent on purpose.

Fans of palace politics get the inside view in Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's novel of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who rises to run Henry VIII's government. The king's break with Rome and his marriage to Anne Boleyn play out from Cromwell's shoulder, in sharp, funny and often chilling scenes. It won the Booker Prize and opens a trilogy. The present-tense style and the habit of calling Cromwell just "he" confuse many readers early on.

The Pillars of the Earth is a doorstop of a saga about building a cathedral in 12th-century England, during the civil war known as the Anarchy. Ken Follett follows a stonemason, a monk, a scheming bishop and a family of outcasts across decades, and the plot rarely stops for breath. It started a series that now runs to several books. Expect blunt violence, including sexual assault. This pocket-size edition squeezes it all into small type.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, drive a herd of cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana in Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer-winning western. The trail brings river crossings, storms, outlaws and loss, and Gus's easy talk keeps it funny between the hard parts. It's often recommended to readers who don't usually like westerns. It's long, and the slow first stretch in town tests patience.

The Song of Achilles retells the Trojan War through Patroclus, the quiet exile who grows up beside Achilles and falls in love with him. Madeline Miller, who taught Latin and Greek, keeps the gods and prophecies from Homer but makes the story a romance first. It won the Orange Prize and later found a big young audience on social media. This is myth, not documented history, and anyone who knows the Iliad knows how it ends.

Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns follows Mariam and Laila, two women in Kabul born a generation apart, who end up married to the same cruel man. Their story runs from the Soviet war through Taliban rule, and the bond they build is the heart of the book. It shows Afghan women's lives with a closeness few bestsellers attempt. The abuse is hard to read, with beatings and a public execution on the page.