10 Great Historical Fiction Novels That Bring the Past to Life

The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett

One of the most popular historical fiction novels out there.

A Mason with a Dream
It is 1135 and civil war, famine and religious strife abound. With his family on the verge of starvation, mason Tom Builder dreams of the day that he can use his talents to create and build a cathedral like no other.

A Monk with a Burning Mission
Philip is the church prior of Kingsbridge. A resourceful man, he knows that if his town is to survive at all, it must find a way to truly thrive. He decides, then, to build Kingsbridge the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

A World of High Ideals and Savage Cruelty
As the prior recruits his mason, so begins a journey of ambition, anarchy and the struggle for absolute power. Facing enemies that would thwart them, they will stop at nothing to fulfil their grand plans of Kingsbridge. Soon build tensions between good and evil, turning church against state, and brother against brother . . .

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Narrated by Death himself, this extraordinary novel is set in Nazi Germany during World War II. Through the eyes of Liesel Meminger, a young girl who discovers solace in stolen books, we witness the power of words, love, and resilience amidst the darkest of times. Markus Zusak’s poetic prose and poignant storytelling make this book a true masterpiece of historical fiction.

Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

What if your future lay in the past?

1946, and Claire Randall goes to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank. It’s a second honeymoon, a chance to re-establish their loving marriage. But one afternoon, Claire walks through a circle of standing stones and vanishes into 1743, where the first person she meets is a British army officer – her husband’s six-times great-grandfather.

Unfortunately, Black Jack Randall is not the man his descendant is, and while trying to escape him, Claire falls into the hands of a gang of Scottish outlaws, and finds herself a Sassenach – an outlander – in danger from both Jacobites and Redcoats.

Marooned amid danger, passion and violence, her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives. A huge one among historical fiction novels.

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

Step into the court of Henry VIII through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell, one of history’s most enigmatic figures. “Wolf Hall” delves into the treacherous world of politics, power, and intrigue during the Tudor era. Hilary Mantel’s vivid prose and meticulous attention to detail breathe life into this extraordinary period, providing a fresh perspective on a well-known historical fiction saga.

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective.

William collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under the cover of night. A spectacular popular and critical success, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages among historical fiction novels.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead

Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction: Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

In Whitehead’s razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history among historical fiction novels.

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’s mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess.

But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. For the ones who want to visit Greece among historical fiction novels.

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

Through the alternating perspectives of three unforgettable women, this historical fiction novel confronts the deep-rooted prejudices and ignites a spirit of change and compassion.

There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell…

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

‘Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.’

For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth.

In this magnificent, deeply moving historical fiction novel, the stories of
Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel

Embark on a journey back to the prehistoric world with Jean M. Auel’s enthralling historical fiction novel. When an earthquake destroys her family’s camp, Ayla is left orphaned and alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land, her likelihood of survival slim.

But then she is found by a woman of the Clan, a people very different from her own kind. To them Ayla looks peculiar and ugly, her blonde hair and blue eyes marking her out as one of the Others, who have recently invaded their ancient homeland. Yet Iza, the Clan’s medicine woman cannot leave the child to die.

As Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza’s ways of healing, Iza grows to love her, and the rest of the Clan to accept her. Everyone, that is, except Brun, the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader. Where others see similarity, he can only see difference, and as his hatred for the strange girl of the Others deepens, he grows determined to get his revenge… An interesting one among historical fiction novels.