Is there a more enjoyable way to learn about history than through historical fiction? The genre’s transportive powers take us deep inside the emotional lives of our forebears. Without historical fiction, the past is trapped in amber—static, preserved, and untouchable. But in the hands of great authors and narrators, history is made vibrant and alive again, bursting forth in full colour and usually imparting a lot of wisdom along the way.
These books immerse us in the sights, sounds, language, customs, and crosscurrents of their times. Most historical fiction fans have an era they just can’t get enough of. (If we have past lives, I must have lived during the Blitz. It never gets old.) I hope you’ll be tempted to wander off your well-trod paths and explore new terrain. Gathered here you'll find eras and themes richly written about, some for decades, some in emerging trends. From ancient Egypt to World War II to the 1990s (!), the past beckons, and we have the audiobooks to take you there.
Survive Tudor England
If you can stomach beheadings and the slurpy sound of people eating meat in great halls, dive in.

The Boleyn Secret
Alison Weir

The Pretender
Jo Harkin

The Tower
Flora Carr

All the Queen's Spies
Oliver Clements

The Beheading Game
Rebecca Lehmann

Boleyn Traitor
Philippa Gregory

The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory

Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen
Alison Weir

Dissolution
C. J. Sansom

Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Join the resistance
How’s your tradecraft? You’re sure to pick up a few tricks from these tales of WWII spies and resistance fighters.

Sisters of the Midnight Sun
Fiona Valpy

The Shock of the Light
Lori Inglis Hall

Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Mark Sullivan

The Storm We Made
Vanessa Chan

The Secret Sewing Society
Siobhan Curham

The Whalebone Theatre
Joanna Quinn

Code Name Butterfly
Embassie Susberry

The Paris Assignment
Rhys Bowen

Five Decembers
James Kestrel

Code Name Hélène
Ariel Lawhon

Night Soldiers
Alan Furst

The Nightingale
Kristin Hannah

Eye of the Needle
Ken Follett

Restless
William Boyd

The Alice Network
Kate Quinn

Schindler's List
Thomas Keneally
Stroll a foggy, gas-lit street
If you suspect the Victorians were not nearly as stuffy as we’ve been led to believe, these listens are for you.

Mrs Pearcey
Lottie Moggach

Call Me Ishmaelle
Xiaolu Guo

Fingersmith
Sarah Waters

A Perfect Hand
Ayelet Waldman

Shadowplay
Joseph O'Connor

A Great Act of Love
Heather Rose

The Women in the Shadows
Harriet Fox

The Fraud
Zadie Smith

The Wildes
Louis Bayard

The North Water
Ian McGuire

The Last Days of Night
Graham Moore

The Clockmaker's Daughter
Kate Morton

The Luminaries
Eleanor Catton

Once Upon a River
Diane Setterfield

The Scent of Oranges
Kathy George

The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert

The Crimson Petal And The White
Michel Faber
Knights and Vikings and monks, oh my!
Finger-numbing scrollwork and festering plague pustules? Welcome to Medieval Europe.

Canticle
Janet Rich Edwards

Essex Dogs
Dan Jones

The Pillars of the Earth
Ken Follett

The Corner That Held Them
Sylvia Townsend Warner

Matrix
Lauren Groff

The Invention of Fire
Bruce Holsinger

The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro

Confessions of a Pagan Nun
Kate Horsley

The Last Kingdom
Bernard Cornwell

The Adventures of Brother Cadfael
Ellis Peters

The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco

Changeling
Philippa Gregory

Doomsday Book
Connie Willis

Kristin Lavransdatter
Sigrid Undset and Tiina Nunnally and Brad Leithauser - introduction and Tiina Nunnally - translator
Explore 20th-century China
These are the makings of a Cultural Revolution.

And the Ancestors Sing
Radha Lin Chaddah

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing
Alice Evelyn Yang

Homeseeking
Karissa Chen

The Last Rose of Shanghai
Weina Dai Randel

The Fourth Princess
Janie Chang

Dragon Springs Road
Janie Chang

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Lisa See

Shanghai Girls
Lisa See

Red Sorghum
Mo Yan and Howard Goldblatt - translator

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Dai Sijie
Pull up a chair in café society
Hobnob with the expats, artists, and thinkers of the 1920s and ‘30s.

The Director
Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin - translator

The Magician
Colm Tóibín

The Artist
Lucy Steeds

Harlem Rhapsody
Victoria Christopher Murray

The Paris Wife
Paula McLain

The Christie Affair
Nina de Gramont

The Joyce Girl
Annabel Abbs

Muralist
B. A. Shapiro

Wild Women and the Blues
Denny S. Bryce

Georgia
Dawn Tripp

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
Therese Anne Fowler

Mrs Hemingway
Naomi Wood

The Hours
Michael Cunningham
Ride into the sunset of the American West
For those who don’t mind sleeping on the hard earth and can tolerate a little lawlessness.

Now I Surrender
Álvaro Enrigue and Natasha Wimmer - translator

The Heart in Winter
Kevin Barry

The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt

Lone Women
Victor LaValle

Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange

The Cold Millions
Jess Walter

Where the Lost Wander
Amy Harmon

News of the World
Paulette Jiles

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Butcher's Crossing
John Williams

Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
Survive the Reign of Terror and the reign of Napoleon
Sharpen the guillotine and ready the grapeshot, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

A Place of Greater Safety
Hilary Mantel

Young Bloods (Wellington and Napoleon 1)
Simon Scarrow

The Tarot Reader of Versailles
Anya Bergman

The Glass-Blowers
Daphne Du Maurier

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Susanna Clarke

Sharpe’s Trafalgar
Bernard Cornwell

Les Misérables
Victor Hugo

Mr Midshipman Hornblower
C. S. Forester

A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Explore the ancient world
Long to feel the graze of a toga at your ankles? We’ve got you covered.

Agrippa
Robert Harris

Cleopatra
Saara El-Arifi

Odyssey
Stephen Fry

Julian
Gore Vidal

The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller

Imperium
Robert Harris

The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker

Daughter of Egypt
Marie Benedict

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Tyrant
Conn Iggulden

Caligula
Simon Turney

Son of Nobody
Yann Martel

The Forgotten Legion
Ben Kane

Fire from Heaven
Mary Renault

Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle
Manda Scott
Witness the birth of modern Ireland
Uprising, independence, civil war, partition, the Troubles—it was a hell of a century for the Emerald Isle.

What the Wind Knows
Amy Harmon

Trinity
Leon Uris

A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry

The Yellow House
Patricia Falvey

The Heart's Invisible Furies
John Boyne

The Black Snow
Paul Lynch

Nora Webster
Colm Tóibín

Exit Unicorns
Cindy Brandner

Strumpet City
James Plunkett

Snow
John Banville

Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan

Trespasses
Louise Kennedy
The end of history, er, just the 1900s
Yes, the ’90s were that long ago.

Sisters in Yellow
Mieko Kawakami and Laurel Taylor - translator and Hitomi Yoshio - translator

Sunburn
Chloe Michelle Howarth

If I Ruled the World
Amy DuBois Barnett

Carrie Soto Is Back
Taylor Jenkins Reid

This Time Tomorrow
Emma Straub

The Idiot
Elif Batuman

New People
Danzy Senna

All That’s Left Unsaid
Tracey Lien and Amelia Nguyen
Get lost in sagas of the subcontinent
Take an epic journey through generations of change in South Asia.

The Covenant of Water
Abraham Verghese

A Rising Man
Abir Mukherjee

The Henna Artist
Alka Joshi

A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Shehan Karunatilaka

A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth

Sea of Poppies
Amitav Ghosh

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy

A Golden Age
Tahmima Anam
Embrace your bell-bottom phase
If social turmoil and gritty art scenes are your jam, you'll dig the 1970s.

The Women
Kristin Hannah

A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
Dawnie Walton

The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen

Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann

Daisy Jones and the Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid

Take My Hand
Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Damnation Spring
Ash Davidson

The Island of Missing Trees
Elif Shafak

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
Keep calm and carry on
Experience the darkest days and nights of the Blitz.
Join the bread line
Tune in to stories of people pushed to the brink during the Great Depression.

The Calamity Club
Kathryn Stockett

The Antidote
Karen Russell

The Four Winds
Kristin Hannah

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
James McBride

Trust
Hernan Diaz

West with Giraffes
Lynda Rutledge

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Kim Michele Richardson

Crucible
John Sayles

This Tender Land
William Kent Krueger

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen

The Giver of Stars
Jojo Moyes

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck and Robert DeMott - introduction
Command the high seas
It’s time for all ye landlubbers to climb aboard a pirate ship.

Fire Sword and Sea
Vanessa Riley

The Pirate Queen
Ariel Lawhon

Black Moon
Stephen Wright

Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson and Marty Ross - adaptation

Pirate Latitudes
Michael Crichton

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye
Briony Cameron

Cinnamon and Gunpowder
Eli Brown

Silver: Return to Treasure Island
Andrew Motion

On Stranger Tides
Tim Powers

The End of Calico Jack
Eddie Jones

The Princess Bride
William Goldman
Contemplate the what if’s
Suspend your disbelief and wade into alternate histories.

Space: 1972
Bill Oakley

The Weight of Angels
John Boyne

Cahokia Jazz
Francis Spufford

Light Perpetual
Francis Spufford

Daikon
Samuel Hawley

11.22.63
Stephen King

The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick

Rodham
Curtis Sittenfeld

Fatherland
Robert Harris

Machines Like Me
Ian McEwan

The Years of Rice and Salt
Kim Stanley Robinson

A Memory Called Empire
Arkady Martine














