Showing titles in Historical Fiction

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025 A moment is all it takes to shatter a family. The echoes last a lifetime... One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father, Serk, take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal...

Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession by bestselling historian Alison Weir, author of Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, is the second captivating novel in the Six Tudor Queens series. An unforgettable portrait of the ambitious woman whose fate we know all too well, but whose true motivations may...

‘Sharpe and his creator are national treasures.' Sunday Telegraph Spain, August 1810 The English army faces ruin in Spain – and the Duke of Wellington is desperate for money to fund the war. Only a cache of hidden Spanish gold can save them. And only Captain Richard Sharpe has the cunning to...

In every life there is a turning point. A moment so tremendous, so sharp and breathtaking, that one knows one’s life will never be the same. For Michael Stirling, London’s most infamous rake, that moment came the first time he laid eyes on Francesca Bridgerton. After a lifetime of chasing women, of smiling slyly as they chased him, of allowing himself to be caught but never permitting his heart to become engaged, he took one look at Francesca Bridgerton and fell so fast and hard into love it was a wonder he managed to remain standing. 

The continuing story of Arthur, the second in a trilogy which began with THE WINTER KING. The novels bring Arthur and his world to vivid life. A man battling for his vision of the future in a brutal age, dragged down by suspicions and magics of the past, surrounded by intrigue, dependent on his...

Diana Gabaldon’s fans will be delighted to find Jamie and Claire as spirited and endearing as ever in this fourth installment of this magnificent saga. Romance, history, and time travel blend once again as the couple builds a new life together in the wilderness of pre–Revolutionary America.

'Tremendous' – The Guardian 'I just fell in love with it' – Stephen King Set in a reimagined 1950s Britain, Dominion is a gripping, haunting spy thriller – and a poignant love story. From the master of the historical novel and author of the Shardlake series, C.J. Sansom. 1952. Twelve years...

Kent, May 1941. The towns and countryside south of London continue to take a battering from German bombers. Canterbury, with the focal point of its distinctive cathedral, is among the hardest hit. The landmark and holy site is the scene of further tragedy when Canon Walter de la Coeur is found...

Jessie Burton is lively and intelligent - she wants more than the respectable life in service her mother has planned for her. Times are changing, railways are being built across the land bringing new freedom and possibilities. Jessie tastes that freedom when she meets an ambitious young navvy...

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Dead to Me by Lesley Pearse, read by Eve Webster. A compellign enw story from international number one bestselling author Lesley Pearse When Ruby and Verity met as girls they came from different worlds. Verity was privately...

When private investigator Matilda Wren is hired to investigate a household theft, she expects a routine inquiry, until the murder of a retired police inspector draws her into a far more personal mystery. The victim was found clutching a slip of paper bearing the name of Tilda's late father. As...

Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than...

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Chloe Pirrie, Sam Woolf, Michael Fox, Olivia Darnley and Terence Wilton. At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's...

Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America - where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain - the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.

Abigail Wendover has no time for love. She is far too busy protecting her niece, who has fallen madly in love with a suspected fortune-hunter. But her efforts become vastly more complicated with the arrival of Miles Calverleigh, the black sheep of his family - a reckless bachelor with a scandalous past. Abby soon discovers that, despite successfully managing her niece's love life, she has far less control over her own unruly heart. 

*SHARPE’S COMMAND, the brand new novel in the global bestselling series, is available to pre-order now* Portugal, 1811 Captain Richard Sharpe’s renegade ways leave him discarded by his regiment and waging a war against a private Portuguese enemy – one fought through the burning, pillaged...

Ambitious and addictive, Only Time Will Tell is the first novel in Jeffrey Archer’s The Clifton Chronicles, beginning the epic tale of Harry Clifton, a working-class boy from the docks of Bristol. Read by Emilia Fox, known for her role in Silent Witness, and Roger Allam. It is 1920, and...

Shasa Courtney, heir to the Courtney fortunes, dreams only of uniting his divided, beloved country. Against all his principles, he allows his half brother Manfred to persuade him to join South Africa's right-wing National Party, hoping to moderate from within their dangerous policies of apartheid. But Shasa's wife is working against everything he's working for while Manfred has deadly secrets he cannot afford to be revealed, either to his family or the public who are on the brink of war.

Jamie Fraser knows from his time-traveling wife, Claire, that, no matter how unlikely it seems, America will win the Revolutionary War. But fighting for the eventual winner is no guarantee of safety. And worse still, the possibility of pointing a weapon at his own son - a young officer in the British army - haunts Jamie's every thought. 

A onetime Crusader turned Benedictine monk, Brother Cadfael is a most unusual detective. Living a quiet life as a monastery herbalist, he spends his days ministering to his brothers using the medical skills he acquired in the Holy Lands—but his worldly knowledge and wide experience of human nature are frequently called upon when there is a murder to solve....

Now a major Disney+ original series, Shardlake – airing this summer on ITV. 'C. J. Sansom’s books are arguably the best Tudor novels going' – The Sunday Times Dissolution is the first novel in C. J. Sansom’s phenomenal bestselling Shardlake series, perfect for fans of Hilary Mantel and...

Still in the formative years of his career, Hercule Poirot faces a most taxing case: who killed Lord Cronshaw? Was Coco Courtenay’s death on the same night a mere coincidence? And did she deliberately take an overdose of cocaine? No sooner has Poirot revealed his astonishing powers of...

All the ton agree: there is no one quite like Hyacinth Bridgerton. Fiendishly smart, devilishly outspoken and - according to some, particularly Gareth St. Clair - probably best in small doses. But there's something about her - something charming and vexing - that grabs one and won't quite let go. Gareth and Hyacinth cross paths at the annual - and annually discordant - Smythe-Smith musicale. To Hyacinth, Gareth's every word seems a dare, and she offers to help him out with a knotty inheritance problem he's facing. 

The searing follow-up to 2018’s most celebrated fantasy debut – THE POPPY WAR. Rin is on the run… Haunted by the atrocity she committed to save her people, addicted to opium, and driven by the murderous commands of Phoenix, the vengeful god who has blessed Rin with her fearsome power...

Beautiful, sophisticated and endlessly ambitious Lily Bart endeavours to climb the social ladder of New York's elite by securing a good match and living beyond her means. Now nearing 30 years of age and having rejected several proposals, forever in the hope of finding someone better, her future prospects are threatened. A damning commentary of 20th-century social order, Edith Wharton's tale established her as one of the greatest British novelists of the 1900s.

*NOW A MAJOR SKY TV SERIES.* THE NUMBER ONE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER. A Discovery of Witches is the first in the must-have, must-read ALL SOULS series. It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with a discovery of witches. Diana Bishop, a young...

When Sophy is sent to stay with her London relatives, she finds her cousins in quite the tangle. Cecilia is besotted with an attractive but feather-brained poet, Hubert has fallen foul of a money-lender and the ruthlessly handsome Charles is engaged to a pedantic bluestocking who seems to bring out the worst in him. Fortunately, Sophy has arrived just in time to sort them all out - but Charles is eager to rid his family of her meddlesome ways. Has the grand Sophy finally met her match?

There are some things which even the closest friendship cannot survive . . . Welcome Home is an enthralling and moving drama from bestselling author Margaret Dickinson, set during the Second World War. Neighbours Edie Kelsey and Lil Horton have been friends for over twenty years, sharing the...

Robbie Matthews is now a captain in the 11th Light Dragoons. Despite the peace, he is soon sent to France to spy on Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion plans. Barely escaping with his life, he returns to England to discover that not all of the new officers he has to work with accept him. He fights prejudice and envy. When he and his squadron are sent to Hanover to help fight against the invading French, he has the chance to show his new comrades what a good cavalryman he is. The novel culminates in the rescue of British civilians from French prison camps.