Historical Fiction

The daughter of a wealthy brewer, Catherine Havisham, sent to stay with the Chadwycks in London, discovers sophisticated new pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money, until she decides to risk everything for the charismatic stranger who pays her attention.

Thirteen-year-old Jessie knows she is a born writer, and through her honest records of parents, classmates, teachers, first love and World War II in England, she reveals her talent.

Henry is a young slave living in the mid-19th-century Kansas Territory whose life takes a major turn when he meets the legendary abolitionist John Brown — who mistakes Henry for a girl. Henry continues to hide his true identity for his own safety as he travels with Brown's militia, through the historic 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

Two years after parting from Benjamin, Janie reunites via magical communication to prevent a global catastrophe.

An adventurous man, once a penniless orphan, searches throughout French society during the Enlightenment for the perfect taste, befriends Benjamin Franklin, becomes pen pals with the Marquis de Sade and improves contraceptive methods.

When governess Abigail Chantry, along with her sister and two friends, comes to the aid of Lady Beatrice Davenham, they are saved from destitution until Lady Beatrice's nephew Max returns to question their position in his aunt's household.

Miss Abigail Harewood, who is determined to reject stifling convention and take a lover, sets her sights on the Duke of Wallingford, who is dissatisfied with his life of debauchery and has resolved to remain chaste for a year.

Louisa Cantwell, who must marry a wealthy man in order to support her sisters, is drawn to Felix Rivendale, the mysterious Marquess of Wrenworth, but resists because she knows that he cannot be trusted.

Struggling to support her family in mid-19th-century New York, writer Frances Osgood makes an unexpected connection with literary master Edgar Allan Poe and finds her survival complicated by her intense attraction to the writer and the scheming manipulations of his wife.

In 1871 Wisconsin, 13-year-old Georgia sets out to find her sister Agatha, presumed dead when remains are found wearing the dress she was last seen in, and before the end of the year gains fame as a sharpshooter and foiler of counterfeiters.

A thriller explores life and culture as experienced by a Cro-Magnon during the Paleolithic era.

In 1929, Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the maid for a prominent family in Missouri, chases down justice after her younger sister is one of 42 people killed in a mysterious explosion at a local dance hall.

Inspired by the woman known as Typhoid Mary, Fever traces the efforts of a headstrong Irish immigrant whose tenacity and talent for cooking gains her entry into upper-class kitchens. Then one day, the discovery that she's a disease carrier forces her into an isolation that she eventually defies with horrific results.

Bogota resident Antonio Yammara reflects on a mid-20th-century uprising between Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and government forces that trapped Pablo's community in a nightmarish existence and culminated in a friend's murder.

When young American pilot Rose Justice is captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbruck, the notorious women's concentration camp, she finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners.

With their husbands away fighting in the war in January 1943, Rita Vincenzo and Glory Whitehall have only their cross-country correspondence to keep them going.

The award-winning author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum follows the experiences of a woman who, after being born on a snowy night in 1910, repeatedly dies and reincarnates into the same life to correct missteps and, ultimately, save the world.

Marisa Silver reimagines the story behind Dorothea Lange's famous Depression-era photo, Migrant Mother. In Silver's story, two women — photographer and subject — briefly cross paths, and a contemporary professor of cultural history uncovers a mystery captured in the resulting photo.

Lady Philippa Marbury, known as Pippa, is a bit ... odd. More interested in books and plants than men, she's about to be married but knows little of the marriage bed. So she enlists a scoundrel, the well-known rake Mr. Cross, to help her do some research.

Flavia de Luce, an 11-year-old genius and chemistry whiz, has found yet another homicide to solve. When Flavia's town opens the crypt of its patron saint, it finds a body that's far from ancient: the disturbingly masked corpse of the church organist. Who would have killed him, and why would the killer hide him there? Flavia's on the case.

Tara Conklin's debut novel links the stories of Lina Sparrow, a 21st century lawyer, and Josephine Bell, an artistically talented 19th century slave. As Josephine plans her escape from a Virginia plantation, Lina goes in search of the perfect plaintiff for a slavery reparations lawsuit.

In belle epoque Paris, the Van Goethem sisters struggle for survival after the sudden death of their father, a situation that prompts young Marie's ballet training and her introduction to a genius painter.

In 1923, 15-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment, and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. Their lives tell the story of a mother's monumental courage and the journey of a nation.

Born in Austria and raised in Ohio, Joseph Skizzen lives an uneventful life; you might even call it insignificant. But in his own mind, he is the great Professor Skizzen, charged with cataloging the many sins and shortcomings of humanity. In his first novel in almost two decades, Gass explores an introvert's inner life, deploying his characteristically dense prose to probe and blur the tentative line between fantasy and self.

The first volume of the Aubrey/Maturin novels introduces Captain Jack Aubrey, commander of the HMS Sophie and Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon and British intelligence agent, during the age of the Napoleonic wars.

Something suspicious is going on in Princeton, N.J., in the otherwise sleepy year of 1905. Children turn to stone; an underworld opens at the edge of town; snakes squirm up and down walls. What have the people of Princeton done to bring such curses on themselves? In Joyce Carol Oates' gothic novel, fictional characters mix with historical figures — including Woodrow Wilson and Upton Sinclair — as a man on a quest to save his sister confronts the repressed horrors of high society.

Possessing uncanny powers of observation that elevate her influence in turbulent seventh-century Britain, Hild, the king's youngest niece, is established as a seer and compelled to advise the king correctly at the risk of her loved ones. Hild was written by the Nebula Award-winning author of Ammonite.

In the Spanish Netherlands of 16th-century Europe, Jepp of Astraveld, a teenage dwarf, wages a contest with destiny. From his rural home to the royal courts of the Spanish Infanta, he seeks out a life not readily offered to him. In this young adult novel — inspired by the paintings of Diego Velazquez — Katherine Marsh combines history with fantasy to create an unusual coming-of-age story.