Trending Historical Fiction Books
And Then There Were None (Released: January 1939)
Author(s): Agatha Christie
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.25 (1208 Ratings, 115 Reviews)
Pages: 116
And Then There Were None is the signature novel of Agatha Christie, the most beloved work of the world's bestselling novelist. It is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense that has been a fixture in popular literature for more than sixty years, a brilliant tale that remains as compelling today as ever. First there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the-coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to any of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder, and one by one they begin to fall prey to an unseen hand. As the only people on the island, unable to leave and unable to call for help, they know that the only possible suspects are among their number. And only the dead are above suspicion. Also published as "Ten Little Indians"
Genre(s): Mystery, Thriller, Fiction, Classics, Suspense, Traditional Detectives, etc, English fiction, Islands, Juvenile Fiction
Catch-22 (Released: January 1961)
Author(s): Joseph Heller
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.00 (709 Ratings, 43 Reviews)
Pages: 466
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original. Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him. Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows with astonishing power and vitality -- a masterpiece of our time. - Back cover.
Genre(s): Classics, Fiction, War, History, Historical Fiction, Psychology, comedy, World War
The Grapes of Wrath (Released: January 1939)
Author(s): John Steinbeck
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.81 (574 Ratings, 52 Reviews)
Pages: 496
Steinbeck’s classic novel of the Great Depression is as vivid now as ever. The story focuses on a family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, farmers who work another man’s land for a share of the crops. Driven from their home by drought and poverty they take to the road in a battered old truck and make their way to California to look for work. When they arrive they find hundreds of others like them being forced to work for breadline wages. they begin working as fruit pickers, strike-breakers replacing the people who have been trying to establish a union but their consciences force them to leave.
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Literature, Friendship, California
Pachinko (Released: January 2017)
Author(s): Min Jin Lee
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.23 (474 Ratings, 66 Reviews)
Pages: 496
In this New York Times bestseller, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan–the inspiration for the television series on Apple TV+. In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger. When she discovers she is pregnant–and that her lover is married–she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty.
Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, War, Literature & Fiction
No Longer Human (Released: January 1948)
Author(s): Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene (Translator), David Shih (Narrator)
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 3.85 (421 Ratings, 61 Reviews)
Pages: 196
Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world . . . suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, . . . but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.
Genre(s): Classics, Fiction, Comics, Literature, Historical Fiction, Juvenile Nonfiction
A Gentleman in Moscow (Released: January 2016)
Author(s): Amor Towles
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.23 (453 Ratings, 71 Reviews)
Pages: 512
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.
Genre(s): Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics, History
The Color Purple (Released: April 1976)
Author(s): Alice Walker
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.16 (412 Ratings, 38 Reviews)
Pages: 288
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this novel about a resilient and courageous woman has become a Broadway show and a cultural phenomenon. A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God. The letters, spanning twenty years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women. She meets Shug Avery, her husband’s mistress and a jazz singer with a zest for life, and her stepson’s wife, Sophia, who challenges her to fight for independence. And though the many letters from Celie’s sister are hidden by her husband, Nettie’s unwavering support will prove to be the most breathtaking of all. The Color Purple has sold more than five million copies, inspired an Academy Award–nominated film starring Oprah Winfrey and directed by Steven Spielberg, and been adapted into a Tony-nominated Broadway musical. Lauded as a literary masterpiece, this is the groundbreaking novel that placed Walker “in the company of Faulkner” (The Nation), and remains a wrenching—yet intensely uplifting—experience for new generations of readers. This ebook features a new introduction written by the author on the twenty-fifth anniversary of publication, and an illustrated biography of Alice Walker including rare photos from the author’s personal collection. The Color Purple is the 1st book in the Color Purple Collection, which also includes The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing the Secret of Joy.
Genre(s): Fiction, Classics, African Americans, Historical Fiction, Friendship, American fiction, LGBTQ, General, Native Americans
The Name of the Rose (Released: January 1980)
Author(s): Umberto Eco, William Weaver (Translator)
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.01 (376 Ratings, 27 Reviews)
Pages: 556
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. His tools are the logic of Aristotle, the theology of Aquinas, the empirical insights of Roger Bacon - all sharpened to a glistening edge by wry humor and a ferocious curiosity. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where "the most interesting things happen at night."
Genre(s): Mystery, Classics, Fiction, Suspense, History, Historical Fiction
Demon Copperhead (Released: January 2022)
Author(s): Barbara Kingsolver
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.41 (337 Ratings, 59 Reviews)
Pages: 560
From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.
Genre(s): Fiction, Literature, Classics, Biography, Historical Fiction, Foster care, Travel, Adventure, Mystery
Small Things Like These (Released: January 2021)
Author(s): Claire Keegan
Ratings and Reviews from Hardcover
Rating: 4.13 (350 Ratings, 49 Reviews)
Pages: 70
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary, Historical, Short Fiction, History, Literature, Historical Mystery