great historical fiction thrillers
Discover the best historical fiction thrillers with our curated list of gripping books. Dive into suspenseful tales set in the past, perfect for fans of mystery and adventure.
Book
Snow Wolf
by Glenn Meade
It is 1953. Joseph Stalin is teetering on the edge of insanity, and is about to plunge the world into nuclear chaos. Only one man and one woman can penetrate the Iron Curtain and stop this madman before it's too late. But someone inside the Kremlin knows they exist. And as the KGB's deadliest manhunter pursues these two CIA-hired assassins, another duel unfolds. Martin's Press.
Book
City of Thieves
by David Benioff
Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake.
Book
War of the Rats
by David L. Robbins
For six months in 1942, Stalingrad is the center of a titanic struggle between the Russian and German armies—the bloodiest campaign in mankind's long history of warfare. The outcome is pivotal. If Hitler's forces are not stopped, Russia will fall. And with it, the world.... German soldiers call the battle Rattenkrieg, War of the Rats. The combat is horrific, as soldiers die in the smoking cellars and trenches of a ruined city. Through this twisted carnage stalk two men—one Russian, one German—each the top sniper in his respective army. These two marksmen are equally matched in both skill and tenacity. Each man has his own mission: to find his counterpart—and kill him. But an American woman trapped in Russia complicates this extraordinary duel. Joining the Russian sniper's cadre, she soon becomes one of his most talented assassins—and perhaps his greatest weakness. Based on a true story, this is the harrowing tale of two adversaries enmeshed in their own private war—and whose fortunes will help decide the fate of the world.
Book
A Gathering of Spies
by John Altman
In 1943, America thought it had rounded up all the German spies on its soil. Now Germany's greatest weapon - a woman with special talents, both for tradecraft and for death - is headed home with critical information about the still-developing atomic bomb, and the Allies chief hope for stopping her is a British agent with agendas of his own. Originally recruited into MI5 to pose as a double agent, he's been telling Germans that he'd do anything to free his wife, a prisoner of a Polish concentration camp. This happens to be true. The question is: how much would he really do to set her free? Where are his loyalties exactly? As the two spies play cat-and-mouse across three countries, the ambiguities deepen, each figure showing new sides, each action providing new twists, until at last both agents are swept into a series of climaxes as breathtakingly unpredictable as they are inevitable.
Book
The Odessa File
by Frederick Forsyth
A group of SS survivors is planning to carry out Hitler's "final solution" 20 years after his death.
Book
Five Past Midnight
by James Stewart Thayer
Escaping from Germany's Colditz Castle where he was being held as a prisoner of war, Captain Jack Cray fights his way to Berlin in April 1945, following a twisted trail of terror across Germany. The American Army commando has just been handed the most dangerous mission of his career--the assassination of Adolf Hitler.