Great Reads ( mostly historical novels)
Discover the best historical novels with Great Reads! Explore our curated list of captivating books that bring history to life, perfect for fans of immersive storytelling and rich historical detail.
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue
by Susan Vreeland
The New York Times bestselling luminous tale about art and human experience that is as breathtaking as any Vermeer painting âA little gem of a novel . . . [and a] beautifully written exploration of the power of art.â âParade A professor invites a colleague from the art department to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeerâwhy has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the workâs inspiration. As the painting moves through each ownerâs hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in human lives. Vreelandâs characters remind us, through their love of the mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts, and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable.
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
by Alexandra Fuller
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother. âThis is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.ââNewsweek âBy turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising, horrific, and thrilling.ââThe New Yorker Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, Donât Letâs Go to the Dogs Tonight is suffused with Fullerâs endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fullerâs debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fullerâknown to friends and family as Boboâgrew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Donât Letâs Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivorâs story. It is the story of one womanâs unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt. Praise for Donât Letâs Go to the Dogs Tonight âRiveting . . . [full of] humor and compassion.ââO: The Oprah Magazine âThe incredible story of an incredible childhood.ââThe Providence Journal
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The Dress Lodger
by Sheri Holman
In a novel set in London during the Industrial Revolution, a prostitute borrows a blue dress to attract a higher class of client and is shadowed through the streets by an evil old woman hired by the dress' owner to keep an eye on her.
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Year of Wonders
by Geraldine Brooks
"When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated mountain village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes, we follow the story of the plague year, 1666, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice. Convinced by a visionary young minister, they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease. But as death reaches into every household, faith frays. When villagers turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As she struggles to survive, a year of plague becomes, instead, annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders.' Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged mountain spine of England. Year of Wonders is a detailed evocation of a singular moment in history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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The Hundred Secret Senses
by Amy Tan
Chinese-American Olivia Laguni has a battle of wills with her half-sister and lifelong nemesis, Kwan Li, whose haunting predictions and implementation of the secret senses link their family's struggles to the challenges of their ancestors. Reprint.
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The Beans of Egypt, Maine
by Carolyn Chute
Earlene marries into the povertystricken Bean family and finds herself being pulled down into their destitution of resources and spirit. In spite of everything, Earlene chooses to become her own woman.
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The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolinaâa town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
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West with the Night
by Beryl Markham
Autobiography detailing the author's life in Africa and career as a pilot.
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Night
by Elie Wiesel
Presents a true account of the author's experiences as a Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp.
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Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier
Inman, an injured and disillusioned Confederate soldier, embarks on a harrowing journey home to his sweetheart, Ada, who herself is struggling to run the farm left her at her father's sudden death.
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Nominated as one of Americaâs best-loved novels by PBSâs The Great American Read Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fictionâat once romantic, erotic, suspensefulâand completely unforgettable.
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In the Fall
by Jeffrey Lent
Compared by critics to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, Jeffrey Lentâs In the Fall is the most stunning debut to come along in years. Ambitious in scope and passionately executed, this epic novel is the rarest of things: a truly moving, emotionally honest, and intellectually satisfying American family. In the twilight of the Civil War, Leah, an escaped slave, discovers Norman Pelham, a wounded soldier who lies dying in a battlefield outside Richmond. After she nurses him back to health, Norman brings her to his family farm in Vermont as his wife, and they begin a family. Now the mother of three, and however begrudgingly, accepted in the community, Leah travels back to the South of her birth and returns with a secret that threatens to destroy what she and Norman had created. Her son Jamie, passing for white, escapes his legacy and enters a world of petty bootlegging, achieving a kind of respectability in the Prohibition era, but also suffering wrenching losses. At the eve of the Great Depression his son, Foster, retraces the path taken by his grandmother and finally confronts the secret exposed by an unknown white uncle, the legacy of slavery, and the painful intricacies of race.
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Suite Française
by IrnĚe NmĚirovsky
In 1940, several families and individuals are thrown together as they flee Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion and struggle to stay alive and grieve for the life they once knew.
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A Thread of Grace
by Mary Doria Russell
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠âA powerfully imagined novel . . . [a] profoundly moving book that engages the heights and depths of human experience.ââLos Angeles Times It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum and her father are among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to find safety now that the Italians have broken from Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it quickly becomes an open battleground for the Nazis, the Allies, Resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians trying to survive. Tracing the lives of a handful of fascinating charactersâa charismatic Italian Resistance leader, a priest, an Italian rabbiâs family, a disillusioned German doctorâMary Doria Russell tells the little-known story of the vast underground effort by Italian citizens who saved the lives of 43,000 Jews during the final phase of World War II. A Thread of Grace puts a human face on history. Praise for A Thread of Grace âAn addictive page-turner . . . [Mary Doria] Russell has an astonishing story to tellâfull of action, paced like a rapid-fire thriller, in tense, vivid scenes that move with cinematic verve.ââThe Washington Post Book World âHauntingly beautiful, utterly unforgettable.ââSan Francisco Chronicle âRich . . . Based on the heroism of ordinary people, [A Thread of Grace] packs an emotional punch.ââPeople â[A] deeply felt and compellingly written book . . . The progress of each characterâs life is marked or measured by acts of grace. . . . Russell is a smart, passionate and imaginative writer.ââCleveland Plain Dealer âA feat of storytelling . . . an important book [that] needs to be widely read.ââPortland Oregonian âMary Doria Russellâs fans (and arenât we all?) will rejoice to see her new novel on the shelves. A Thread of Grace is as ambitious, beautiful, tense, and transforming as any of us could have hoped.ââKaren Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club âA story of love and war, A Thread of Grace speaks to the resilience and beauty of the human spirit in the midst of unimaginable horror. It is, unquestionably, a literary triumph.ââDavid Morrell, author of The Brotherhood of the Rose and First Blood