Historical Fiction: So many books so little time!
Discover the best historical fiction books to read now! From Bernard Cornwell's Fallen Angels to Sandra Worth's The Rose of York, explore gripping tales of medieval intrigue, royalty, and adventure. This curated list of must-read novels, including The Physician and Roselynde, is perfect for history lovers seeking immersive stories and timeless classics—all in one place.
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A Crowning Mercy
by Bernard Cornwell
A "New York Times" bestselling master of historical fiction and his co-author deliver a powerful story of a young Puritan woman who, as civil war tears England asunder in 1643, will risk everything to find love and a secret fortune.
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The Innocent
by Posie Graeme-Evans
The year is 1450, a dangerous time in medieval Britain. Civil unrest is at its peak and the legitimacy of the royal family is suspect. Meanwhile, deep in the forests of western England, a baby is born. Powerful forces plot to kill both mother and child, but somehow the newborn girl survives. Her name is Anne. Fifteen years later, England emerges into a fragile but hopeful new age, with the charismatic young King Edward IV on the throne. Anne, now a young peasant girl, joins the household of a wealthy London merchant. Her unusual beauty provokes jealousy, lust, and intrigue, but Anne has a special quality that saves her: a vast knowledge of healing herbs. News of her extraordinary gift spreads, and she is called upon to save the ailing queen. Soon after, Anne is moved into the palace, where she finds her destiny with the man who will become the greatest love of her life -- the king himself.
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The Fallen Angels
by Bernard Cornwell
During the French Revolution, lovely young Englishwoman Lady Campion Lazender finds herself endangered because of her French ancestry and her valuable estate, coveted by a ruthless secret society.
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The Thrall's Tale
by Judith Lindbergh
Set in Viking Greenland in 895 AD, this dramatic novel focuses on the intertwined lives of three women straddling the pagan past and Christian future: Katla, an Irish, Christian slave or thrall; Bibrau, her daughter from a violent rape; and Thorbjorg, the prophetess of the pagan god Odin who raises Bibrau.
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The Illuminator
by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
Working in secret for a fourteenth-century Oxford professor who would translate the Bible into English, master illuminator Finn forms an alliance with Lady Kathryn, a widow desperate to protect her inheritance from the church and the monarchy.
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Margaret the Queen
by Nigel G. Tranter
First she was Margaret the refugee. A Saxon princess, sister of Edgar Atheling who, but for William the Conqueror, would have been King of England. She came to Scotland in 1069. Beautiful, sympathetic and devout, whe was an unlikely consort to the rough and ready Malcolm King of Scots and slayer of MacBeth, a man who cared for little other than hunting, drinking and the brutal arts of war. Yet, through her gentle strength of character and intelligence, she was to have a profound and lasting effect on her adopted nation and people that lasts to this day. 'Through his imaginative dialogue, he provides a voice for Scotland's heroes' Scotland on Sunday
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The Rose of York
by Sandra Worth
In a tumultuous era the passions of a few rule the destiny of England.
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Roselynde
by Roberta Gellis
Yearning to be near the knight who has awakened her to the tender joys of love, Alinor, mistress of Roselynde, defies King Richard's command to marry a land-hungry noble
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A Rare and Curious Gift
by Pauline Holdstock
Through this fearless story of utterly convincing human passions, Holdstock paints a rich, beautifully textured portrait of the Italian Renaissance and its material and spiritual visions of human nature.
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The Physician
by Noah Gordon
Eleventh-century England and Persia are the backgrounds of this story of an orphan named Rob Cole, who is apprenticed to a travelling barber-surgeon and, discovering in himself a gift for healing, decides to study medicine with the legendary Avicenna.
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The Luck of Huemac
by Daniel Peters
Huemac has foreknowledge of the disaster approaching Tenochtitlan, as Cortez and his army march toward the city.
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A Distant Mirror
by Barbara Wertheim Tuchman
This is a story of the 14th century, when the whole world seemed to be spinning to its doom, and yet when our modern world was being born.