Smart Historical Fiction (Heavy on the Tudors light on romance)
Explore smart historical fiction with a focus on the Tudors—light on romance, rich in detail. Discover top books blending meticulous research with gripping narratives for history lovers.
Book
The Autobiography of Henry VIII
by Margaret George
The novel that started it all: Margaret George's debut novel of the legendary British king
Book
Mary Queen of Scotland & The Isles
by Margaret George
A fictional account of the life of Mary Queen of Scots traces her lineage and describes her historic fight with Elizabeth over the throne of England.
Book
Mrs. Shakespeare
by Robert Nye
In this humorous and bawdy fictional memoir, Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway reminisces about her famous husband seven years after his death.
Book
Sacajawea
by Anna L. Waldo
Clad in a doeskin, alone and unafraid, she stood straight and proud before the onrushing forces of America's destiny: Sacajawea, child of a Shoshoni chief, lone woman on Lewis and Clark's historic trek -- beautiful spear of a dying nation. She knew many men, walked many miles. From the whispering prairies, across the Great Divide to the crystal capped Rockies and on to the emerald promise of the Pacific Northwest, her story over flows with emotion and action ripped from the bursting fabric of a raw new land. Ten years in the writing, SACAJAWEA unfolds an immense canvas of people and events, and captures the eternal longings of a woman who always yearned for one great passion -- and always it lay beyond the next mountain.
Book
The Sunne in Splendour
by Sharon Kay Penman
A historical novel that re-creates the life of Richard III in fifteenth-century England, presenting the monarch as a gifted man and romantic hero who was betrayed in life and in death.
Book
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 America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s 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 fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.
Book
Artemisia
by Alexandra Lapierre
Artemisia Gentileschi, a significant female artist of the late 1600s, is brought to life as Lapierre captures the flavor of Baroque Italy as well as the emotional life of this fascinating woman. A major exhibition of the artist's paintings opens in February 2002 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. of color photos.
Book
The Mists of Avalon
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
The magical saga of the women behind King Arthur's throne. “A monumental reimagining of the Arthurian legends . . . reading it is a deeply moving and at times uncanny experience. . . . An impressive achievement.”—The New York Times Book Review In Marion Zimmer Bradley's masterpiece, we see the tumult and adventures of Camelot's court through the eyes of the women who bolstered the king's rise and schemed for his fall. From their childhoods through the ultimate fulfillment of their destinies, we follow these women and the diverse cast of characters that surrounds them as the great Arthurian epic unfolds stunningly before us. As Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar struggle for control over the fate of Arthur's kingdom, as the Knights of the Round Table take on their infamous quest, as Merlin and Viviane wield their magics for the future of Old Britain, the Isle of Avalon slips further into the impenetrable mists of memory, until the fissure between old and new worlds' and old and new religions' claims its most famous victim.
Book
The Concubine
by Norah Lofts
"All eyes and hair" a courtier had said disparagingly of her - and certainly the younger daughter of Tom Boleyn lacked the bounteous charms of most ladies of Court. Black-haired, black eyes, she had a wild-sprite quality that was to prove more effective, more dangerous than conventional feminine appeal. The King first noticed her when she was sixteen - and with imperial greed he smashed her youthful love-affair with Harry Percy and began the process of royal seduction... But this was no ordinary woman, no maid-in-wairing to be possessed and discarded by a King. Against his will, his own common sense, Henry found himself bewitched - enthralled by the young girl who was to be known as the Concubine...
Book
The Alexandrian
by Martha Rofheart
She ruled a mighty nation-- and the hearts of the ancient world's greatest men. Her beauty was matched only by her passion for life and power. Despite what others might think, she won in her bedchanger what she could not win on the battlefield: the safety of her land and people, the undying respect and love of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.
Book
Johnny Got His Gun
by Dalton Trumbo
A powerful narrative which exposes the brutalities and useless suffering caused by war.
Book
Roots
by Alex Haley
It begins with a birth in 1750, in an African village; it ends seven generations later at the Arkansas funeral of a black professor whose children are a teacher, a Navy architect, an assistant director of the U.S. Information Agency, and an author. The author is Alex Haley. This magnificent book is his.
Book
Nothing Like the Sun
by Anthony Burgess
Before Shakespeare in Love, there was Anthony Burgess's Nothing Like the Sun: a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life.
Book
Slammerkin
by Emma Donoghue
Mary Saunders' lust for linen, lace and a shiny red ribbon leads her to a life of prostitution.
Book
Mozart's Wife
by Juliet Waldron
Based on original sources, including family letters and scholarly biographies this is a biographical novel about Constanze, Moazrt's wife.
Book
The Oxford Book of Historical Stories
by Michael Cox
Historical fiction is as popular today as it was at its birth in the nineteenth century. The imaginative recreation of a period beyond living memory has a power to evoke the past better than any history text book. The stories in this collection travel in time from pre-history and the ancientGreeks to Regency bucks and Edwardian suffragettes, by way of medieval Europe, the English Civil War and the French Revolution. Emperors and kings, poets and soldiers walk these pages, in tales of intrigue, adventure, mystery, and romance. As well as the giants of the genre - Stanley Weyman, Rafael Sabatini, and Georgette Heyer among them - this anthology also includes tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Aldous Huxley, William Faulkner, and Marjorie Bowen, and by writers from the golden age of the Victorian magazine. In their choices the editors demonstrate the vitality of a form that cuts across the boundaries of popular and literary fiction to appeal to anyone who enjoys a cracking good read.`History is too important to be left solely to historians. Or, to put it less provocatively, historical fiction shows that there are parts - important parts - of the experience of history that the professional historian cannot be expected to reach.' From the Introduction
Book
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.
Book
The Clan of the Cave Bear
by Jean M. Auel
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. A natural disaster leaves the young girl wandering alone in an unfamiliar and dangerous land until she is found by a woman of the Clan, people very different from her own kind. To them, blond, blue-eyed Ayla looks peculiar and ugly—she is one of the Others, those who have moved into their ancient homeland; but Iza cannot leave the girl to die and takes her with them. Iza and Creb, the old Mog-ur, grow to love her, and as Ayla learns the ways of the Clan and Iza’s way of healing, most come to accept her. But the brutal and proud youth who is destined to become their next leader sees her differences as a threat to his authority. He develops a deep and abiding hatred for the strange girl of the Others who lives in their midst, and is determined to get his revenge.
Book
The Wind Done Gone
by Alice Randall
A parody of Gone with the wind, this novel tells the story of Cynara, the mulatto half-sister born into slavery who eventually triumphs.