Historical Fiction

Morocco, 1968. The air is electric. Anything feels possible, and Mathilde is determined to celebrate it.Doesn't she have the right to enjoy life, after dedicating her best years to the war and then to this farm? Looking out at her…

1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother's belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out.She died soon after, and Jack never…

At the very centre of the life of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest artists was the most unexpected of life-long influences. The aptly named Jessie Lightfoot shielded the young Francis Bacon from the brutish violence of his …

11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus.She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintai…

Power. History. Love.Hate. Vengeance. She will be Queen.Whatever it takes... Daughter of an ousted king. Descendant of powerful druids.Destined to take her place in history. As a child, Gruoch's grandmother prophesies that she wil…

Tartelin Brown is all alone in the world. So when she sees an advert for a job on a remote island, she knows she has nothing to lose. Her employer, Marianne Stourbridge, is a woman as strange and mysterious as the place she inhabi…

Blonde is a mesmerising novel about the most enduring and evocative cultural icon of the 20th century: the woman who became Marilyn Monroe. A fragile and gifted young woman, Norma Jeane Baker makes and remakes her identity: she is…

A modern classic work of Irish literature, this award-winning novel is an exploration of love, art and identity.  This was the night train to Barcelona, some hours before the dawn. This was 1950, late September.I had left my husba…

Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divo…

Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. It is a loving and nostalgic recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osaka immediately before Wor…

Set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, this experimental novel follows an ensemble cast of all-singing, all-dancing butch dykes and Yiddish anarchists through eternal Friday nights, around the table, and at the bar. In one of m…

An astounding debut, both epic and intimate, about grief, trauma, revelation, and the hidden lives of women - by a major new talent. In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in Norwich.Before they part, Julian will e…

South Korea, 1970. San is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything.Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently reje…

FATE CAN BE CHANGED.CURSES CAN BE BROKEN.In a shabby house in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil. But when her scheming mistress discovers her scullion is hiding a …

Bestselling and award-winning Irish author, Nuala O’Connor's sixth novel is her most ambitious yet. In crisp, shimmering prose, she conjures a completely unexpected portrayal of Anne Bonny, giving us so much more than just the 18t…

The sequel to the prize-winning, bestselling novel Brooklyn. A novel of enormous wit and profound emotional resonance from one of the world's finest writers. In Colm Toibin's masterful new novel, we are reunited with Eilis Lacey, …

Chinatown, New York.After a chance encounter with an old friend, Simon Hanlon, an Irish architect, experiences a seizure, his first in almost thirty years. Soon, they come to him daily. As he awaits a brain operation, Simon turns …

This is James Clavell's tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, SHOGUN is a stunningly dramatic re-creatio…

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.At the tu…

A deeply poetic account of love and resistance through a young girl’s eyes by acclaimed writer, Sahar Khalifeh, called "the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian literature” (Börsenblatt)Nidal, after many decades of restless exile, return…

Life and Fate is an epic tale of twentieth-century Russia told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stalingrad. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's character…

In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. More than a century later, the Honeys' descendants remain, with an eccentric, diverse band of neighbou…

When the Nazis take Rome, thousands go into hiding. One priest will risk everything to save them. September 1943: German forces occupy Rome.SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates h…

Death in Spring is a dark and dream-like tale of a teenage boy's coming of age in a remote village in the Catalan mountains; a place cut off from the outside world, where cruel customs are blindly followed, and attempts at rebelli…

*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available* WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE BY THE NOBEL-PRIZE WINNING AUTHORONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of …

After signing up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, fight in the Indian Wars and the Civil War. Having both fled terrible hardships, their days are now vivid and…

An extraordinary story of the journey of one young family through love, loss and unwavering hope. There are the goodbyes and then the fishing out of the bodies – everything in between is speculation. One night, not long after the …

Plague is not the only killer -- an historical epic of murder and mystery, myth-making and nation-building, from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1901. Night draws in.With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship …

A Power Unbound is the final entry in Freya Marske's beloved, award-winning Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light. Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfort…

They will have justice. They will show their power. They will not burn. Norway, 1662. A dangerous time to be a woman, when even dancing can lead to accusations of witchcraft. After recently widowed Zigri's affair with the local me…