Historical Fiction

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a …

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifr…

Lucy is running from what she's done - and what someone did to her. There's only one person who might understand: her sister Jess. But when Lucy arrives at her sister's desolate cliff-top house, Jess is gone. Lucy is now alone, in…

The outstanding novel from the Carnegie Medal-winning, former Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan; thought-provoking and moving, it explores love and family during The Great Hunger. Ireland, 1846. Nell is working as a scullery maid in t…

When Miss Catherine Symonds arrives to take up a position as governess at remote Locksley Abbey in the foothills of the Black Mountains, where England bleeds into Wales, she is apprehensive. It is not the echoing, near empty house…

The Women is a novel of epic love and devastating loss. And it is a story of a memorable heroine, and her deep friendships, whose idealism and courage under fire will define an era.Their friendship changed lives. Their bravery cha…

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023A Reese's Bookclub December Pick (2022)An Instant Sunday Times, New York Times and Irish Times Bestseller (August 2022)A Guardian and LitHub Book of the Year (December 2022) 'Every…

Trieste, 1904. James Joyce - not yet famous - arrives in the city by train with Norah Barnacle. Penniless, he goes to seek out a loan, leaving Norah sitting on a suitcase outside the train station for almost an entire day and nigh…

Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West.No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion. When Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act i…

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg BusinessweekFrom one of today's most brilliant and beloved novelists, a dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century …

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River - an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes…

Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of social and political chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When sold…

Yaga lives deep in the Russian forest, tending to any that call upon her for her healing potions and vast wisdom. She has been alone for centuries, with only her beloved animals for company. But, when Tsaritsa Anastasia, wife of T…

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover.Enter LAMPO: lovesick, jobless, in need of a distraction.  Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.…

Meet the indomitable Marie de France. Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse, too wild, too rough-hewn for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court. Woefully, she is sent to the mu…

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…

The first time Romeo Montague sees young Rosaline Capulet he falls instantly in love. Rosaline, headstrong and independent, is unsure of Romeo's attentions but with her father determined that she join a convent, this handsome and …

December 1962, the West Country.In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day.Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out…

Bringing sixteenth-century France vividly to life, Kate Mosse’s historical epic The Burning Chambers is a gripping story of love, betrayal, war and conspiracy. It is the first volume in the sweeping, spellbinding s…

The richly atmospheric new Strafford and Quirke murder mystery, from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Snow. He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten.1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously em…

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024. It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out…

Hidden behind the walls of Grangegorman Mental Hospital in 1941, four lives collide, all afflicted by the human cost of wars, betrayals and trauma. Gus, a shrewd attendant, is the keeper of everyone’s secrets, especially his own.…

The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change. 1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable t…

Charlotte Brontë dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital, richly-drawn characters. She spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love – and eventually found it with Arthur Bell Nicholls, her father’s curat…

In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen …

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to sa…

June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin. Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at F…

Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Novel.  Hell is empty and all the devils are here. The Chatelaine has come. The year is 1328 and Hell has overrun Bruges.Demons stalk the streets and revenants swarm the walls. The city's men ha…

From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of the families we forge and the friendships that make us. 1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cella…

Standing by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders...is this it? As she begins to push back against the structures of her life in 1950s America…