Blending historical fact with fiction, a novel set in other times and places can transport you into the past more convincingly than a dry historical treatise - and entertain you in the bargain. What I look for in historical fiction are books by authors who, after reading the histories and doing the research, create stories based in the past that include characters I want to know better and a plot that keeps me turning pages - books like Peter Ackroyd's The Clerkenwell Tales, Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom, and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.
Now you can spend less time searching and more time reading as I watch for new historical fiction in the Kindle Store
Rainwater by Sandra Brown. Simon & Schuster. TIME FRAME: Depression Era Texas. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The year is 1934. With the country in the stranglehold of drought and economic depression, Ella Barron runs her Texas boardinghouse with an efficiency that ensures her life will be kept in balance. She also cares for her ten-year-old son, Solly, a sweet but challenging child whose misunderstood behavior finds Ella on the receiving end of pity, derision, and suspicion. David Rainwater arrives at the house looking for lodging but Ella senses that admitting him will bring about unsettling changes. However, times are hard, so Mr. Rainwater moves in - and impacts her life in ways Ella could never have foreseen. The changes are echoed by the turbulence beyond the house walls. Friends and neighbors now face financial ruin and in an effort to save their families from homelessness and hunger, are forced to make heart rending choices. The climate of desperation creates a fertile atmosphere for racial tensions and social unrest. Conrad Ellis - privileged and spoiled - and his gang of hoodlums come to embody the rule of law, and no one in Gilead, Texas, is safe. Particularly Ella and Solly. In this hotbed of uncertainty, Ella finds Mr. Rainwater a calming presence. Slowly, she begins to rely on his soft-spokenness, his restraint, and the steely resolve of his convictions. And on the hottest, most violent night of the summer, those principles will be put to the ultimate test." - books.simonandschuster.com.
No Less Than Victory by Jeff Shaara. This is the third volume of Shaara's WW II trilogy following The Rising Tide and The Steel Wave. Ballantine Books. TIME FRAME: Europe 1944-1945. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $12.38. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"After the success of the Normandy invasion, the Allied commanders are buoyantly confident that the war in Europe will be over in a matter of weeks, that Hitler and his battered army have no other option than surrender. But despite the advice of his best military minds, Hitler will hear no talk of defeat. In mid-December 1944, the Germans launch a desperate and ruthless counteroffensive in the Ardennes forest, utterly surprising the unprepared Americans who stand in their way... Thus begins the Battle of the Bulge, the last gasp by Hitler’s forces that becomes a horrific slugging match, some of the most brutal fighting of the war... Though some in the Nazi inner circle continue the fight to secure Germany’s postwar future, the Führer makes it clear that he is fighting to the end. He will spare nothing - not even German lives - to preserve his twisted vision of a 'Thousand Year Reich.' But in May 1945, the German army collapses, and with Russian troops closing in, Hitler commits suicide. As the Americans sweep through the German countryside, they unexpectedly encounter the worst of Hitler’s crimes...Presenting his riveting account through the eyes of Eisenhower and Patton and the young GIs who struggle face-to-face with their enemy, and through the eyes of Germany’s old soldier, Gerd von Rundstedt, and Hitler’s golden boy, Albert Speer, Jeff Shaara carries the reader on a journey that defines the spirit of the soldier and the horror of a madman’s dreams..." - from the hardcover edition.
Less expensive alternative: Shaara's The Rising Tide.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Macmillan. TIME FRAME: 16th century England. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (30 reviews). Kindle edition $14.85. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death." - Amazon.
Less expensive alternative: Dark Fire by C. J. Sansom.
The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland. Delacorte Press. TIME FRAME: 14th century England. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $13.73. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"England 1321: Deep in the heart of the countryside lies an isolated village governed by a sinister regime of Owl Masters.
Theirs is a pagan world of terror and blackmail, where neighbour denounces neighbour, and sin is punishable by murder. This dark status quo is disturbed by the arrival of a house of religious women, who establish a community outside the village. Why do their crops succeed when village crops fail, their cattle survive despite the plague? But petty jealousy turns deadly when the women give refuge to a young martyr; for she dies a gruesome death after spitting the sacramental host into flames that can't burn it. What magic is this? Or is the martyr now a saint, and the host a holy relic? Accusations of witchcraft and heresy run rife, while the Owl Masters rain down hellfire and torment on the women, who must look to their faith to save them from the lengthening shadow of evil...a shadow with predatory, terrifying talons." - www.karenmaitland.com.
Less expensive alternative: Set in the same period, Maitland's earlier novel, Company of Liars has been called "a sinister version of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales..."
The Concubine by Pai Kit Fai. St. Martin's Griffin. TIME FRAME: Early 20th century China. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (23 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. See also the reading group guide for this novel here (PDF file).
"When the young concubine of an old farmer in rural China gives birth to a daughter called Li-Xia, or 'Beautiful One,' the child seems destined to become a concubine herself. Li refuses to submit to her fate, outwitting her father’s orders to bind her feet and escaping the silk farm with an English sea captain. Li takes her first steps toward fulfilling her mother’s dreams of becoming a scholar - but her final triumph must be left to her daughter, Su Sing, 'Little Star,' in a journey that will take her from remote mountain refuges to the perils of Hong Kong on the eve of World War II." - us.macmillan.com.
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