What are some of the best historical novels you have ever read?

Question

I am a huge historical novel Fan.

(Pauline Gedge, Edward Rutherford)

Answer 1

Novels - as in fictionalization of the era - hmmmm.

Hmm - several - let me think... For celtic and druids, I like Morgan LLewylyn's books. He's got his clan structures, lifestyle, etc down.

Clan of the Cave Bear and all the rest that follw it.

Piers Anthony wrote a series of books about the evoltion of man, following the same characters through the centuries - amazing amount of research there, a lot of interesting suppositions as well. Isle of Woman, Shame of Man, Hope of Earth, Shape of Art, and Climate of Change yet to come.

Harry Turtledove does alternate history novels - such as what if the south won the civil war and many others. Have to know your history facts in order to mess them about.

There is a book about a town called Alta, Colorado - a ghost town these days - and a woman exploring the ruins who goes back in time to the 1880s when it was a thriving mining community. The historical accuracies about the area, the time, the lifestyles were astounding, but I cannot remember the name of the book or the author! AHHH!

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I've just started to get into Historical Fiction, so I haven't read very many of them yet. This is my favorite one by far though: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, "It is 1906 and Mattie Gokey is trying to learn how to stand up like a man -- even though she’s a sixteen-year-old girl. At her summer job at a resort on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack mountains, she will earn enough money to make something of her life. That money could be a dowry to wed the handsome but dull Royal Loomis. It could save her father’s brokeback farm. Or it might buy her a train ticket to New York City and college and a life that she can barely allow herself to imagine. But Mattie’s worries and plans are cast into a cold light when the drowned body of Grace Brown turns up – a young woman who gave Mattie a packet of love letters, letters that convince Mattie that the drowning was no accident. Inspired by the sensational Chester Gillette murder case of 1906, which was also the basis for Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and the film A Place in the Sun, this story evokes novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, and other classics that hark back to times of lost innocence."

Answer 3

Number the Stars (young readers - fiction) is excellent is about a family living in the time of the Holocaust.
Diary of Anne Frank
If you have not read Man-Hunt the 13 Day Hunt for Lincoln's Killer it is excellent.
The Red Badge of Courage
Gone With the Wind
Red Petticoats and Old Glory

Answer 4

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, the Grapes of Wrath, Schindler's List

Answer 5

Historicla novels are a treat, to be able to walk into another time period and experience those people's lives is fabulous. I have to say all things Charles Dickens, Thackeray, Bronte, The Holy Bible although it is more of a spiritual manual than a novel.

Answer 6

Ivanhoe, The Grapes of Wrath, The Shepherd of the Hills, Little Women...

Answer 7

How about "The Red Tent" or "Mary Queen of Scotland and France" or "Elizabeth Rex" or "The Other Apostle: Mary the Magdalene".

I know lots more. I love historical novels too.

Answer 8

All Quiet On the Western Front by Remarque, it's one of the best on WWI written by a German Soldier. Banned by Hitler.

Guns of August, I guess that's really not a novel, but it's still good

Answer 9

Sun Tzu Art of War

Answer 10

Anything by Anya Seton. "The Child From the Sea" by Elizabeth Goudge.