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Historical Fiction April 2026 |
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Paradiso 17
by Hannah Lillith Assadi
Born in Palestine on the precipice of 1948's Nakba, Sufien is forced to leave the only home he's ever known, the one on the hill with a beautiful blue door. This is the precise moment when time stops making sense. He spends the rest of his life propelled forward, always on the way--although in search of what, he is never quite sure. The lyrical pages of Paradiso 17 weave in and out of time and space, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning. They are haunting, haunted with grief, struck through, as Dante once wrote, with the arrow that the bow of exile / shoots first, and yet they throb with light--not just the light that Sufien sees as he approaches his own end, but the brilliant light of a life lived. Like all of our dead, Sufien still speaks, the book begins. Listen, this is his story.
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| Daughter of Egypt by Marie BenedictLady Evelyn Herbert defies societal expectations in 1919 and accompanies her father, Lord Carnarvon, and archeologist Howard Carter on digs in Egypt, where she seeks the tomb of Hatshepsut. In 1400s BCE, Hatshepsut becomes pharaoh against the odds. Following the lives of two women whom history almost forgot, this evocative novel is the latest from acclaimed author Marie Benedict. Read-alikes: Gill Paul's The Collector's Daughter; Saara El-Arifi's Cleopatra. |
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| Book of Forbidden Words by Louise FeinIn 1552 England, former nun Lysbette writes of a utopian world for women, but people find her words heretical and she's killed before her book can be printed. This leads Charlotte Guillard, a real-life Parisian publisher, to encode the work for posterity. In 1952 New York, bored housewife and World War II codebreaker Millie decodes the manuscript, but McCarthyism makes the centuries-old ideas inside still dangerous. Try these next: A.D. Bell's The Bookbinder's Secret; Chanel Cleeton's The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes. |
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| Mule Boy by Andrew KrivakIn 1929, 13-year-old Ondro Prach begins work as mule boy in the coal mines where his father died. When an accident kills everyone on his crew except him, he's left with trauma and survivor's guilt. He drinks, goes to prison as a conscientious objector during World War II, and is ready to talk years later when the miners' families ask him about the men who were lost that day. "This is flawless," raves Publishers Weekly. Try this next: Anne Michaels' Held; Nathaniel Ian Miller's The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven. |
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| White River Crossing by Ian McGuireIn the Canadian winter of 1766, news that there's gold further north leads the manager of a Hudson Bay Company outpost to send a secret group to investigate. Led by two Native couples, the party of three prospectors includes the manager's loathsome deputy, the intellectual first mate from the company's whaling sloop, and the manager's naive 19-year-old nephew. But an act of sexual violence will make a dangerous trip even more so in this atmospheric novel. Try this next: Kathleen Grissom's Crow Mary. |
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| A Far-Flung Life by M.L. StedmanOn a vast sheep station in 1958 Western Australia, a fatal accident changes the lives of the MacBrides. Left behind are injured teenager Matt, his older sister Rose, and his grief-stricken mom Lorna, who are eventually joined by a bright young boy. Exploring how loss and secrets reverberate for decades, this emotional family saga is the long-awaited sophomore novel from M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans). Try these next: Heather Rose's A Great Act of Love; Michelle Huneven's Bug Hollow. |
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Field Notes from an Extinction
by Eoghan Walls
Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling, and determined to set the scientific record straight on the Great Auk. Green's world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest.
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| A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn YangThough she's busy with her New York job and boyfriend, Qianze takes in her estranged father, who seems to have dementia. The story moves to the past when he begins talking about his family, leading to stories from the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. With elements of magical realism, this emotionally intense debut novel ponders history, family relationships, and the effects of intergenerational trauma. Read-alikes: Wendy Chen's Their Divine Fires; Ali Araghi's The Immortals of Tehran. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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