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Book List - Historical Fiction Greats

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<?=$who;?> Historical Fiction Greats Run across anything amazing? Love great fiction that takes place during a notable period in history -- where the story of a place and time is a big part of what we remember about the book. I'm intentionally omitting books that are primarily romances. Edit
List created by Patty P. (Patouie) - , on May 31, 2010
List Votes: 8 Books: 57 Contributors: 6 Watchers: 7 List Type: Open
1
megt
Margaret T. (megt)
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and...  more

Book Votes: 8
2
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
This powerful first novel tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, the privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces....  more

Book Votes: 7
3
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Shogun by James Clavell
The setting of Shogun is Japan in the year 1600. The principal figures are John Blackthorne, whose dream is to be the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, to wrest control of the trade between Japan and China from the Portuguese, and to return home a man of wealth and position;...  more

Book Votes: 6
4
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the...  more

Book Votes: 6
5
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Ken Follett had long been a staple of the bestseller lists for his novels of intrigue and espionage. Then came The Pillars of the Earth, a grand novel of epic storytelling that readers and critics quickly hailed as his crowning achievement. Now, The Pillars of the Earth is available for the...  more

Book Votes: 5
6
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution...  more

Book Votes: 5
7
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Hawaii by James A. Michener
"[A] mammoth epic of the islands, [a] vast panorama, wonderful."THE BALTIMORE SUNAmerica's preeminent storyteller, James Michener, introduced an entire generation of readers to a lush, exotic world in the Pacific with this classic novel. But it is also a novel about people, people of strength...  more

Book Votes: 4
8
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Roots by Alex Haley
The monumental bestseller! Alex Haley recaptures his family's history in this drama of eighteenth-century slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants.

Book Votes: 4
9
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Chesapeake by James A. Michener
The central scene of Michener's historical novel is that section of Maryland's Eastern shore, hardly more than 10 miles square. To this point come the founders of families that will dominate the story.

Book Votes: 3
10
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Centennial by James A. Michener
"Michener is America's best writer, and he proves it once again in CENTENNIAL."THE PITTSBURGH PRESSA stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener...  more

Book Votes: 3
11
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it...  more

Book Votes: 3
12
Generic Profile avatar
Dianne (gardngal)
Moloka'i (Moloka'i, Bk 1) by Alan Brennert
Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined...  more

Book Votes: 3
13
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Dianne (gardngal)
Honolulu by Alan Brennert
From the bestselling author of the “dazzling historical saga” (The Washington Post), Moloka’i, comes the irresistible story of a young immigrant bride in a ramshackle town that becomes a great modern city. “In Korea in those days, newborn girls were not deemed...  more

Book Votes: 3
14
Generic Profile avatar
Mar
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Doctorow's novel takes place in turn-of-the-century New York, and mingles real-life and fictional characters. The plot involves the Evelyn Nesbit-Stanford White intrigue, but also includes a black musician and his girlfriend, a Jewish peddler on the Lower East Side, and a coterie of wealthy...  more

Book Votes: 3
15
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Mar
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Set in turn-of-the-century New York, Edith Wharton's classic novel The Age of Innocence reveals a society governed by the dictates of taste and form, manners and morals, and intricate social ceremonies. With amazing clarity and sensitivity, Edith Wharton re-creates an atmosphere in which subtle...  more

Book Votes: 3
16
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children, Bk 1) by Jean M. Auel
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age...  more

Book Votes: 2
17
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Tai-Pan by James Clavell
It is the early 19th century, when European traders and adventurers first began to penetrate the forbidding Chinese mainland. And it is in this exciting time and exotic place that a giant of an Englishman, Dirk Straun, sets out to turn the desolate island of Hong Kong into an impregnable...  more

Book Votes: 2
18
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
In memories that rise like wisps of ghosts, LuLing Young searches for the name of her mother, the daughter of the Famous Bonesetter from the Mouth of the Mountain. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile,...  more

Book Votes: 2
19
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende & Magda Bogin (Translator)
Here, in an astonishing debut by a gifted storyteller, is the magnificent saga of proud and passionate men and women and the turbulent times through which they suffer and triumph. They are the Truebas. And theirs is a world you will not want to leave, and one you will not forget. Esteban --...  more

Book Votes: 2
20
Generic Profile avatar
Mar
Mary by Janis Cooke Newman
An engrossing novel about Mary Todd Lincoln – one of history’s most misunderstood and enigmatic women.Writing from Bellevue asylum — where the shrieks of the other inmates keep her awake at night — a famous widow can finally share the story of her life in her own words....  more

Book Votes: 2
21
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Mar
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Widely recognized as Willa Cather's greatest novel, My Antonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman's simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Antonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood...  more

Book Votes: 2
22
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Exodus by Leon Uris
Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event.  Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power.  Here is...  more

Book Votes: 2
23
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
The Physician (Cole Family, Bk 1) by Noah Gordon
In the eleventh-century London, Rob Cole left poor, disease-ridden London to make his way across the land, hustling,juggling, peddling cures to the sick -- and discovering the mystical ways of healing. It was on his travels that he found his own very real gift for healing -- a gift that urged...  more

Book Votes: 1
24
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Portrait in Sepia (Daughter of Fortune, Bk 2) by Isabel Allende & Margaret Sayers...
Isabel Allende's sensuous novel about the mystery of memory In nineteenth-century Chile, Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases all recollections of the first five years of her life. Raised by her regal and ambitious grandmother Paulina del Valle, Aurora grows up in a...  more

Book Votes: 1
25
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende & Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator)
An Orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, young, vivacious Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849.  She enters a rough-and-tumble world whose newly arrived inhabitants are driven mad by gold with the help of her...  more

Book Votes: 1
26
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel & Carol Christensen (Translator) &...
To the table or to bed...You must come when you are bid The number-one bestseller in Mexico in 1990, Like Water for Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with bittersweet moments of magic and sensuality. Evocative of How to Make an American Quilt in...  more

Book Votes: 1
27
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Cold Mountain is an extraordinary novel about a soldier's perilous journey back to his beloved at the end of the Civil War. At once a magnificent love story and a harrowing account of one man's long walk home, Cold Mountain introduces a stunning new talent in American literature. Based on local...  more

Book Votes: 1
28
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Mar
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus
"Exuberant...Unforgettable."THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWLucy Marsden, is narrowing in on her 100th birthday. She had been married to her husband William More Marsden since she was fifteen. But Willie, a veteran of the Civil War, never recovered from his youthful foray into battle, and more...  more

Book Votes: 1
29
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Mar
Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice
Following the stories of two men castrated to ensure their perfect soprano voices, Cry to Heaven is a historical novel in 18th century Italy. Guido Maffeo is castrated at age six and enters the conservatory. He becomes a star until he loses his voice. When his voice is gone, he becomes a...  more

Book Votes: 1
30
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
A group of English visitors want to see the “real” India, and in Dr. Aziz they find a highly civilized companion. During a visit to the Marabar caves, one of the women accuses Dr. Aziz of sexually assaulting her, triggering a chain of events that will change the lives of people on...  more

Book Votes: 1
31
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Widely considered the greatest novel ever written in any language, War and Peace has as its backdrop Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and at its heart three of the most memorable characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, a quixotic young man in search of spiritual joy; Prince Andrey...  more

Book Votes: 1
32
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
An American classic, the moving story set in the 1900's, about a young girl's coming of age at the turn of the century, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the...  more

Book Votes: 1
33
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Most Famous and Important Novel in South Africa's History An immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply...  more

Book Votes: 1
34
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Wall (Vintage) by John Hersey
Riveting and compelling, The Wall tells the inspiring story of forty men and women who escape the dehumanizing horror of the Warsaw ghetto. John Hersey's novel documents the Warsaw ghetto both as an emblem of Nazi persecution and as a personal confrontation with torture, starvation, humiliation,...  more

Book Votes: 1
35
Patouie
Patty P. (Patouie) - ,
King Rat by James Clavell
Clavell's adventure novel takes place in a World War II prison camp, Changi, where 8,000 English, Australian, and American prisoners of war are incarcerated. Left largely to themselves, the prisoners establish a hierarchy of power in which a brutal American corporal, known as King Rat, rises to...  more

Book Votes: 0
36
Generic Profile avatar
Mar
One Thousand White Women : The Journals Of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the...  more

Book Votes: 0
37
justreadingabook
Joan W. (justreadingabook)
Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
No description available.

Book Votes: 0
38
justreadingabook
Joan W. (justreadingabook)
The Meaning of Night (Meaning of Night, Bk 1) by Michael Cox
"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper." So begins the extraordinary story of Edward Glyver -- booklover, scholar, and murderer. As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that...  more

Book Votes: 0
39
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra as seen through the eyes of the Romanovs' young kitchen boy, Leonka. Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims...  more

Book Votes: 0
40
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker
No description available.

Book Votes: 0
41
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
City of Dreams: A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam and Early Manhattan by Beverly Swerling
In 1661, Lucas Turner, a barber surgeon, and his sister, Sally, an apothecary, stagger off a small wooden ship after eleven weeks at sea. Bound to each other by blood and necessity, they aim to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam; soon lust, betrayal,...  more

Book Votes: 0
42
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha's vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the...  more

Book Votes: 0
43
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The White Russian by Tom Bradby
January 1917 -- With St. Petersburg on the brink of revolution, Sandro Ruzsky, the city’s chief police investigator, returns from exile in Siberia only to be assigned a grisly case: the bodies of a young couple found on the ice of the frozen River Neva, just outside the Tsar’s Winter...  more

Book Votes: 0
44
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
With this brilliant novel, the bestselling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys gives us an exhilarating triumph of language and invention, a stunning novel in which the tragicomic adventures of a couple of boy geniuses reveal much about what happened to America in the middle of...  more

Book Votes: 0
45
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak & Max Hayward (Translator) & Manya Harari (Tra...
The Russian Revolution forms the background to this beautiful but heartbreaking tale of four young people, Yury, Tonya, Lara and Pasha, who find love only to lose it again in tragic circumstances. A classic love story, Dr Zhivago remains one of the best-loved romantic books of the century. It...  more

Book Votes: 0
46
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Night Soldiers (Night Soldiers, Bk 1) by Alan Furst
Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to...  more

Book Votes: 0
47
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Levant Trilogy: "Danger Tree", "Battle Lost and Won" and "Sum of Things" (Penguin...
Leaving behind Hitler's Europe, Guy and Harriet Pringle find refuge in Cairo, a city tense with fear. Another new arrival is Simon Boulderstone, a young officer who falls for Harriet's friend, Edwina. The trio battle with their unresolved problems, heightened by the uncertainties of war.

Book Votes: 0
48
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley
When we think of the Dark Ages, we often think of a dim, primitive society where people struggled just to stay alive, with no room for spirituality or philosophy. The cool, clear, gemlike precision of Horsley's (Crazy Woman) new novel tells another tale. Gwynneve is born into a world...  more

Book Votes: 0
49
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Good Night, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian
London is poised on the brink of World War 11. Timid, scrawny Willie Beech -- the abused child of a single mother -- is evacuated to the English countryside. At first, he is terrified of everything, of the country sounds and sights, even of Mr. Tom, the gruff, kindly old man who has taken him...  more

Book Votes: 0
50
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn's bestselling -- and timeless -- classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened...  more

Book Votes: 0
51
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska & Anzia Yezierska
This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence...  more

Book Votes: 0
52
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Raj Quartet: The Jewel in the Crown / The Day of the Scorpion / the Towers of Sil...
Paul Scott's spectacular Raj Quartet captures the culture, the history, and the magic of India. This four-volume epic of English rule in India has won world-wide acclaim - was the foundation for a public television miniseries. The 4 novels which comprise The Raj Quartet, all of which are...  more

Book Votes: 0
53
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Trinity by Leon Uris
From the acclaimed author who enthralled the world with Exodus, Battle Cry, QB VII, Topaz, and other beloved classics of twentieth-century fiction comes a sweeping and powerful epic adventure that captures the "terrible beauty" of Ireland during its long and bloody struggle for freedom. It is...  more

Book Votes: 0
54
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Redemption by Leon Uris
The legendary author of Trinity explores the saga of the Irish people through the Larkin family in an epic that ranges from Ireland to New Zealand, Egypt, and Gallipoli and captures the love and loss, triumph and tragedy. 350,000 first printing. $200,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Book Votes: 0
55
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
The Persian Boy traces the last years of Alexander's life through the eyes of his lover, Bagoas. Abducted and gelded as a boy, Bagoas was sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia, but found freedom with Alexander after the Macedon army conquered his homeland. Their relationship sustains...  more

Book Votes: 0
56
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of...  more

Book Votes: 0
57
Dargent
Denise S. (Dargent) -
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque & A. W. Wheen (Translator)
Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a...  more

Book Votes: 0

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Comment added 11/1/10 by Cozette M. (CozSnShine) - , :
Love this list! I've read many but not all of them!