Category Archives: Historical Fiction

We Rip the World Apart by Charlene Carr

When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she’s pregnant with a child she isn’t sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black, half-white—yet feels neither—is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they’d come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily. Years later, in the aftermath of her son’s murder by the police, Evelyn’s mother-in-law, Violet, moves…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Abortion discussed
  • Death of a child from gun violence

Wings of Starlight by Allison Saft

It’s been centuries since a warm-season fairy in Pixie Hollow has crossed into the Winter Woods, and while most fear the legends of monsters lurking in the frozen lands, Clarion, can’t help being intrigued by Winter’s stoic beauty. But under the watchful eyes of the current monarch and the court’s seasonal ministers, Clarion has little time to dwell on daydreams while the days to her coronation dwindle away. That is, until reports of a monster crossing from Winter into Spring make their way to the palace. Clarion sees defeating… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Blood & injury depiction)

Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff

London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war. Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history. The necklace leads them to discover the dark history of Lévitan—a once-glamorous department store that… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Chronic illness (protagonist)
  • Imprisonment
  • World War Two (theme)

The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield

The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield

Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war. There’s a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power? Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father’s fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events. The Nazis are also obsessed with the convinced that not… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder & torture
  • Imprisonment
  • The Holocaust & World War Two mentioned including Nazism

The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield

The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield

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 have fallen and only widows remain. But Hell should fear them. Margriet de Vos killed her first soldier when she was eleven. She has buried six children and will fight for the daughter left to her. Their only wealth is gone, taken into the inferno. And she will not be stolen from. The Devil be damned. Together with a man-at-arms with unfinished business, a widow and her forgehammer and a… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical ableism, antisemitism, misogyny & misgendering
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Body horror
  • Famine & plague
  • War themes
  • Poverty

End of August by Paige Dinneny

Fifteen-year-old Aurora Taylor’s single mother prefers to leave when things get hard. She’s spent years abandoning bad boyfriends and dead-end jobs, without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror. After fifteen years in the passenger seat, Aurora needs more than two hands to count the towns she’s lived in. She’s learned to live small—it’s easier to leave when you don’t need to say goodbye. So when her mother Laine shows up at school with the car loaded, Aurora assumes her latest fling has run its course. Instead, it’s her grandpa Jay’s death calling them back to the town Laine has spent fifteen years running from… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Death of a grandfather (off-page)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape (on-page)
  • Graphic animal death

Shoulder Season by Christina Clancy

The small town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin is an unlikely location for a Playboy Resort, and nineteen-year old Sherri Taylor is an unlikely bunny. Growing up in neighboring East Troy, Sherri plays the organ at the local church and has never felt comfortable in her own skin. But when her parents die in quick succession, she leaves the only home she’s ever known for the chance to be part of a glamorous slice of history. In the winter of 1981, in a costume two sizes too small, her toes pinched by towering stilettos, Sherri joins the daughters of dairy farmers and factory workers for the defining experience of her life…. Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drug use
  • Disordered eating

Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray

It was said that if you write to the Bridegroom’s Oak, the love of your life will answer back. Now, the tree is giving up its secrets at last. In 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom’s Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too—but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis. In 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism, homophobia & antisemitism

More Than This by Krystal Marquis

Newly engaged Ruby Tremaine is eagerly planning her wedding to the love of her life when a nasty rumor threatens her reputation and her marriage. Olivia Davenport has committed to the social justice cause and secretly hopes she’ll be reunited with dashing lawyer Washington DeWight—until her parents decide she’s to marry someone else. Amy-Rose Shepherd is making her lifelong wish of owning a salon come true, but when an incident forces her to return to Freeport Manor, she’s back in the path of John Davenport, who still holds her heart. Helen Davenport… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism, misogyny & classism
  • Slavery mentioned
  • Sexual harassment
  • Police brutality