Category Archives: Historical Fiction

Unveiled by Courtney Milan

Of all Ash Turner’s accomplishments, stealing a dukedom from his old enemy is by far the most brazen. Now that he’s been recognized as the heir, nothing remains but to head to Parford Manor and survey the estate that will be his. He expects opposition. He gets Lady Margaret. Margaret lost everything when Ash claimed the dukedom: her dowry, her legitimacy, and her place in society. Now Ash wants to take her family home, too. She disguises herself as a nurse, determined to learn his weaknesses. But the closer she comes to Ash, the greater the pull of his reckless… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Child abuse recounted
  • Parental bigamy mentioned
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a mother recounted
  • Death of a sister recounted
  • Childhood poverty & food scarcity mentioned
  • Bullying recounted

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape. Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Animal abuse

Ashes in the Wind by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Alaina MacGaren is forced to flee the devastation of her homeland in the guise of a young boy, only to find sanctuary in the arms of an enemy. Cole Latimer is a dashing Yankee surgeon who has served the Union faithfully, and his tender heart compels him to help a ragged, innocent “”lad”” in need–never suspecting the rags conceal a bewitching belle suspected of being a rebel spy. But Alaina’s masquerade does not fool Cole for long. And the strength, courage, and breathtaking sensuality of this woman whom it would be treasonous to love sets duty and desire at war within… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity (on-page, protagonist)

The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Noble Aislinn grieves as the Iron Wolf and his minions storm through her beloved Darkenwald. And she burns with malice for the handsome Norman savage who would enslave her. . .even as she aches to know the rapture of the conqueror’s kiss. For the first time ever, mighty Wulfgar has been vanquished — and by a bold and beautiful princess of Saxon blood. He must have the chaste, sensuous enchantress who is sworn to his destruction. And he will risk life itself to nurture with tender passion a glorious union born in the blistering heat of hatred and war…

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Familial disownment mentioned
  • Rape (on-page)
  • Death of a father
  • Decapitation
  • Kidnapping

The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical Nazism & antisemitism
  • Eugenics
  • Infidelity
  • Death of an infant
  • Murder mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

When We Meet Again by Kristin Harmel

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad walked out on the family when she was a just a kid, her mom died when she was eighteen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she’s laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely adrift…until the day she receives a beautiful painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. She recognizes the woman as her grandmother, but the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, “He never stopped loving her…” Curious, Emily begins to do some digging and uncovers… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Cancer
  • Death of a mother
  • Death of a grandmother & grandfather
  • Lynching
  • World War II & internment camps (theme)

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical antisemitism
  • Suicide mentioned
  • World War II (theme)

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel

Colette Marceau has been stealing jewels for nearly as long as she can remember, following the centuries-old code of honor instilled in her by her mother, take only from the cruel and unkind, and give to those in need. Never was their family tradition more important than seven decades earlier, during the Second World War, when Annabel and Colette worked side by side in Paris to fund the French Resistance. But one night in 1942, it all went wrong. Annabel was arrested by the Germans, and Colette’s four-year-old sister, Liliane, disappeared in the chaos of the raid, along with an… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical racism & antisemitism
  • Hate crime
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a sister/child
  • Kidnapping
  • World War II (theme)

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci

Charlie Matters’ life has always been a fight for survival. Orphaned with no prospects, Charlie steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he can enlist in the battle against the Germans. He miraculously emerges unscathed from the Blitz, but there’s no telling when the next bomb will fall, and whether it will be the one to end his life. Molly Wakefield’s dreams of a joyful homecoming are all she’s had to hold on to after being evacuated to the countryside via ‘Operation Pied Piper’ five years before. But when she finally returns to the city, Molly faces a London changed… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grief & loss depiction (secondary character)
  • Death of a wife (secondary character)
  • World War II (theme)

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before. The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As,… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Misogyny & toxic masculinity
  • Sexual harassment
  • Alcoholism
  • Infertility
  • Murder
  • Animal death & cruelty