Category Archives: Historical Fiction

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold – and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Wrongful imprisonment
  • Gulag

Rake I’d Like to F by Sierra Simone, Joanna Shupe, Eva Leigh, Nicola Davidson, and Adriana Herrera

Rake I’d Like to F… by Sierra Simone, Joanna Shupe, Eva Leigh, Nicola Davidson, and Adriana Herrera

He’s a legend in the raking . . Collects The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind by Sierra Simone, Two Rakes for Mrs Sparkweel by Eva Leigh, A Rake, His Patron & Their Muse by Nicola Davidson, Monsieur X by Adriana Herrera, and Sold to the Duke by Joanna Shupe.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Toxic relationship recounted
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a spouse, parent and sibling recounted
  • Poverty

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake 

All These Bodies by Kendare Blake

Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.

September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.

Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a friend
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent
  • Murder
  • Animal death

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

Stay Where You Are and Then Leave by John Boyne

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield’s father promised he wouldn’t go away to fight – but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn’t know where his father might be, other than that he’s away on a special, secret mission.

Then, while shining shoes at King’s Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father’s name – on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realises his father is in a hospital close by – a hospital treating soldiers with an unusual condition. Alfie is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place . . .

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Smoking
  • Psychiatric hospitalisation of a parent for PTSD
  • World War One
  • Refugee camps mentioned

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

If you look hard enough, you can find stories pretty much anywhere. They don’t even have to be your own. Or so would-be writer Maurice Swift decides very early on in his career. A chance encounter in a Berlin hotel with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann gives him an opportunity to ingratiate himself with someone more powerful than him. For Erich is lonely, and he has a story to tell. Whether or not he should do so is another matter entirely.

Once Maurice has made his name, he sets off in pursuit of other people’s stories. He doesn’t care where he finds them – or to whom they belong – as long as they help him rise to the top. Stories will make him famous but they will also make him beg, borrow and steal. They may even make him do worse.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Suicide
  • Alcoholism
  • Death of a child
  • Murder

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

The Boy at the Top of the Mountain by John Boyne

When Pierrot becomes an orphan, he must leave his home in Paris for a new life with his Aunt Beatrix, a servant in a wealthy household at the top of the German mountains. But this is no ordinary time, for it is 1935 and the Second World War is fast approaching; and this is no ordinary house, for this is the Berghof, the home of Adolf Hitler.

Quickly, Pierrot is taken under Hitler’s wing, and is thrown into an increasingly dangerous new world: a world of terror, secrets and betrayal, from which he may never be able to escape.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Antisemitism
  • Attempted rape
  • Domestic violence
  • Parent with alcoholism & military-related PTSD
  • Death by train
  • World War One & Two
  • The Holocaust
  • Bullying

The Absolutist by John Boyne

The Absolutist by John Boyne

September 1919: Twenty-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a clutch of letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian’s brother Will during the Great War. They trained together. They fought together. But in 1917, Will laid down his guns on the battlefield and declared himself a conscientious objector, an act which has brought shame and dishonour on the Bancroft family. The letters, however, are not the real reason for Tristan’s visit. He holds a secret deep within him. One that he is desperate to unburden himself of to Marian, if he can only find the courage.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Homophobia
  • Suicide
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Blood depiction & medical content including emesis, needles & hospitalisation
  • Murder
  • Gun violence
  • Bullying

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Slut shaming
  • Hate crimes
  • Paedophilia
  • Rape
  • Incest
  • Child abuse
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Suicide mentioned
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Bullying

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shared love of E.T., roller-skating parties, and scratch-and-sniff stickers. But when they arrive at high school, things change. Gretchen begins to act….different. And as the strange coincidences and bizarre behaviour start to pile up, Abby realizes there’s only one possible explanation: Gretchen, her favourite person in the world, has a demon living inside her. And Abby is not about to let anyone or anything come between her and her best friend. With help from some unlikely allies, Abby embarks on a quest to save Gretchen. But is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Ableist language
  • Date rape mentioned
  • Attempted suicide
  • Body horror
  • Emesis
  • Death of a baby
  • Animal death (dog)
  • Kidnapping

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Patricia Campbell had always planned for a big life, but after giving up her career as a nurse to marry an ambitious doctor and become a mother, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. The days are long, her kids are ungrateful, her husband is distant, and her to-do list is never really done. The one thing she has to look forward to is her book club, a group of Charleston mothers united only by their love for true crime and suspenseful fiction. In these meetings, they’re more likely to discuss the FBI’s recent siege of Waco as much as the ups and downs of marriage and motherhood.

But when an artistic and sensitive stranger moves into the neighbourhood, the book club’s meetings turn into speculation about the newcomer… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Misogyny
  • Classism
  • Victim blaming
  • Graphic rape
  • Cheating
  • Domestic violence
  • Suicide & attempted suicide
  • Drug use
  • Blood & gore depiction
  • Body horror & eyeball trauma
  • Nonconsensual psychiatric hospitalisation
  • Death of a child
  • Death of a spouse
  • Lynching mentioned
  • Home invasion
  • Animal death