Best Historical Fiction Books Summer 2026
Step through the corridors of time with this summer's magnificent lineup of the best new historical fiction books. Transporting readers to beautifully reconstructed eras with rich period details and emotional human dramas, this genre flourishes under through the spectacular writing of authors like Lisa See, Maggie O'Farrell, Beatriz Williams and many others. Experience history come alive with the turn of each page. Enjoy these curated new releases that were hand-picked by our in-house editorial team, book lovers and librarians.
August 2026 Historical Fiction New Releases
Sunrise
by Téa Obreht
Three lives, 100 years, one ghost town: an explosive novel about a mysterious place called Sunrise, where the secrets of the past refuse to stay buried, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife
"I've loved every book Téa Obreht has written but I might love this one the most. Please put this book into the hands of everyone you know." -- Liz Moore, author of The God of the Woods
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Literary Hub, Today, Good Housekeeping, The Boston Globe
In 2024, Nina's small-engine plane crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Her boyfriend Ben, who was flying it, is nowhere to be found. Lost and freezing on the shore, Nina is armed with only a few old protein bars, a phone with no service and a vague hope of rescue. It is up to her to survive in the vast wilderness. But then she stumbles upon Sunrise, a town of the Old West that is strangely well maintained but seemingly abandoned. A place that holds the missing link to a ghost story 100 years in the making.
In 2003, Sand Daw's golden boy Coll is putting the finishing touches on the town's annual historical reenactment. But when an upstart would-be author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, it threatens to upend everything he thought he knew about the city and himself.
In 1902, town founder, gunslinger and legendary pulp hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy's disappearance? And why has he returned after such a long absence?
These three strangers are separated by time and circumstance. But Sunrise's many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark. Magisterial and suspenseful, Téa Obreht's novel challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the people and places to which we lay claim, and most of all, of our own lives.
Time Travel for Beginners
by Jaclyn Moriarty
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF SUMMER BY PEOPLE, GOODREADS, SHEREADS, BUZZFEED AND SOUTHERN LIVING
In her dazzling new novel, award-winning author Jaclyn Moriarty asks the question, if you could revisit one moment in your life, what would it be?
On a bustling road in Sydney, Australia, lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. Inside, you'll be welcomed by the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, a selection of baked goods...and the question, Where in time do you wish to go?
The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there's no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything.
Is it a hoax? And if it's real, what's the catch?
When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy's a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope.
In Jaclyn Moriarty's incandescent novel, Anna, Teddy and Jade leap headlong into time, hurtling on a crash course toward one another. At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.
Fallen for France
by Elizabeth Letts
An exquisite Arabian mare. A small boy leaving home. A young woman in France fighting to survive. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Ride of Her Life braids a sweeping novel of love, war, empire and the power of kindness in a world descending into darkness.
"A compelling read ... Prepare to be swept away." -- Susan Meissner, author of A Map to Paradise
Beddou is 6 years old when he is sent off to apprentice far from his High Atlas village in Morocco. His mother gives him six amber beads to help him find his way home. That same month, a magnificent filly is born in Fes, in the splendor of the Sultan's palace. For a brief, golden time, the mare belongs to the boy. But Beddou's heart is broken when a soldier steals his horse and disappears into France just as the Great War roars to a start. Finding her seems impossible, but he vows to try.
Estelle, a young woman in France, finds a distressed Arabian mare wandering alone in the meadow behind her house. She is determined to look after this radiant creature just as tenderly as she cares for her vulnerable younger brother. But soon her world is torn apart, and she loses both the horse and her brother. She will spend the rest of the war searching for both.
Thomas is an Englishman hardened by his experience as a wartime veterinarian in France. He finds the mare and promises to protect her -- and the woman who once loved her -- but he doubts his own ability to keep anyone safe. As the pathways of the unforgettable mare and the boy's desperate search intertwine, the separate strands of these strangers' journeys converge, propelling them to make momentous choices that will change the course of their lives.
Spanning Morocco and France in the shadow of World War I, Fallen for France follows unforgettable characters whose lives are bound by a magnificent horse and a string of amber beads.
The House of Boleyn
by Tracy Borman
"Historical fiction at its absolute best." -- Alison Weir
Acclaimed Tudor historian Tracy Borman weaves the dramatic history of the Boleyn family into a richly imagined novel of ambition, bloodlines and the opulent and deadly court of Henry VIII
When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come.
Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family's three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life. Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne's ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn's perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can't give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate and intrigue.
The Ladies Hall: A Novel of Three Women Who Refused to Be Silenced
by Vanessa Miller
"Tender and resonant ... This work made me feel immensely proud." -- Addie E. Citchens, author of Dominion
"An important story of resilience and belonging." -- Meagan Church, NYT bestselling author of The Mad Wife
"This inspiring and informative novel is a must-read." -- Janie Chang, bestselling author
The lives of real heroes prove this truth: equality is won when we rise together.
1880s, Ohio. When Mary and Anna enter the Bachelor of Arts program, also known as the "gentlemen's course" of study, at Oberlin College, they have little in common other than the color of their skin and their passion for education.
While Mary was raised in luxury, attending presidential inaugurations with her wealthy father, Anna is a schoolteacher, likely the daughter of her enslaved mother's former owner, and works a second job to pay for her room and board. But despite their differences, both women share strength, ambition and a deep yearning for change. If they can bridge the gaps between them, they just might build a lasting legacy.
From its earliest days in the 1830s, Oberlin College admitted men and women, white and Black students. Though the doors are officially open, school policy cannot change the hearts of classmates who refuse to see a woman, and especially a Black woman, excel. Despite constantly being forced to prove themselves, the women triumphantly overcome every obstacle and push through their pain. And as the world evolves around them, Mary and Anna persevere to build a legacy of success and excellence.
Based on the real lives of Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Gibbs Hunt, The Ladies Hall is a mirror into times of great change, where progress and new possibilities are met with violence and resistance ... but hope always rises. And it rises still.
The Ladies Hall is an ideal choice for book clubs eager to explore the intersections of race, gender and resilience in American history. Miller's richly researched narrative sparks meaningful conversation about equality, allyship and the personal cost of progress, themes that resonate just as powerfully today as they did in the 1880s. An included discussion guide helps groups dig deeper into the legacy these remarkable women left behind.
The Song of Stork and Dromedary
by Anjet Daanje - David McKay
A thrilling literary puzzle that explores the haunted life and mysterious after-lifes of a writer and her work.
Who was Eliza May Drayden? Is she just the quiet, intensely private person she seems to all the world in her little village of Bridge Fowling in the shadow of the West Yorkshire hills, or is there more to her than meets the eye? It is only after her death that Haeger Mass, her one book, a dark and cryptic novel, assumes a life of its own. In each new chapter of this literary treasure hunt that spans almost 300 years, we see the conundrum through the eyes of a new generation of characters, each providing competing and interlocking versions of the life and cursed vision of this Emily Brontë-like figure.
Scholars immerse themselves in the mystery of her life and are led to ruin; the curse that hangs over her comes to visit a young couple; a mysterious diary emerges with her strange and indecipherable poetry and sketches. Elements and symbols repeat in relentless and varying combinations from one story to the next as the years pass as if the truth at the center of her work is fighting to break free.
The Song of Stork and Dromedary is a philosophical puzzle that unfolds with the exuberance of a historical romp, ingeniously pivoting from Gothic horror to quantum mechanics to memento mori. In this thrilling, recursive tale, Anjet Daanje gets to the frantically beating heart of why we tell stories and how we try to create meaning with them in a world filled with brutality and death. Daanje has crafted a conundrum that is as diabolical as it is heartbreaking. When we finally open the box that contains the secret behind the life of Eliza May Drayden, what will we see there – a vision of heaven or a vision of hell?
Hocus Pocus
by Brinda Charry
A young magician travels across the world seeking fame and fortune all the while hiding a secret, in a novel based on the renowned, real-life Indian stage magicians performing in the United States in the 1800s.
Samuel Thomas, a man of uncertain parentage, is a young magician convinced that he is destined for greatness in a far-off land. Seeking honor and acclaim, he journeys across the globe, from India to London to the fog-shrouded streets of Boston in 1816, the infamous Year Without a Summer. In this season of unrelenting cold, Samuel arrives in a city alive with ambition, contradiction and tension.
Enter Walter Mepham: in some ways a world away from Samuel, hailing from the upper echelons of Boston society but also nursing a problem of his own. Proprietor of the New Boston Museum, which is on the brink of bankruptcy, Walter is desperate to find ways to keep it open, and Samuel is the ideal fit for the first live addition to the collection.
While the perfect solution to each other's problems, the relationship between the two men quickly becomes complicated as Walter grows more and more fascinated, and even obsessed, with the young foreigner. As Samuel becomes subsumed within the museum and dependent on Walter, he must reckon with just how much he's willing to give up to achieve success. Richly detailed and vividly conjured, Hocus Pocus is a story about art, ambition and desire, and captures the crackling energy and wonder of a bygone era through the eyes of a young performer.
Queen of Shadow
by P. C. Cast
From #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling author P. C. Cast, a passionate and magical epic bringing alive Celtic legend, perfect for romantasy fans who love Sue Lynn Tan and Thea Guanzon and historical fantasy fans of Madeline Miller.
Step into the mystical world of the Isle of Skye in 200 BCE, where legends come to life, goddess and gods walk the mortal earth and the Queen of Shadow holds court. But Scáthach is no ordinary queen. Daughter of the Underworld goddess Bēfionn, golden-haired Scáthach is not just a brilliant trainer of warriors, her divine mother has gifted her with the ability to pass between the living world and the Underworld and has granted her dominion over shadows.
Scáthach dedicates her life to training the most talented warriors from across the ancient world at Dunscaith Castle, her impenetrable fortress on the magical Isle of Skye. When Cuchulainn, the Hero of Ulster, son of the Irish god Lugh, arrives asking to become one of her students, Scáthach reluctantly agrees to train him -- even though she has serious misgivings about his violent past and the mindless berserker who sleeps within him and whose rage, once awakened, has always been uncontrollable ... until the Hero of Ulster meets the Queen of Shadow. Scáthach soon realizes Cuchulainn is much more than the brutal, emotionless warrior everyone expects him to be. And the Hero of Ulster begins to believe he might take control of and even change his foretold fate.
As their growing attraction deepens, Cuchulainn's father, the God of Light, forces him to retrieve a weapon that will seal Cuchulainn's fate and forever take him away from the Queen of Shadow. But when Scáthach joins him on the quest through the most dangerous and disturbing parts of the Underworld, Scáthach discovers that her fate may lie in the Underworld and, perhaps, she might be able to forge a future for herself and Cuchulainn by tricking death herself. …
July 2026 Historical Fiction New Releases
An Infinite Love Story
by Chanel Cleeton
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR SUMMER BY NPR*, WOMAN'S WORLD, PARADE AND BOOKBUB
"A sweeping romantic drama with a touch of magical realism. ... Cleeton's ability to pull readers in quickly and deeply through her storytelling makes her a go-to author for an immersive reading experience. ... Vivian and Joe's love is unforgettable, and so is Cleeton's writing."*
When an astronaut is lost in space, his wife relives their epic love as she attempts to unravel what truly happened to him, in this sweeping love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s Space Race, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes.
When Joe Mitchell launches into space, the world is watching. It's 1968, and the country waits with anticipation and excitement for another successful mission, another celebration as America sets its sights on the Moon. And then comes the knock at the door.
Joe Mitchell's spacecraft has lost contact. He and his fellow astronauts onboard are feared to be dead. It's his wife Vivian's worst nightmare come to life, her grief suddenly taking center stage as the nation waits and mourns. In her quiet moments, Vivian relives their memorable story, unable to accept that this is the end to a love that felt as though it was written in the stars.
As the investigation surrounding Joe's lost spacecraft intensifies and the mishap is written off as an operator error, Vivian is determined to clear her husband's name and uncover the mystery of what happened in space. When someone starts sending Vivian messages -- messages she believes only Joe could send- - she begins to wonder if their love is stronger than space and time, and she'll do whatever it takes to bring her husband back to her.
The Half Life
by Rachel Beanland
From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island about a navy wife's reckoning with power, love and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.
"A captivating, whip-smart novel about love, loyalty and a woman torn between two lives. I utterly adored it." -- Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
When 23-year-old Eileen O'Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn't expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen's got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.
In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island, taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones, she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from.
Still, it doesn't take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island, not to mention all of Italy, doesn't go communist in the next election.
When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the U.S. Navy. Soon, Eileen's marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets--and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she's been handed.
Atmospheric, sexy and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity and awakening – of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.
The Story Keeper: A New Novel from the Author of the Things We Cannot Say
by Kelly Rimmer
AN INDIE NEXT PICK - A LIBRARY READS #1 TOP PICK
"Kelly Rimmer is at her most skillful here... An emotional, haunting tale." --Julia Kelly, internationally bestselling author of The Dressmakers of London
In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion--beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.
When a curious book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle's library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own--a story of love, loss and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?
Told in a dual narrative and set against the Gothic backdrop of Wurimbirra, Kelly Rimmer, bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say, weaves an intricate and compelling tale, inviting readers into the heart of a family's deepest secrets with an absorbing book-within-a-book mystery.
"Kelly Rimmer always delivers a poignant story with real characters who lodge themselves in your heart." -- New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin
City of Promises
by Victoria Thompson - Ellen Thompson
Elizabeth Bates must use everything she knows about the art of the con to stop a fellow scammer in his tracks in this first-ever thrilling crossover in the Victoria Thompson universe, featuring characters from her bestselling Gaslight Mysteries.
Famed former police detective turned private investigator Frank Malloy and his wife, Sarah, come to Gideon Bates desperate for legal guidance. The Malloys' adopted daughter, Catherine, a burgeoning star of the stage, has announced her engagement to a man she barely knows. Catherine has recently gained access to her trust fund, and Sebastian Talbot appears very eager to marry her as quickly as possible.
As Gideon and his wife, Elizabeth, investigate, it becomes all the clearer that Talbot may not be who he says he is. As a former con artist herself, Elizabeth suspects one may be in their midst. Undeterred by her pregnancy, she must pull out all the stops to out swindle a swindler and save another woman from ruin.
Cool Machine
by Colson Whitehead
From #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy
1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism. Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture's Dealer of the Month. When the banks won't give his beloved wife Elizabeth a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.
1983. To some, Carney's friend and partner in crime, Pepper, is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he's feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones. When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favor to Elizabeth, he's plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene. Luckily for him, whether you're uptown or down, everyone speaks the same language of violence--Pepper is a native speaker.
1986. Carney has always been haunted by his inability to save his cousin Freddie. Now, twenty years after Freddie's death, he has a chance to rescue Freddie's son from the violent forces of the city. But coming out of retirement and teaming up with Pepper again will mean risking the safety and security he's spent decades building for his family, with only one shot to get it right.
With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, Cool Machine roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York, and in the lives of Whitehead's vivid characters, it's what's below the surface that reveals the truth.
Fishbone Cinderella
by Elizabeth Lim
A mother and daughter must break their family's curse through trials of war and immigration, love, loss and redemption in this riveting multi-generational saga with a shimmer of magic, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Forgery of Fate.
This stunning hardcover edition includes designed full-color endpapers and a family tree interior illustration.
★"Lim dazzles in her dark and deftly woven adult debut. ... Blending the historically grounded and complex mother-daughter narratives of Amy Tan with the rich fantasy of Yangsze Choo, this stunning tale will delight. ... This is a gem." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
1940s Hong Kong
When Japanese soldiers invade her hometown, Ha Yut Ying makes an unlikely escape--by turning invisible. But her miraculous survival is only the beginning. After the war is over, she's sent to Hong Kong to live with her distant father and glamorous stepmother, who end her dreams of becoming a singer and turn her into the family's servant. As the years pass, Yut Ying learns the hard truths of betrayal and ambition, of forbidden love and devastating loss, and discovers that sometimes the only way to endure is to disappear.
1960s San Francisco
Marigold has always had a knack for uncovering secrets, but nothing prepares her for the day she accidentally witnesses her mother vanish before her eyes. The moment fractures their bond, leaving questions that shadow her entire childhood. But when her mother's condition suddenly deteriorates, Marigold is convinced she's the only person who can save her. To do so, she must journey into the secrets her mother never shared and uncover the tragic, fairytale-tinged history their family has fought to forget.
A story of mothers and daughters, the scars they inherit and the magic that binds them, Fishbone Cinderella is a tender and enchanting exploration of what it means, at last, to be seen.
★ "[Elizabeth Lim's] heart-wrenching and magical first adult novel is a multi-generational story that adapts a foundational fairy tale and creates a story of mothers, daughters and a past that haunts their futures." -- Library Journal (starred review)
June Historical Fiction New Releases
Daughters of the Sun and Moon
by Lisa See
From beloved New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, the story of three Chinese women whose unexpected friendship helps them survive and, despite the odds, thrive, in the turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles.
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal's father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain of America, where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English, and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom, and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined. Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance, and ability to "eat bitterness" to discover their voices, find freedom and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon.
Land
by Maggie O'Farrell
The award-winning, bestselling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait returns with a soaring historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger.
"A breathtaking hymn to the sanctity of natural spaces, operating on timescales both intimate and geological. I finished Land moved not only by the vivid lives of its human characters, but the thrumming, gorgeous presence of its mosses, waters, winds, and skies." -- Daniel Mason, author of North Woods
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only 10, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times and for all time.
The Unicorn Hunters
by Katherine Arden
In a desperate gamble to save her throne, a young monarch conceals a secret marriage in the shadows of an enchanted forest – and unknowingly alters the fate of her world -- in this dazzling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.
"I loved every moment I spent in this magical, dangerous and haunted realm in the company of its clever and captivating duchess." -- Naomi Novik, author of A Deadly Education
Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman, sovereign duchess of an occupied realm, and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Such an alliance would put her title, her lands and her body forever in the hands of her enemies.
But Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany. Her only hope of resisting conquest is another alliance sealed with marriage, so Anne arranges a daring last gambit: a secret betrothal to Charles of France's greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners.
The forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination.
While pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret, or so she thinks. In this rich and epic novel, the author of the acclaimed Winternight trilogy turns the real history of a remarkable woman into an unforgettable tale of mystery, enchantment and the price of power.
The Windsor Affair
by Melanie Benjamin
A scandalous affair. A power struggle for the throne. A sensational rivalry between an English queen and an American social climber. In this electrifying novel, the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue tells the story of the Abdication of Edward VIII and the two women at the center of it all.
"As deliciously dishy as an English cream tea and the royal gossip whispered over it!" -- Kate Quinn, author of The Astral Library
Feuding Windsor brothers and their wives -- some things, it seems, never change. The Windsor Affair recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Wallis Simpson. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s and the glittering private lives of the Windsors. The first novel to be dedicated to this infamous rivalry, The Windsor Affair brings us all the gossip and intrigue between the two very different -- yet perhaps more similar than they would admit -- wives of royals.
As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British pluck and courage during World War II and remain a British institution the rest of her long life. Wallis would be forever forced to enact the World's Greatest Love Story even after it sours, as she goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied. Against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births and deaths, these two women maintain a biting, sharp-tongued feud -- until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding. For the last communication between these bitter rivals was a simple, surprising message: "In friendship, Elizabeth."
When You Loved Me
by Beatriz Williams
A young widow returns to her late father's New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers.
"Utterly transporting . . . one of the most gorgeous love stories I've read in a long time." -- Emily Giffin
Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: The property is mired in debt she canʼt repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.
Thirteen summers ago, the teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy's best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy's life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career, Ben has returned to live quietly in the Peabodys' caretaker lodge. He's also the last person who saw Lucy's father alive.
As Lucy reconstructs her father's troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal from the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy's long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.
A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.
The Last Human Bear
by Greg Sarris
"Lush and gripping." -- Rebecca Solnit
"It's revelatory on every page." -- Dave Eggers
"The grand return of a master storyteller." -- Peter Maravelis, City Lights Booksellers
An epic story of curses, love, hard-won independence and healing -- and the first novel in 28 years by a widely acclaimed Native writer.
Mary Hatcher lives with a curse, or is it a power that could make her life whole? A Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, Mary keeps trying to make sense of her enigmatic family. Strange rumors spread about her. Her stepmother may have taught her how to become a Human Bear, a shapeshifter who can menace and poison enemies. Two men may love her -- or love who they think she is.
A mystery even to herself, Mary learns to pass between Native and white societies, tenaciously carving her own path as an independent woman. But as she explores love and desire, family inherited and chosen and the secrets of the natural world, one question gnaws at her: Is she fated to do harm?
Wry and richly lyrical, The Last Human Bear follows Mary from the Great Depression to the twenty-first century, when she commits a haunting final act. Inspired by the Native women elders who shaped Greg Sarris in his youth, it is the triumphant and revelatory return of an eminent novelist. With illustrations by Obi Kaufmann.
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict - Victoria Christopher Murray
A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law, a prosecutor and a madam, who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian.
Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan's first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City's five largest organized crime families. Other prosecutors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they've all focused on the crime syndicate's traditional businesses: bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking and drug dealing or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can't get Luciano alone.
Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.
Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they're trying to convict. It is this very alliance of two women from vastly different worlds that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.
Related: Craving deep contemporary or classical narratives instead? See our curated Summer Reading List for Bookworms. Find more historical fiction new releases in our Spring Time Traveler Roundup.