Whether your passion is The Ancient Greeks, The Wars of The Roses or The Russian Revolution, you'll find stories of life during these eras and every other, often using factual accounts to build a fictional narrative.
Historical Fiction Books
Park Row The Girls with No Names A Novel
Book Synopsis
£14.44
Park Row Books The Lotus Shoes
Book Synopsis
£23.19
Park Row The Lost Girls of Paris
Book Synopsis
£14.44
Mira Books The Woman Before Wallis
Book Synopsis
£13.29
Park Row Books The London Séance Society
Book Synopsis
£24.00
Park Row Books The Diplomats Wife 2 Kommandants Girl
£14.44
Avalon Publishing Group Black Ajax
£21.53
Avalon Publishing Group A Garden of Sand Thompson Earl
Book SynopsisDestitution, hunger, cruelty, rootlessness,all the odds stand against Jacky, the young boy at the centre of this powerful, popular American classic, yet still he prevails. Resourcefully, doggedly, Jacky nurtures his spirit of independence, his capacity to love, and his faith in a nation''s dream in a journey that takes him from Wichita to Corpus Christi and from poverty to possibility.
£27.09
RosettaBooks How Green Was My Valley
Book Synopsis
£20.69
Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Marathon
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£11.48
Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp Dews from the East
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£13.12
Human & Rousseau (Pty) Ltd Klassiek reeks n Ander land
£17.19
Human & Rousseau (Pty) Ltd Bidsprinkaan
£17.57
Human & Rosseau Philida n Slaweroman
£17.93
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Matterhorn A Novel of the Vietnam War
Book Synopsis
£13.99
Grove Atlantic Call Me Ishmaelle
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£12.99
Univ of Chicago on Behalf of Ohio Univ Press The Wife of Martin Guerre
Book SynopsisThe Wife of Martin Guerre—based on a notorious trial in sixteenth-century France—is “one of the most significant short novels in English” (Atlantic Monthly). Originally published in 1941, it still raises questions about identity, belonging, and about an individual’s capacity to act within an inflexible system.Trade Review“One of the most significant short novels in English.” * Atlantic Monthly *“Lewis wrote her vibrant novella in 1941 as the first in her Cases of Circumstantial Evidence trilogy, which Swallow Press has brought back into print. The mystery here is not Martin’s identity, but why Janet Lewis remains obscure.” * NewPages *“Flaubertian in the elegance of its form and the gravity of its style.” * The New Yorker *“Ohio University Press/Swallow Press is reissuing all three novels in Lewis’s Cases of Circumstantial Evidence series in new editions with fancy new covers. They’re gorgeous.” * The Book Haven *“One of (the short novel’s) most perfect examples is Janet Lewis’s The Wife of Martin Guerre.” * The Washington Post *“When the literary history of the second millennium is written at the end of the third, in the category of dazzling American short fiction (Janet Lewis’s) Wife of Martin Guerre will be regarded as the 20th century's Billy Budd and Janet Lewis will be ranked with Herman Melville.” * New York Times *“A relentless and draining novel sans merci, all the way to its ruthless end.” * The Book Haven *“The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis is one of the most resonant short novels I can remember. I greatly like two other books she wrote: The Trial of Soren Qvist and The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron. She never got the attention she deserved.”“Lewis skillfully builds up Bertrande's growing conviction: it has a quality of a horror story, a stranger in her bed. Is she crazy? Is she sinning? She determines that she cannot continue in this way.” * Meredith Sue Willis’s Books for Readers *“One of the last century’s great novels.” * A Commonplace Blog *Janet Lewis brings the haunting qualities of fable to this novella, based on a legal case that attracted wide attention in 16th-century France and has continued to fascinate down through the years. * Wall Street Journal *
£9.99
Random House USA Inc Middle C Vintage International
Book SynopsisIn a series of brilliant variations, William Gass presents a man’s life—futile, comic, anarchic—arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms, and tones, with music as both theme and structure.It begins in Graz, Austria, in 1938, when Joseph Skizzen’s father pretends to be Jewish and emigrates to avoid the Nazis. In London with his wife and children for the duration of the war, he mysteriously disappears and the rest of the family relocates to a small town in Ohio. Here Joseph Skizzen grows up and leads a resolutely ordinary life, but one that is built on a scaffold of forgery and deceit. Outwardly he is a professor of music at a mediocre college; secretly he is the earnestly obsessive curator of a private Inhumanity Museum, meant to contain the guilt of centuries of atrocities. Middle C tells the story of his journey—a story that is also an investigation into the nature of identity and the ways in which each of us is sever
£12.31
Random House USA Inc The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • A magisterial novel of love and war that traces the life of one man from World War II to the present.Available now on Prime Video: Justin Kurzel’s highly anticipated series based on this Booker Prize–winning novel by Richard Flanagan; starring Jacob Elordi, Ciarán Hinds, Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge and Simon Baker.Magnificent. —The New York Times Book Review Nothing short of a masterpiece. —Financial TimesAugust, 1943: Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. His life, in a brutal Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, is a daily struggle to save the men under his command. Until he receives a letter that will change him forever.A savagely beautiful novel about the many forms of good and evil, of truth and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
£15.30
Random House USA Inc Half a King 1 Shattered Sea
Book SynopsisNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND THE WASHINGTON POST • LOCUS AWARD WINNER“The Shattered Seas trilogy has worked its way into a very exclusive group of my favorite fantasy novels of all time.”—James Dashner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maze Runner“A fast-paced tale of betrayal and revenge that grabbed me from page 1 and refused to let go.”—George R. R. Martin“I swore an oath to avenge the death of my father. I may be half a man, but I swore a whole oath.” Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains, and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea. And he must do it all with only one good hand. The deceived will become the deceiver. Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi is alone in a world where a strong arm and a cold heart ru
£15.30
University of Oklahoma Press Harpsong
Book Synopsis
£14.95
Beacon Press Kindred
Book SynopsisSelected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. (You have to read them.)The New York Times best-selling author’s time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground
£22.36
Wildside Press Via Crucis A Romance of the Second Crusade
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£29.66
Wildside Press Via Crucis A Romance of the Second Crusade
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£16.95
Wildside Press The Rise of Iskander by Benjamin Disraeli Fiction Historical
£10.95
£39.56
New Directions Publishing Corporation In Memory of Memory
Book SynopsisAn exploration of life at the margins of history from one of Russia’s most exciting contemporary writers Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize Winner of the MLA Lois Roth Translation AwardTrade Review"In Memory of Memory is a multi-faceted essay rooted in doubt on the nature of remembering." -- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"A brilliant evocation of the last years of the Soviet Union, extending deep into the past....A remarkable work of the imagination." -- Kirkus (starred review)"Stepanova’s finely crafted debut follows a woman’s lifelong efforts to better understand her ancestors, Russian Jews whose stories fascinated her as a child growing up in the Soviet Union...[an] admirable cross-genre project will intrigue fans of erudite autofiction." -- Publishers Weekly"A daring combination of family history and roving cultural analysis...a kaleidoscopic, time-shuffling look at one family of Russian Jews throughout a fiercely eventful century." -- John Williams - The New York Times"A book to plunge into. 'Everyone else's ancestors had taken part in history' writes Stepanova; building itself via accumulation, these chapters become an important testimony to the cultural and political lives of the people held beneath the surface of the tides of history." -- Andrew McMillan"A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldn't put it down; it felt sort of like watching a hypnotic YouTube unboxing-video of the gift-and-burden that is the twentieth century. In Memory of Memory has that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid American fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia." -- Elif Batuman"Dazzling erudition and deep empathy come together in Maria Stepanova’s profound engagement with the power and potential of memory, the mother of all muses. An exploration of the vast field between reminiscence and remembrance, In Memory of Memory is a poetic appraisal of the ways the stories of others are the fabric of our history." -- Esther Kinsky"There is simply no book in contemporary Russian literature like In Memory of Memory. A microcosm all its own, it is an inimitable journey through a family history which, as the reader quickly realizes, becomes a much larger quest than yet another captivating family narrative. Why? Because it asks us if history can be examined at all, yes, but does so with incredible lyricism and fearlessness. Because Stepanova teaches us to find beauty where no one else sees it. Because Stepanova teaches us to show tenderness towards the tiny, awkward, missed details of our beautiful private lives. Because she shows us that in the end our hidden strangeness is what makes us human. This, I think, is what makes her a truly major European writer. I am especially grateful to Sasha Dugdale for her precise and flawless translation which makes this book such a joy to read in English. This is a voice to live with." -- Ilya Kaminsky"Stepanova has given new life to the skaz technique of telling a story through the scrambled speech of an unreliable narrator, using manic wordplay and what one critic called ‘a carnival of images.’" -- Los Angeles Review of Books"Stepanova’s fraught relationship with the tempting glut of the past takes this hybrid, unforgettable work far beyond the paradigm of the family memoir—just like memory itself, it exists in a state of limbo between the historical and the fantastical. In Memory of Memory is a stunning and ambitious reckoning with the fragility of memory, the Jewish imperative to remember, and the unbridgeable chasm separating us from our ancestors." -- Ali Hassani - BOMB"Russia’s greatest living poet.... Stepanova lays bare the fallibility of memory, mocking, as she does in her poetry, the idea that anything certain can be built atop a vision of the past." -- Jennifer Wilson - Poetry Foundation"Oblivion is a kind of storage facility for exhausted histories. Inside its walls, Stepanova acts as collector and critic, and makes her temporary home.... As the title suggests, In Memory of Memory might be read as a eulogy for our obsession with the past, one of those rare works that narrates its own disillusionment with its subject. Stepanova embraces memory in order to eventually free herself from its suffocating embrace." -- Linda Kinstler - LARB"As it delves into the story of Stepanova’s Russian-Jewish family, branching out into broader questions about the nature of memory, the book exhibits many of the qualities that have made her a beloved writer in her native country: exquisite imagery and metaphor, an affectionate sense of Russian literary tradition, and a gentle, melancholy approach to the region’s violent history. Above all it asks, What merits remembrance, and what is better forgotten?" -- Sophie Pinkham - Harper's"In Memory of Memory is a meditation on the nothing that remains after catastrophe, the residual oblivion." -- Edward Stephens - Rain Taxi"Aunt Galya is dead and has left a sea of bric-a-brac behind in her cave-like apartment. The objects are priceless or worthless, probably both: newspaper clippings, horoscopes, tchotchkes, postcards, photographs, diary entries…This heaping pile of life detritus, what it reveals and, maybe more crucially, what it obscures, is the point of departure for Maria Stepanova’s breathtaking zigzag meditation on memory." -- Negar Azimi - Artforum"Grappling with the heaviness of details, and then holding them up to the light, Stepanova examines just how relentlessly the past shines through—how it haunts and follows us around, even when—especially when—we think we’ve closed the door on it." -- Snigdha Koirala - Lit Hub"Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses and Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory are both trying to pin down echoes and build from dust." -- Audrey Wollen - Bookforum"More a treatise on the nature of memory than a novel, Stepanova's work recounts a woman's life as it is lived parallel to the tumultuous history of the Soviet Union. Inger Tudor's beautiful and compelling narration soon draws the listener in. Tudor's capable performance makes accessible even the most metaphysical descriptions of memory and human cognition—attentive listeners will find much to love here." -- AudioFile
£15.19
New Directions Publishing Corporation Tell Them of Battles Kings and Elephants
Book SynopsisMichelangelo’s adventure in Constantinople, from the “mesmerizing” (New Yorker) and “masterful” (Washington Post) author of CompassTrade Review"All of Énard's books share the hope of transposing prose into the empyrean of pure sound, where words can never correspond to stable meanings. He's the composer of a discomposing age." -- Joshua Cohen - New York Times Book Review"Énard weaves an imaginative and suspenseful tale of civilizations and personalities clashing, of love, of being an artist in a violent era." -- Juan Vidal - NPR"There is a lush materiality to Énard’s prose, thick and smooth, so that following the artist’s expeditions through Ottoman opium dens feels nearly as immersive as being in them." -- The New York Times"Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (deftly translated, like Énard’s three previous English releases, by Charlotte Mandell) is a tale of bastard genius that might have been, and a cautionary fable about the consequences of parochial timidity." -- Julian Lucas - The New Yorker
£11.39
Random House USA Inc The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Book SynopsisBy the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas Longlisted for the Man Booker PrizeIn 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japa
£16.15
Random House USA Inc Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Book Synopsis
£15.30
Random House USA Inc Delicious
Book Synopsis
£14.64
Random House USA Inc Austerlitz Modern Library Paperback
Book SynopsisThis tenth anniversary edition of W. G. Sebald’s celebrated masterpiece includes a new Introduction by acclaimed critic James Wood. Austerlitz is the story of a man’s search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. A small child when he comes to England on a Kindertransport in the summer of 1939, Jacques Austerlitz is told nothing of his real family by the Welsh Methodist minister and his wife who raise him. When he is a much older man, fleeting memories return to him, and obeying an instinct he only dimly understands, Austerlitz follows their trail back to the world he left behind a half century before. There, faced with the void at the heart of twentieth-century Europe, he struggles to rescue his heritage from oblivion.
£17.60
Penguin Putnam Inc From Here to Eternity
Book Synopsis
£20.40
Random House Publishing Group The Watermen
£14.40
Random House USA Inc Oh William
Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they’ve come from—and what they’ve left behind. BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.”—Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch HouseI would like to say a few things about my first husband, William. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two hav
£21.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Miss Bensons Beetle
Book Synopsis
£15.30
Vanderbilt University Press The Shy Assassin
£20.16
Vanderbilt University Press Teaching Peace
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£69.00
Vanderbilt University Press Teaching Peace
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£39.34
Herald Press (VA) Peter and the Pilgrims
Book Synopsis
£11.48
Sapere Books Torpedo Treasure
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.98
Sapere Books Hot Zone
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.98
Sapere Books Pirates and Patriots
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.11
Sapere Books The Traitor Queen
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.98
Sapere Books Decanus
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£17.58
Sapere Books Sherlock Holmes and the Legend of the Great Auk
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£14.11
Sapere Books The Maple and the Blue
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£16.71
Sapere Books The Warrior King
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£15.84
