Book reviews, excerpts, reading guides and more of exceptional historical fiction.

The Original

A Novel

by Nell Stevens

Hardcover: Jul 2025 | Paperback: Jun 2026

In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor.

How to Dodge a Cannonball

A Novel

by Dennard Dayle

Hardcover: Jun 2025 | Paperback: Jun 2026

A cutting, revealing caricature of the American Civil War, told through the eyes of a white teenager who joins an all-Black regiment of soldiers, for fans of Colson Whitehead and James McBride.

Land

A Novel

by Maggie O'Farrell

Hardcover: Jun 2026

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.

Angel Down

A Novel

by Daniel Kraus

Hardcover: Jul 2025 | Paperback: May 2026

The critically acclaimed author of the "crazily enjoyable" (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war.

Palaces of the Crow

A Novel

by Ray Nayler

Hardcover: May 2026

In Ray Nayler's speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect.

The Foursome

A Novel

by Christina Baker Kline

Hardcover: May 2026

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina — Kline's own distant relatives — who married world-...

The Young Will Remember

by Eve J. Chung

Hardcover: May 2026

A sweeping novel about a correspondent trapped behind enemy lines during the Korean War, and the women who help her find her way home, from the national bestselling author of Daughters of Shandong.

When I found the courage to lift my head, I ...

Odessa

A Novel

by Gabrielle Sher

Hardcover: Apr 2026

In a powerfully imagined Russia at the height of the pogroms, a grief-stricken family turn to ancient magic to bring their daughter back from the grave.

James

A Novel

by Percival Everett

Hardcover: Mar 2024 | Paperback: Apr 2026

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. From the "literary icon" (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the ...

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton

A Novel

by Jennifer N. Brown

Hardcover: Apr 2026

A dual-timeline murder mystery set in an English country manor, when an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess.

A Private Man

by Stephanie Sy-Quia

Hardcover: Apr 2026

A debut novel inspired by the true story of the author's grandparents, tracing the slow-burn love story between a Catholic priest and a progressive theology teacher across Rome and England during the twentieth century.

The Antidote

A Novel

by Karen Russell

Hardcover: Mar 2025 | Paperback: Mar 2026

From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their ...