The 12 Best Historical Fiction Books Worth Reading Right Now

Want to read the best historical fiction books, but not sure where to start? 

Most lists out there are 50 entries long, half of them are World War II, and by the time you finish reading the list, you're more confused than when you started. For book lovers and casual readers alike, that's not a list — it's a research project.

This one is shorter on purpose. Twelve best historical fiction books of all time, grouped by era — ancient and medieval, Tudor and Enlightenment, the long 19th century, and the wars and aftermaths of the 20th — chosen because each one has genuinely earned its reputation. 

The list solely includes the historical fiction books that hold up, with a clear reason why each one is worth your time.

One more thing before the list: a lot of the best historical fiction is built on serious research. Hilary Mantel spent years reading primary sources on Thomas Cromwell, and Min Jin Lee spent decades on the Korean diaspora. 

If you want to read the real history alongside the novel — biographies, social histories, books like 'Sapiens' — Headway condenses them into 15-minute reads. 

📘 Read the novel and the history side by side on the Headway app!

12 best historical fiction books, at a glance (TL;DR)

The historical fiction novels that come up most consistently when readers and booksellers compare notes:

1. 'The Pillars of the Earth' — Ken Follett, medieval England

2. 'Wolf Hall' — Hilary Mantel, Tudor court

3. 'The Book Thief' — Markus Zusak, WWII Germany

4. 'All the Light We Cannot See' — Anthony Doerr, occupied France

5. 'Beloved' — Toni Morrison, post-Civil War America

6. 'Pachinko' — Min Jin Lee, 20th-century Korea and Japan

7. 'The Song of Achilles' — Madeline Miller, ancient Greece

8. 'The Name of the Rose' — Umberto Eco, medieval Italy

9. 'Hamnet' — Maggie O'Farrell, Elizabethan England

10. 'Things Fall Apart' — Chinua Achebe, 19th-century Nigeria

11. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' — Arthur Golden, pre-WWII Japan

12. 'A Tale of Two Cities' — Charles Dickens, French Revolution

These are also among the best books to bring to a book club, gift to a reader in your life, or use as book recommendations when someone asks where to start with the genre.

The 12 best historical fiction books of all time, by era

Here's the full list of 12 historical fiction books and the brief description of their plots:

Ancient and Medieval worlds (1–3)

1. 'The Song of Achilles' — Madeline Miller (2011) 

The Trojan War, retold as a love story.

Miller spent ten years writing this novel, and it shows. The Greek world feels lived-in rather than studied, and the central relationship between Achilles and Patroclus — handled with real restraint and tenderness — gives the familiar mythology emotional weight it doesn't usually carry. This book won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012. 

A short, beautifully written entry point for anyone unsure whether they actually like historical fiction or just the idea of it. Available in paperback, audiobook, and on Amazon, and consistently lands near the top of Goodreads lists for the genre.

2. 'The Pillars of the Earth' — Ken Follett (1989)

12th-century England, the building of a cathedral, and everything that gets in the way.

Ken Follett's epic about a Gothic cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge is one of the most popular historical novels of the modern era for a straightforward reason: it's long — over 1,000 pages — but never feels long. 

Politics, religion, ambition, survival, and architectural detail all braid together without any of it feeling like homework. If you ask serious readers of medieval fiction where their love for the time period started, this is the book they name.

3. 'The Name of the Rose' — Umberto Eco (1980)

A medieval Italian monastery, a series of murders, and a Franciscan friar who solves them.

Eco was a semiotician and medievalist before he was a novelist, and this is what happens when a serious scholar writes a historical mystery. Dense in places — genuinely dense — but the central plot is gripping, and the portrait of a 14th-century monastery is unlike anything else in the genre. 

Adapted into films and a series, but the novel is significantly stranger and richer than either. A must-read for anyone who wants their historical fiction also to be intellectually demanding.

📘 The novel pulled you in. The real history is waiting on Headway.

The Tudor Court and beyond (4–6)

4. 'Wolf Hall' — Hilary Mantel (2009)

Thomas Cromwell's rise in the court of Henry VIII, told from inside his head.

Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize for 'Wolf Hall' and again for its sequel — only the third writer ever to win twice. The trilogy reimagines Cromwell, traditionally cast as a villain of the Tudor period, as a working-class self-made man navigating a brutal court. 

Mantel's present-tense interior style takes a few pages to settle into, then becomes close to hypnotic. Widely considered the most important historical novel published in the 21st century. An award-winning series and a genuine achievement in what historical fiction can do.

5. 'Hamnet' — Maggie O'Farrell (2020)

The Shakespeare family in Stratford, told mostly from the perspective of his wife.

Maggie O'Farrell takes the most well-documented writer in the English language and looks past him at the people around him — particularly his wife, Agnes, and the death of their 11-year-old son. This story won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020. 

Short, devastating, and one of the most beautifully written historical novels in recent memory. If you're skeptical that a new novel about Shakespeare's family could have anything fresh to say, this is the book review that changes your mind.

6. 'A Tale of Two Cities' — Charles Dickens (1859)

The French Revolution, London and Paris, and the moral arc of redemption.

Dickens isn't usually shelved under historical fiction, but 'A Tale of Two Cities' is one of the earliest and most influential books in the genre. Set during the 18th-century revolutionary period, it's shorter than most of Dickens's novels, and is one of the most quotable historical novels in English. 

This book is also still one of the more fun books to read in the genre: propulsive in a way a lot of literary fiction isn't. One of the more underrated short classic books on any list like this, and one of the better short books here, it earns its reputation without demanding much of your time.

Not sure what to add to your TBT list and still looking for other multigenre listicles? Then check out these articles — your next read is closer than you think:

• Motivational Books for Men: Best Reads That Change Lives

• Best Leadership Books for Strategy, Influence, and Growth

• Good Books to Read for Women: Fiction, Memoirs, and Self‑Help

The 19th and early 20th centuries (7–9)

7. 'Beloved' — Toni Morrison (1987)

A formerly enslaved woman in 1870s Ohio, haunted by the ghost of her daughter.

Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for 'Beloved' and the Nobel Prize for Literature shortly after. The novel, based loosely on the real-life story of Margaret Garner, is one of the most morally serious works of fiction in American literature. 

Difficult, devastating, and built on a true story that most readers will not have encountered before. It sits alongside the Civil War and its aftermath in a way few novels manage. A required read for any honest list of the best historical fiction books of all time.

8. 'Things Fall Apart' — Chinua Achebe (1958)

Pre-colonial Igbo society in late 19th-century Nigeria, and what the European arrival did to it.

Achebe's novel rewrote how Western readers understood Africa. It's also a deeply human portrait of one man — Okonkwo — and his community before colonialism arrived. Short, powerful, and the most widely read African novel in the world. 

Frequently named a book for men, a coming-of-age story, and a Goodreads essential in equal measure, which tells you something about how many angles it works from. The first in Achebe's African Trilogy, and one of the most important historical novels of the 20th century.

9. 'Memoirs of a Geisha' — Arthur Golden (1997)

A young girl's path through the world of pre-WWII Kyoto's geisha district.

Controversial when first released — both for questions about cultural accuracy and for a legal dispute with one of Golden's sources — but the novel remains one of the most accessible windows into a culture most Western readers know almost nothing about. 

Worth reading alongside critical responses to it; Mineko Iwasaki's memoir 'Geisha, A Life' is a useful companion. Still, a book club picks this read in many places for good reason: it raises real questions and doesn't flatten them.

📘 You don't have time for every 900-page history. Headway gives you the ideas in 15 minutes.

The 20th century: War and after (10–12)

10. 'The Book Thief' — Markus Zusak (2005)

A young girl in Nazi Germany, narrated by Death.

Zusak's novel about Liesel Meminger — and the family hiding a Jewish man in their basement — became one of the most beloved historical fiction books of the 21st century, and it earns it. The choice to narrate through Death sounds gimmicky on the page. It isn't. 

The book earns every emotional payoff without once feeling manipulative. Marketed as a young adult but read widely by adults, available as an audiobook that holds up particularly well, and a perennially strong book recommendation for anyone new to the genre.

11. 'All the Light We Cannot See' — Anthony Doerr (2014)

A blind French girl and a German boy whose lives converge in occupied France.

Anthony Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel, and the prose alone earns it. Short chapters, beautiful sentence-level writing, and a structure that braids two perspectives across years of WWII without ever losing the thread. Adapted into a Netflix limited series in 2023. 

One of the most accessible award-winning historical novels of recent years — the kind of book that works equally well as a paperback on a long flight or an audiobook on a long commute. Consistently rated near the top on Goodreads for best historical fiction books of all time.

12. 'Pachinko' — Min Jin Lee (2017)

Four generations of a Korean family in 20th-century Japan.

Lee's sweeping family saga follows Sunja from colonial-era Korea through her descendants' lives in Japan, where ethnic Koreans have faced systemic discrimination across decades. 

The novel is patient — it accumulates power slowly, across generations — and is one of the most important historical fiction books about Asia published in English in the past twenty years. 

A New York Times bestselling title and a book club pick that generates real conversation. Adapted into an acclaimed Apple TV+ series. If you read one book from this list that you've never heard of before, make it this one.

What makes a historical novel worth reading

The best historical fiction does three things at once:

1. It captures a place and a time period with enough research that the world feels real. 

2. It builds protagonists whose interior lives feel as recognizable as anyone you'd meet today.

3. It uses the distance of the past to say something honest about what hasn't changed.

The genre's best authors, like Mantel, Morrison, Achebe, and O'Farrell, hold all three steady. The weakest historical fiction drops one of them: research becomes pageantry, protagonists become costumes, or the past becomes nostalgia dressed up as insight.

A word on accuracy: historical fiction is fiction. The best authors take real liberties to serve a story. The question isn't whether every detail is documented — it's whether the world feels true and whether the invention serves something larger than the author's convenience. Every book on this list passes that test.

Where to start if you're new to historical fiction

If you want one clear entry point into the best historical fiction books, start with 'The Book Thief'. It's emotionally accessible, historically grounded, and short enough to finish in a few sittings — the rare fun book to read that also has genuine literary weight.

From there, pick by era:

• 'The Song of Achilles' for the ancient world.

• 'The Pillars of the Earth' for medieval Europe.

•  'Wolf Hall,' if you're ready for a longer, more demanding read. 

• 'All the Light We Cannot See' for World War II.

Save the denser titles — 'The Name of the Rose', the rest of Mantel's Cromwell trilogy, 'Pachinko' — for after you've found which time periods pull you in most. For anything on this list, the audiobook version is worth considering: historical fiction read aloud tends to land differently, especially the ones with strong narrative voices.

Worth noting: if you're looking at best historical fiction books 2026 new releases or want to explore beyond this list, Philippa Gregory is a reliable name for Tudor reimaginings, and Kristin Hannah's work — including 'The Nightingale', set in WWII France — is a strong next step after Doerr. Both are widely available at your local bookshop or on Amazon.

Read the history behind the fiction with Headway!

The best historical fiction is built on research that the authors did first. A lot of readers who love historical fiction also love the nonfiction histories underneath — biographies, social histories, big-picture books like 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari or 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' by Jared Diamond.

Headway condenses these into 15-minute reads and audios, so you can move between a great historical novel and the real history of its period without having to choose between them. Besides, the app offers 2000+ summaries of the best books on self-improvement, growth, psychology, and many other topics.

📘 Join millions of readers using Headway to finally get through the books that matter!