Author of Pippo & Clara and Alberto’s Lost Birthday, Diana Rosie writes historical fiction that tells a story first and foremost, while gently uncovering the history of a time and place. In the vast spectrum of the genre, where historians like Hilary Mantel and James A Michener sit at one end, the novels that inspire her most can be found at the other. The books she recommends here are stories to make your heart ache and your soul sing. And they just happen to be set in the past.
While the setting is undoubtedly Elizabethan, the crux of the novel is timeless. This is a story of grief, exploring the guilt and recriminations between parents after the loss of a child. It just so happens the father is William Shakespeare.
The skill and subtly of Maggie O’Farrell’s writing lets you believe you have happened upon Stratford in 1596, where you are not reading descriptions of history, but watching one family live through a devastating week. (Watch out for a completely entrancing section on the life and travels of a flea.)
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021 'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times 'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell
TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
You don’t have to know much about the Spanish civil war to have heard of Guernica. If you’ve ever seen Picasso’s work depicting the bombing, this book creates the story of the people of the town going about their everyday lives just before the painting’s horror. As a reader, you know what is coming but are helpless to do anything but care for characters who are oblivious to the destruction coming their way.
As an author, I found inspiration in this novel for my own portrayal of the civil war in Spain. The trick is to let ordinary people tell the story for you.
An extraordinary epic of love, family, and war set in the Basque town of Guernica before, during, and after its destruction by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War.
In 1935, Miguel Navarro finds himself in conflict with the Spanish Civil Guard and flees the Basque fishing village of Lekeitio to make a new start in Guernica, the centre of Basque culture and tradition. Once there, he finds more than just a new life - he finds someone to live for. Miren Ansotegui is the charismatic and graceful dancer he meets and the two discover a love they believe…
The woman who inspired Don Quixote sets out across the dangerous roads of Spain to honor her dying lover's final plea.
The daughter of a wealthy merchant, young Dolça Llull Prat is besotted with the dashing, bootstrapping Miguel Cervantes from their first meeting. Despite Miguel's entreaties, the ever-practical Dolça, with…
Set and published in the 1920s, this novel wasn’t written as historical fiction. However, the backdrop of mainland China, and the situation the lead characters create for themselves is of another world and time.
We follow Kitty who, in punishment for an affair, joins her scientist husband on a mission to a colony infested by cholera. Ultimately though, this is the story of a woman who learns the difference between passion and love. While the incorrectness of the time may be a little uncomfortable to read, Kitty’s determination that the next generation of women should be fearless and frank, and as independent as any man rings just as true today.
'She did not know what to say. She was undecided whether indignantly to assert her innocence or to break out into angry reproaches. He seemed to read her thoughts. "I've got all the proof necessary" '
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with Charles Townsend, a man whom she finds charming, attractive and exciting. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange but terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera…
This is the tale of a man trapped in a gilded cage. An ideological revolution, the rise of a dictator, and the subsequent suppression and death of millions of Russians are but casual acquaintances to his story. The cage is quickly tarnished, but the charm, generosity, and good nature of the gentleman in question ensure that he discovers how to make the very most of his life imprisonment. Creating a character that a reader instantly warms to, and cheers on through every trial is difficult, but Amor Towles achieves it effortlessly.
The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers, soon to be a major television series
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and…
Cities of Women is a dual timeline novel that interweaves the contemporary story of Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor lacking passion and love in her life, with the tale of a medieval woman, who transforms herself into the artist, Anastasia, an unidentified illuminator of the manuscripts of the historical Christine…
The story of a priest in Mexico during a period when Catholicism is prohibited sounds like a tale of adventure and heroism. But our hero is flawed almost beyond redemption. Almost. As he travels through the state of Tabasco, ministering to all those who need him, his faults are painfully exposed. And yet, we still care for him, willing him to escape the traps laid before him, hoping against hope that salvation awaits. This is a book that will stay with you forever.
During an anti-clerical purge in Mexico, a priest is hunted like a hare. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the little worldly priest is nevertheless impelled towards his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.
Italy, 1938. Mussolini is in power and war is not far away... When Mamma goes missing early one morning, both Clara and Pippo go in search of her. Clara turns right; Pippo left. As a result of the choices they make that morning, their lives will be changed forever. Pippo and Clara tells the story of a family and a country divided. But will Clara and Pippo – and their mother – find each other again?
Set in Britain at the time of the Roman invasion, it is narrated by Togidubnus of the Atrebates, whose mother was a druid and father, King Verica, a strong supporter of Rome. Having spent ten years in Rome being educated by the philosopher Seneca, he comes to rely increasingly on…
A Last Survivor of the Orphan Trains
by
Victoria Golden,
Four years old and homeless in 1930, William Walters climbed aboard one of the last American Orphan Trains, and, without knowing it, embarked on an extraordinary path through nine decades of U.S. history.
For 75 years, Orphan Trains transported 250,000 children from the East Coast into homes in the emerging…
