100 Books Like Fire from Heaven

I had my doubts about reading this because, well… Tudor history.

I love Mantel’s work but…another trot through Henry VIII’s marriages and murders? I wasn’t sure it was for me. But within moments of opening the book, I was away with Mantel and Thomas Cromwell.

Even the title, Wolf Hall, demonstrates her gift. It was the name of the Seymour family’s seat, and the book never takes us there—but it was Jane Seymour who replaced Anne Boleyn and gave monstrous Henry his heir. The title hangs over the action, echoing, Man is wolf to man.

Mantel’s Cromwell is complex, often kind as well as ruthless, but Mantel herself said that she presents only one possible view of him. Read it and make up your own mind!

If you fall for this book, as I did, then there are twenty more Falco books when you can’t make this one last any longer.

The books work on so many levels. They are brilliantly imagined, well-researched historical novels set in Ancient Rome. They are also send-ups of classic "gum-shoe" novels, since Falco is an "informer," the Roman equivalent of a private detective.

They are who-dunnits, plus a love story—the love of Falco’s life is a posh senator’s daughter, way out of his league. They are exciting adventures, with lots of action, and also very funny. There isn’t a measurement these books don’t score highly on! Characters, plot, vivid backgrounds, humour, suspense, a handsome hero… They have it all.

Opting to cover just a slice of Alexander’s campaign, Judith Tarr treats the period after the Battle of Issus down to his fateful trip to the Oracle of Ammon in Egypt. Being historical fantasy, magic is present, but Tarr (a trained historian) depicts it as understood by the ancient Egyptians. An Egyptian priestess, Meriamon, has been charged by her gods to bring Alexander to Egypt in order to eject the hated Persians and preserve her people. The novel also contains a love story between Meriamon and the fictional younger brother of Ptolemy—the same Ptolemy who would found a dynasty in Egypt after Alexander’s death. Lord of the Two Lands is a master class in how to utilize magic for historical fantasy in an authentic way.

Although Stealing Fire takes place during the early Successor Wars that followed Alexander’s death, it contains enough flashbacks to qualify as about Alexander too. Or really, about Hephaistion, whose presence is stronger. Like Renault and Tarr, Graham depicts Hephaistion’s relationship with Alexander as more than friendship. Her main character Lysias began as Hephaistion’s groom, then became an officer under his command. Lysias hero-worships Hephaistion. After Hephaistion’s, then Alexander’s, deaths, he falls under the command of Ptolemy, helping him to establish the Ptolemaic empire in Egypt. Like Tarr, Graham does very well at showing magic as conceived of in the ancient world, but she also writes a mean battle scene—of which there are several. Her Hephaistion is one of the most engaging in print.

Melissa Scott has written the best “What would’ve happened if Alexander didn’t die?” alternate history. It’s a popular question among historians, but usually assumes he survived his final illness. Scott takes a different tack, choosing instead to diverge some years before his death. Here, he returns from Asia to put down a revolt in Greece. After that, he goes west, against first Rome, then Carthage. Although the characters aren’t as fleshed out as in some of her later military SF (this was an early work), her grasp of military maneuvers and politics, for which she would later earn attention, is on full display. It’s a viable tale of what might have happened, had Alexander decided to take on Rome, or Carthage, at that point in their histories.

“And now for something completely different,” I offer some satiric whimsy from Indo-Irish author Aubry Menen. He belonged to Renault’s generation, not Tarr’s, Graham’s, or Scott’s. This novel, published in 1965, is historical allegory rather than historical fiction. Menen changes historical events in order to suit his plot and message, which is to poke fun at British presumption. The result is a delightfully wicked parallel between the arrogant and ethnocentric Macedonians and the nineteenth-century imperialistic Brits, set against a far older Indian culture. Yet Menen didn’t spare the self-righteousness of Indian brahmins and rajas, either. Menen spares no one. While usually accused of misogyny, the women here are screamingly funny in their (legitimate) bitchiness, but Hephaistion gets the best lines. This book deserves a wider readership.

Norah Lofts was my mother’s favourite author.

I read the books "because they were there," but I was soon a fan. Lofts came from an old farming family and had a deep sense of being rooted in a place. The Town House tells how "The Old Vine" came to be built. The House at Old Vine and The House at Sunset travel on through their history. Each book is a collection of longish short stories, spanning time from the 1400s to the 1950s (when the books were written).

Lofts shows heartbreak lingering for centuries, haunting the house. A later character feels despair in certain rooms. They don’t know why, but the reader is spookily aware of the reason. Books for everyone who’s ever wondered, "What happened here in this place?"

This is the first book in a series that seems—hooray!—never ending.

Novels, novellas, short stories, graphic novels…they’re all built around a wonderful idea: police procedural in a version of the modern world where rivers have goddesses, trees have dryads, and vampires, werewolves, elves, and all the other creatures of folklore and fantasy matter-of-factly exist alongside council estates and the internet. And so have to be policed.

The "Isaacs" (named after Isaac Newton) are that branch of the Old Bill which deals with magic, so its inspectors and constables tend to be witches and wizards. All the books are incredibly inventive and funny. I love them.

It is this book, about the successors of Alexander the Great, that inspired me to write my first novel, the Atlantis Papyrus. It is a great read—the pages feel less like an academic paper and more like an action novel and keeps one’s interest until the very end. I learned about so many fascinating figures in Alexander’s world I had never really known about and the tumultuous years following his death. In my work, I drew inspiration from some of the characters and events depicted in this book.

If Gadamer is an important guide to the hermeneutics of beginnings and the spirit of theorizing, Thomas Martin’s work is one of the most concise, readable, and comprehensive introductions to the social history of ancient Greece and the spiritual origins of Western culture. While there are many fine histories of the period, this book provides access to the whole sweep of Greek history from the beginnings of Hellenic civilization in Indo-European and Mycenaean cultures, to the Archaic age, the beginnings of democracy with the age of the city-state, the collapse of the Athenian Empire at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the rise of Hellenistic Greece and the Hellenistic kingdoms that led to the hegemony of Rome and Latin culture. The work is an exemplary form of what I would call 'configurational’ history as his narrative interweaves military, political, religious, and social history with detailed discussion of the realm… show more.