Here are 100 books that Wolf Hall fans have personally recommended if you like
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I recall my younger self looking at the reading lists on Oxford University history courses, and asking, “Where are all the women?” I have always wanted to know what it was like to be there, in any century up to the present. How did families form and pass on their values, what did people wear and eat, when (and if) children learned to read, and what were people’s daily routines? Political, military, and economic history is important, but I have flourished in the social history trenches. I discovered women writers and historians have more acute antennae for the details I wanted, even when writing about wars and dynasties.
Who knew that an account of a disappeared medieval world could be so gripping?
I’ve always regarded history as a literary and intellectual exercise, and Pulitzer-winning Barbara Tuchman has been my model ever since I picked up this absorbing history of a Europe riven by war, climate catastrophes, plague, and religious schisms.
Academic historians might denigrate Tuchman’s approach, but through pen-portraits and narrative momentum, Tuchman immersed me in a world that had subtle echoes of today.
The fourteenth century was a time of fabled crusades and chivalry, glittering cathedrals and grand castles. It was also a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
Here, Barbara Tuchman masterfully reveals the two contradictory images of the age, examining the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes and war dominated the lives of serf, noble and clergy alike.
Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries and guilty passions, Tuchman recreates the lives of proud cardinals,…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I am passionate about little-told stories of women’s lives. Too often, women have been either minimized or silenced, and in so doing, we have ignored the experience of half of humanity. I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in the South, where girls and women were not listened to. For this reason, among others, it was hard for me to speak up for myself, hard for me to write. I found the stories of strong, courageous women—bad-ass women—whether fictional or real, to be life-affirming and inspirational in my own journey as a writer. These stories have helped me to say, “It’s my turn. I’m talking now.”
I love this book because of the strange and wonderful 10-year-old female protagonist, a white girl who is “rescued” from Kiowa captivity on the Texas frontier in 1870, a time of Indian raids and pervasive anarchy.
This girl was assimilated into her Indian family and considers her “rescue” a kidnapping; she remembers almost nothing of her family of origin. She is icy-veined, fearless, and creatively violent. The scene where she improvises ammunition from hundreds of dimes (yes, coins) blew my mind.
From this book, I learned about how whites (especially children) who were captured by Indians quickly abandoned their former lives and usually did not want to return if given the opportunity. The language is spare, tough, and beautiful. I did not want this book to end.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his…
I spent the 1970s as an officer in the U.S. Navy UDT/SEAL Teams, giving me insight into the military aspects of peacebuilding. I have spent the last forty years researching and teaching international marketing and negotiations at USC and UC Irvine, after receiving a Berkeley PhD. I was also the director of the UC Irvine Center for Citizen Peacebuilding for ten years. I have published four books on international negotiations and all my ten books in print are on the topic of peace in families, neighborhoods, commerce, and international relations.
The Winds of War is a powerful and intimate story about WWII.
It follows one fictional family through the buildup to the most devastating war in human history. The cultural and political details are most impressive. The writing itself is captivating. I have used it as a model for my own book.
Wouk’s work demonstrates the impact of war on families and establishes the importance of advocating for peaceful resolutions to global disputes.
Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with THE WINDS OF WAR and continues in WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers.
Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - the drama, the romance, the heroism and the tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very centre of the maelstrom.
"First-rate storytelling." - New York Times
"Compelling . . . A panoramic, engrossing story." - Atlantic…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I am a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. My works have been published globally in more than fifteen languages. I hold a PhD from the University of Oxford, served as an officer in the Canadian and British Armies, and have appeared in numerous documentaries, television programs, and podcasts. I am an associate professor of history (and, as a true Canadian, head coach of the hockey team) at Colorado Mesa University.
I could not put this book down. It proves that war and peace have lasting and momentous ramifications. Deeply researched and elegantly detailed, it establishes the undeniable truth that we still live among the war-torn shadows of the First World War and its fraudulent peace—the current implications of the Paris Peace Conference and the ensuing Treaty of Versailles are simply staggering.
Silver Medalist for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations
Finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
For six months in 1919, after the end of “the war to end all wars,” the Big Three—President Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George, and French premier Georges Clemenceau—met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. In this landmark work of narrative history, Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic and intimate view of those fateful days, which…
Why do I love books set in cemeteries? Maybe it’s because I grew up living right next to one and still do. I spent hours as a child wandering around and even playing hide and seek among the tombstones. It’s a place where the living and dead meet, a place of mourning, memories, and peace. Cemeteries have so many superstitions and lore surrounding them. The stories written about them can be spooky, mysterious, sad, heartfelt, and any number of things, so the ideas are endless.
This was one of the strangest, most beautiful books I’ve ever read. At first, the format can throw you off. A chorus of dead voices, snippets of historical and imagined texts? But once I got into the rhythm, it felt like something sacred. The cemetery setting becomes a limbo space where spirits cling to their stories, fears, and unfinished business.
I found myself unexpectedly emotional, especially in how it portrayed grief—Lincoln’s grief, yes, but also the collective grief of the dead. It made me think about what we leave behind and how love can echo even after death. It was haunting in the best way.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns…
Ever since spending a year on a Fulbright teaching grant on the island of Cyprus, where Aphrodite arose from the seafoam, I’ve been enticed by the Greek mythic world, a fascination that began much earlier with reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. Subsequent trips to Greek islands, museums, and archeological sites enhanced those ancient resonances, as did Mother Goddess studies and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Recent writing residencies at Cyprus College of Art and on Evia island immersed me in the Greek atmosphere and mythos as I edited Serpent Visions. My career was spent as a community college teacher, where my courses included ‘World Literature, Homer to Dante,’ and Shakespeare, another keen interest.
Although this is not Mary Renault’s first novel set in Bronze Age Greece, it’s a classic.
She retells the story of Theseus in his own words, but not as a simple hero tale. Set long before the Trojan War, much takes place in Minoan Crete where Theseus performs his first heroic act.
Renault depicts the advanced Minoan culture and Mother Goddess religion intriguingly and gives fresh interpretations, from the character of Theseus himself to the Minotaur in the Labyrinth and what follows.
First read while I was a college student (not for a class), this book inspired me to one day create my own mythic retelling.
Theseus is the grandson of the King of Troizen, but his paternity is shrouded in mystery - can he really be the son of the god Poseidon? When he discovers his father's sword beneath a rock, his mother must reveal his true identity: Theseus is the son of Aegeus, King of Athens, and is his only heir. So begins Theseus's perilous journey to his father's palace to claim his birth right, escaping bandits and ritual king sacrifice in Eleusis, to slaying the Minotaur in Crete. Renault reimagines the Theseus myth, creating an original, exciting story.
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
Maybe it’s something about my training as a newspaper journalist, but I have a real affinity for the untold story and the wrongly accused. I wrote many stories as a cops and courts reporter, and profiled both saints and sinners. I learned that it’s easy for the outsider to be made into the villain. (Cue: “When You’re Strange” by The Doors.) I’m particularly interested in historical fiction where we can reconsider people who’ve been turned into monsters. When I learned that the Macbeth play that I loved was far from the truth, I was launched into a decades-long writing project.
I became enthralled by Claudius through the TV drama starring Derek Jacobi, but later came to the novels.
A stammering, reclusive young man dismissed as a fool, the bookish Claudius is all of us who watch from the wings, hoping not to draw attention to ourselves. He manages to outlive others, including Tacitus and Caligula, to succeed to the imperial purple.
Graves is a noted historian who drew on Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus for his portrayal. His books on ancient cultures and religions were among many that I devoured in my research.
A work of historical fiction which recreates the life and times of Emperor Claudius, who lived from 10 BC to AD 41, a time when poisoning, blasphemy, treachery, incest and unnatural vice were commonplace. From the author of CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA.
I’ve always been interested in history. I grew up in London, where there's a lot of it. But what made me want to write fiction about the past was experiences of imaginative affinity for certain other times and places. My first book is set during World War One. I've always felt connected to the change in sensibility that many people went through then, from an optimistic, moralistic, Victorian outlook, in which, to quote Paul Fussell from The Great War and Modern Memory, people “believed in Progress and Art and in no way doubted the benignity even of technology” to an understanding that human beings and our societies contained deeper, more persistent shadows.
The question of how to portray a historical atrocity like slavery in a work of fiction is obviously monumental. Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Colson Whitehead, and John Keene have approached this with consummate brilliance by writing the experience and subjectivity of enslaved and formerly-enslaved people. Johnson, however, focuses on the perpetrators: the men who engage in and profit from the capture and trafficking of other human beings. As in Mantel’s novel, the choice of the protagonist is key. Rutherford Calhoun is a ne’er-do-well free Black man from New Orleans who runs away on a ship to escape debts and engagement to a woman whose love he hasn’t done much to deserve. It turns out this ship is bound for Africa to collect a cargo of people, members of the Allmuseri tribe, an ethnicity Johnson invented for his fiction. But along with the people, they are also collecting something much more…
The Apocalypse would definitely put a crimp in my career plans.
Rutherford Calhoun, a puckish rogue and newly freed slave, spends his days loitering around the docks of New Orleans, dodging debt collectors, gangsters, and Isadora Bailey, a prim and frugal woman who seeks to marry him and curb his mischievous instincts. When the heat from these respective pursuers becomes too much to bear, he cons his way on to the next ship leaving the dock: the Republic. Upon boarding, to his horror he discovers that he…
I love to read and write historical fiction—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling the past—revealing the thoughts and emotions of characters real and imagined through psychological insights. My mentor Fawn Brodie wrote non-fiction, specifically psychobiography. Her Thomas Jefferson: an Intimate History introduced the world to the enslaved Sally Hemings. The seeds of my first novel The Woman Who Loved John Wilkes Booth were sown in Fawn Brodie’s UCLA lecture hall. I can only imagine what her historical fiction might’ve been. Now I wait for novels from historians Imani Perry South to America and Isabel Wilkerson Caste. Meantime there are so many wonderful novelists writing history.
When recommending Geraldine Brooks’ multi-layered and intricately crafted March, another book must always be mentioned. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. March is the Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction rooted in Alcott’s classic novel that’s been read and loved for centuries. The March of the title is Jo March’s father in Little Women. In real life, his name was Amos Bronson Alcott. And he was the father of Louisa May Alcott. Brooks tells March’s fictitious story masterfully and with great historical acumen. Her depictions of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are truly historic. Geraldine Brooks is not a historian. Her husband Tony Horwitz was. In Brooks’ case it seems that to fall in love with a historian is to fall in love with history as well. March is the beautiful proof.
From the author of the acclaimed YEAR OF WONDERS, a historical novel and love story set during a time of catastrophe, on the front lines of the American Civil War. Set during the American Civil War, MARCH tells the story of John March, known to us as the father away from his family of girls in LITTLE WOMEN, Louisa May Alcott's classic American novel. In Brooks' telling, March emerges as an abolitionist and idealistic chaplain on the front lines of a war that tests his faith in himself and in the Union cause when he learns that his side, too,…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
As a horror writer whose interests tend to favor morbid topics that are often neglected, end-of-the-world stories have fascinated me since I first read Stephen King’s The Stand at far too young of an age. I love how these works enable the exploration of life, death, and survival. My appreciation for the subject matter deepened during my studies in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program, where I learned how genre fiction has the unique ability to both enlighten and entertain readers. This inspired me to write my post-apocalyptic horror novel, What Remains.
I was first introduced to the film adaptation of The Road in my early teens when I went through all five stages of grief in the span of 1 hour and 51 minutes.
I then made a beeline to the bookstore for a copy of McCarthy’s novel, which subsequently solidified my love of end-of-the-world stories in how they can examine what it means to survive.
The Road is a story that has stayed with me over the subsequent decade and a half and greatly influenced my post-apocalyptic novel.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if…
