Historical Fiction

Log in / Sign Up

List of Forums + New Post Recipe Box Usergroups Following My Posts Bookmarks

Private Messages Advanced Search Rules New User Guide FAQ Advertise Contact Us

Forum -> Hobbies, Crafts, and Collections -> Reading Room

Historical Fiction

Previous 1 2 3

View latest: 24h 48h 72h

Ravenclaw

Thu, Feb 14 2019, 9:35 am

I love all these suggestions! Do you guys think we should create a formal poll, since a lot of posts suggest more than one, etc? Or is that just unnecessarily redundant?

levlongnprosper

Thu, Feb 14 2019, 9:40 am

Ravenclaw wrote:

I love all these suggestions! Do you guys think we should create a formal poll, since a lot of posts suggest more than one, etc? Or is that just unnecessarily redundant?

Redundant unless you need to break a tie for top choice

Ravenclaw

Thu, Feb 14 2019, 10:08 pm

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film—a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who’s always taken orders quietly, but lately she’s unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She’s full of ambition, but without a husband, she’s considered a failure.

Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...

levlongnprosper

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 12:26 pm

Ravenclaw wrote:

I enjoyed this book quite a bit too! You might like Their Eyes Were Watching Gd-- also set in post-abolition south dealing with themes of racial and class divides through narrative!

levlongnprosper

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 12:28 pm

Ravenclaw wrote:

I love all these suggestions! Do you guys think we should create a formal poll, since a lot of posts suggest more than one, etc? Or is that just unnecessarily redundant?

I should have asked what you meant by historical fiction. I interpreted it as people looking back and setting a story in some time period before they lived. But I see suggestions that are written in their time period, like North and South written in and about the 19th century.

If we're including the latter I've got some amazing books to recommend!

Ravenclaw

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 12:50 pm

levlongnprosper wrote:

I happen to agree with you. I don’t really see classics as historical fiction, unless they were written as historical fiction at the time (like Julius Caesar).

sequoia

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 12:51 pm

Three Musketeers, obviously.

esuss

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 1:03 pm

levlongnprosper wrote:

I believe North and South was written by John Jakes in 1982 about events in the 19th century I.e. 1800s.

levlongnprosper

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 1:09 pm

esuss wrote:

I believe North and South was written by John Jakes in 1982 about events in the 19th century I.e. 1800s.

Are we talking about the same North and South? Maybe I skimmed too quickly because I thought it was the 1855 book by Elizabeth Gaskell

esuss

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 1:42 pm

levlongnprosper wrote:

Are we talking about the same North and South? Maybe I skimmed too quickly because I thought it was the 1855 book by Elizabeth Gaskell

Sorry. The previous poster suggested the one by John Jakes.

BetsyTacy

Fri, Feb 15 2019, 3:10 pm

The North and South by John Jakes might be a offensive to some posters--that Ashley was just ughh. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell was amazing, although I must admit I read it after I saw the movie where John Thornton is played by Richard Armitage.

itsmeima

Sat, Feb 16 2019, 9:12 pm

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

The Nightingale is a historical fiction novel, written by Kristin Hannah and published in 2015. It tells the story of two sisters in France during World War II, and their struggle to survive and resist the German occupation of France.

itsmeima

Sat, Feb 16 2019, 9:14 pm

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls. Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this debut novel reveals a story of love, redemption, and secrets that were hidden for decades.

itsmeima

Sat, Feb 16 2019, 9:22 pm

The Book of Negroes (in the US ‘Someone Knows My Name’) by Lawrence Hill

This is a fascinating historical account of one woman's journey through the slave trade...

Kidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will ever forget.

Cheshire cat

Sat, Feb 16 2019, 9:24 pm

Shogun, by James clavell.

I was surprised to be so thoroughly swept into this book. It's about an English pilot who gets swept ashore in Feudal Japan, I think in the 1600s. Book provides a fascinating view of the people, the culture, and the land.
There is some violence, though not crass. There is romance, intrigue, suspense... This book is epic!

itsmeima

Sat, Feb 16 2019, 9:26 pm

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Its about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

glamourmom

Sun, Feb 17 2019, 12:02 am

I just finished reading The Chalky Sea by Clare Flynn. really enjoyed this easy and captivating read.

set in WWII in Canada and England. a perspective I hadn't known much about.
I can't vouch for how squeaky clean it is, though, as it is a romance novel.

Ravenclaw

Mon, Feb 18 2019, 5:47 pm

Strings Attached
By Judy Blundell

Caught up in dreams of dancing on Broadway, Kit Corrigan unwisely accepts an apartment and a nightclub job from mob lawyer Nate Benedict in exchange for keeping tabs on his son Billy, who’s enlisted in the Army along with Kit’s brother, Jamie. Kit broke off her relationship with Billy after his last jealousy-fueled outburst. Nate starts calling in favors, and Kit becomes entangled in a web of secrets and lies. Like her Aunt Delia before her, she came to New York to escape a suffocating life in Providence and what Jamie calls “the Irish form of advancement—you don’t dare do better than those before you.” Kit’s father had scraped together a living off the novelty of his motherless triplets, the Corrigan Three, in a home with psychic and emotional “undertows, things we didn’t understand, and jokes and stories passing for truth.” Layers of deception are peeled away in a jumbled sequence of events that echoes Kit’s confusion as she discovers the extent of her family’s connection with the Benedicts and realizes that her own actions at the age of 12 set in motion a chain of events that end in murder. National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied, 2008) delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

This is beautifully written with a noir style atmosphere and intricate plot. However there are some questionable settings as far as I remember (read it awhile ago) so it’s not that squeaky clean.

33055

Mon, Feb 18 2019, 6:58 pm

The Kitchen House

I bought it thinking it was a beach read but really enjoyed it. I lent it to a friend who lent it to another friend who lent it to her mother and so on. I don't think it is ever coming home.

It gives an insight into [black person] slavery from the slave's point of view.

Page 3 of 3

Previous 1 2 3