For pure escapism, there’s nothing quite like historical fiction. These vividly imagined novels transport you back to another time and place, from a sweeping love story against the backdrop of the American Civil War to a thrilling murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence.
Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
American literature’s “best-known, least-seen writer” is back with his first book in over a decade, said Randy Boyagoda in the Financial Times. Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1932, the action follows Hicks McTaggart, a private eye living “pay cheque to pay cheque” as he tries to track down a missing cheese heiress. Written in the “swaggering, zingy lingo of hard-boiled detective fiction and vintage caper movies”, it’s a “charming” (and at times hard to follow) novel that immerses you in “Prohibition-inspired bootlegging” and violent feuds between “warring Italian mobsters amid Depression-era scarcity”.
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
In his latest book, Daniel Kehlmann paints a fictionalised portrait of the real-life German director G.W. Pabst and his “moral struggles under the Nazis”, said Nina Allan in The Guardian. Anyone keen to discover details about the filmmaker’s life “will find Kehlmann an unreliable narrator”. This is, however, a deliberate choice: the author is “more interested in the unstable no man’s land between facts and the truth” than any faithful rehashing of history. With “all the darkness, shapeshifting ambiguity and glittering unease of a modern Grimms’ fairytale: it is Kehlmann’s best work yet”.
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The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
“There’s something peculiarly fascinating about novels set in self-enclosed communities with their own rules”, said Margot Harrison in The New York Times. In her adult debut, “The Listeners”, best-selling young adult author Maggie Stiefvater tells the tale of June Hudson, general manager of the Avallon hotel in the Appalachian mountains, who must play host to enemy diplomats and Nazi sympathisers during the Second World War. It isn’t easy “melding history and fantasy in fiction”, but Stiefvater “deftly” pulls it off, weaving “wonder” around each corner in her “richly imagined world”.
The Pretender by Jo Harkin
Harkin’s latest novel is “loosely” based on the real life of Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the throne of England used by Yorkist supporters to challenge the newly established reign of Henry VII, said Antonia Senior in The Times. The innocent young peasant boy’s life is “upended” when a “shifty” aristocrat arrives to carry him away to a new life. “At turns funny, moving, filthy and original”, it's an “absolute delight” – and a “frontrunner” for the best historical fiction book of the year.
The Jackal’s Mistress by Chris Bohjalian
This compelling tale is inspired by the true story of a gravely wounded Vermont captain in the Civil War whose life is saved by a Confederate woman amid the “shifting” battle lines in the Shenandoah Valley, said Alida Becker in The New York Times. Bohjalian wrote a magazine article on the subject back in 2003; now he has returned to it adding his own “imaginative twists” to the fascinating historical material.
A Merciful Sea by Katie Daysh
In this final instalment of Daysh’s trilogy, it's 1805 and Captain Hiram Nightingale has been discharged from the navy and is missing life at sea, said Senior in The Times. When he begins receiving “threatening” notes that could expose his “clandestine” relationship with his lover, Lieutenant Arthur Courtney, to a “hostile” world, he vows to find out who is responsible. But while investigating, he is also drawn into plans to protect Britain’s shores from a French invasion. It’s a “fitting end” to a "wonderful trilogy".
The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn
Quinn’s third novel follows the story of Elinor Coombes, an “unhappily married” British aristocrat who survives the sinking of the Titanic, and starts a fresh life with her infant son in New York, said Kat Trigarszky in The Washington Post. But the city turns out to be a place where “secrets and lies all too easily come bubbling to the surface”. Quinn “skilfully contrasts the claustrophobic world of Britain’s upper classes” with the chaos of New York in the early 20th century – her book makes for a gripping read.
The Eights by Joanna Miller
Miller’s debut novel is set in 1920 – the “pivotal” year when Oxford University began awarding degrees to women, said Trigarszky in The Washington Post. The action charts the progress of four “equally compelling” young women living on Corridor Eight of St. Hugh’s College as they navigate the university’s “archaic rules” and life alongside their “misogynistic” peers. Each is “hampered by pasts that loom over their present – and threaten to overshadow their futures”.
Perspectives by Laurent Binet
Set in Renaissance Florence, Binet's latest novel begins with a murder. Fresco painter Jacopo da Pontormo has been "stabbed to death" with a chisel in the chapel he has been painting for over 10 years, said Vulture. His brutal slaying is a mystery, though it could have something to do with his scandalous works, or a “rivalry” with a fellow artist. Filled with characters who “gossip, flatter and scheme wildly”, Binet’s epistolary novel makes for an “extremely fun” read.
