Historical fiction books are some of my all time favorite books and I love reading new ones and learning about new historical events I otherwise wouldn’t come across. And today, I will be sharing three historical fiction books that you should read in 2025!
There are thousands of amazing historical fiction books and new ones releasing every month. The ones I chose for this list have all been released in the past three years. I am always checking out popular new books and seeing if the hype behind them is justified or just great marketing.
These three novels were some of the best books that I read and ones I find myself recommending to anyone who will listen. I loved each novel for a different reason and can’t wait to read them again. You can see the three historical fiction novels below!
Historical Fiction Books That You Should Read in 2025
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang
The Women
2024 was the year Kristin Hannah became a household name with the release of The Women, a novel about women serving in the Vietnam War. Hannah has been one of my favorite authors for a decade ever since I read The Nightingale.
The Women was released in early 2024 and went on to become the best selling novel of the year. It was everywhere and was loved by critics and readers alike. This novel lives up to the hype and one that will make you cry and learn about the Vietnam War and the heroes who were ignored as they suffered in silence.
Demon Copperhead
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. And after reading this novel, I think it should have won even more awards. Kingslover loosely adapts the classic novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens with a modern take.
The novel follows protagonist Demon Copperhead who lives in the south of the Appalachia with a single mother. Demon goes through a lot of hardships including going through foster care, abandonment issues, child labor and addiction. The story will break your heart, make you laugh, and make you question how something like this could happen in modern times and why.
Babel
Babel is a historical fiction and fantasy novel by R.F. Huang that takes readers back to the 1800s. Robin Swift is an orphan from Canton and is raised by Professor Lovell who trains Robin in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese in preparation of enrolling to Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation, which is also known as Babel.
The novel combines etymology and magic and Huang brings it all together at Oxford. But if you know anything about Huang, just know that she will call out wrongdoing throughout history and she does just that as she comments about imperialism and what she thinks of it. Her attention to history and using Oxford as the setting will take you back to the 1800s and is the perfect backdrop for her commentary.
Conclusion
These are the three historical fiction books that you need to read in 2025. Each of these novels is beautifully written and encompasses amazing historical settings. The research each author did makes you feel like you traveled back in time.
All three of these novels are incredible and all three authors have tons of amazing novels you should read after reading these novels. I love historical fiction novels and how much research authors do to make it all come together. I loved all three of these books and will be sharing even more historical fiction novels in the coming months. Happy Reading!
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Thanks for liking my wordpress post. If you like to read historical fiction, you might want to read my last two novels, based on my parents during the Nazi occupation in Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and on my maternal grandmother and her journey through two worldwars and immigration to my home country, The Netherlands in The Imposter. Unlike many novels written by American authors, the settings described is authentic as I grew up there and was born a few years after the end of World War II.