By Ahaqir Ishaq
A count confined to a hotel. Two sisters facing war. A young woman searching for freedom. These are very different starting points, but they illustrate what draws me to historical fiction: the chance to encounter a period through the people trying to live within it.
Looking back through our coverage on Books of Brilliance, five novels stand out for the relationship between their characters and their settings. Some create suspense through a murder investigation or an escape. Others ask you to slow down and watch a life take shape under difficult circumstances.
This selection offers five distinct reading experiences, with a guide to choosing the one that suits you. The descriptions avoid major ending spoilers, and none of these books needs to be read as part of a series.
1. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Choose it for: A suspenseful journey that combines history with speculative imagination.
Cora, an enslaved young woman on a Georgia plantation, attempts to escape. Whitehead makes the Underground Railroad a physical railway, with trains and tunnels beneath the ground.
That distinction matters. The historical Underground Railroad was a network of people, routes, and safe places; the novel’s railway is an imaginative transformation. Its world also brings together forms of oppression drawn from different periods, rather than offering a strictly realistic account of one historical moment.
The invention gives Cora’s journey a powerful uncertainty. Reaching another place does not automatically mean reaching safety, and the suspense grows from the fragility of each possible refuge.
In my review of The Underground Railroad, I described it as one of the best books I have ever read. Cora gives its larger ideas an immediate human center.
Pick this if you welcome fiction that takes creative risks. Expect emotionally difficult depictions of slavery and racist violence.
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2. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Choose it for: An emotional wartime story centered on two sisters.
The Nightingale follows Vianne Mauriac and Isabelle Rossignol in France during World War II. Their different personalities and circumstances give Hannah two ways to explore survival and resistance.
The appeal is in following people who must make choices without knowing how those choices will turn out. A family relationship gives the larger conflict a personal scale: what happens to one sister matters differently when you understand the other.
Our review of The Nightingale emphasizes its emotional storytelling and attention to women’s experiences during the war.
This is the book I would put first for someone seeking a story built around relationships and sacrifice. You do not need to choose it because World War II is your favorite setting; interest in the sisters is a strong reason to begin.
It is also a useful choice for readers who want to discuss the characters afterward. Consider how circumstances shape your judgment of each sister’s decisions as you read.
3. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Choose it for: A memorable protagonist and a life unfolding within a confined setting.
Historical fiction can create a wide perspective from a surprisingly small space. A Gentleman in Moscow follows Count Alexander Rostov, sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Hotel Metropol.
The restriction supplies the novel with an intriguing question: what kind of life can someone build when the boundaries of that life have been decided for them? Russia continues changing while the Count must respond from within the hotel.
Towles makes Rostov’s personality central to the experience. In my A Gentleman in Moscow review, I singled him out as a character who remained memorable after reading.
Choose this when you want to spend time with a protagonist rather than move quickly through an investigation. Its setting offers a different kind of immersion from the other selections: instead of traveling widely, you become familiar with one place.
For an autumn reading evening, that sustained attention to a character and his surroundings can be especially appealing.
4. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Choose it for: A medieval murder mystery involving books, religious conflict, and restricted knowledge.
Set in a northern Italian monastery in 1327, The Name of the Rose follows William of Baskerville and the young Adso of Melk as suspicious deaths unsettle a closed religious community.
The monastery’s library gives the investigation a particularly compelling focus. Preserving books and allowing people to read them are different things, and Eco makes that tension part of the mystery.
What I appreciate is the way the setting shapes the investigation. Debates about theology and authority matter because they influence what people fear, defend, and refuse to question.
In my review of The Name of the Rose, I praised its ideas and atmosphere while acknowledging its dense passages.
Start here if libraries, intellectual conflict, and literary mysteries appeal to you. Give the opening time: this is a novel for immersion and close attention, rather than a quick whodunit with little interruption between clues.
5. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Choose it for: A demanding literary epic with multiple voices and a crime-fiction dimension.
James draws on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Jamaica in 1976, then builds a fictional narrative reaching across years and borders. Marley appears primarily as “the Singer,” while many other people carry the story.
The shifting voices are essential to its effect. Characters speak from their own situations, bringing different rhythms, priorities, and limits of understanding to the same larger world.
As my review of A Brief History of Seven Killings explains, the novel rewards attention but asks for concentration. Its imagined motives and conspiracies belong to the fiction; they should not be treated as a definitive account of the real attack.
Pick this when you want a substantial reading project. Focus first on who is narrating and what matters to that person, allowing the connections to develop over time.
Readers should expect graphic violence, sexual violence, and strong language.
Which Historical Fiction Book Should You Read First?
The most useful question is what you want your next book to do. A historical setting alone will not tell you whether a novel suits your reading mood.
| If you want… | Start with… |
|---|---|
| Suspense and an inventive approach to history | The Underground Railroad |
| An emotional story about sisters during wartime | The Nightingale |
| Time with a distinctive protagonist in one setting | A Gentleman in Moscow |
| A literary mystery with an intricate intellectual world | The Name of the Rose |
| Multiple voices and an expansive, demanding narrative | A Brief History of Seven Killings |
My suggestion is to choose one experience rather than turn this list into an assignment. If you are tired of your usual reading patterns, try a different structure: a confined setting, an unfamiliar narrator, or a mystery that makes room for difficult ideas.
That approach also gives you a useful question to carry into the book: how does this character’s world shape the choices available to them? You may disagree with a decision while understanding the pressures behind it.
Which historical fiction novel made you care most about the people living through its period? Share your recommendation in the comments.
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