We are currently in the middle of October and the rainy weather is the perfect background for a cozy read. If you are a lover of historical fiction, it’s your lucky day. Cause in this blogpost I am sharing with you my top 10 historical novels of all time.
1. Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
Goodreads Rating: 4.06/5
My Rating: 4/5
Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, have been raised in a powerful family that has provided wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries. Ambitious, charismatic and beautiful, Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep, an unstable young pharaoh. It is hoped by all that her strong personality will temper the young Amunhotep’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods, overthrow the priests of Amun and introduce a new sun god for all to worship.
From the moment of her arrival in Thebes, Nefertiti is beloved by the people. Her charisma is matched only by her husband’s perceived generosity. The love of the commoners will not be enough, however, if the royal couple is not able to conceive an heir.
As Nefertiti turns her attention to producing a son, she fails to see that the powerful priests, along with the military, are plotting against her husband’s rule…
Perfect for: lovers of Ancient Egypt and those who like stories with political & religious intrigue
2. Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest by Colin Falconer
Goodreads Rating: 3.84/5
My Rating: 4/5
The triumphant, controversial life of the Aztec woman Malinali is one of the great and enduring legends of Mexico. A high-born Mexica heiress, she was sold into slavery as a child, and it was as a slave of the Maya that she met the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. To her and many of the Mexica, Cortés was Feathered Serpent, the god whose return to earth foretold the end of Montezuma’s fabled empire.
The daughter of a prophet, Malinali knew her fate lay with Feathered Serpent and his invaders. To this day she is reviled as a traitor by Mexico’s native people, but is also honored as a heroine and symbolic mother of a mixed-race nation.
This is her story—and the story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which for better or worse changed the Americas forever.
Perfect for: the ones interested in the Spanish conguest of Mexico and how it impacted the lives of native Mexicans
3. The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters
Goodreads Rating: 4.5/5
My Rating: 5/5
Set in the 1100s, the series of 20 novels follows Brother Cadfael, a Welsh ex-crusader, who now serves as a Benedictine monk in the Shrewsbury Abbey and uses his knowledge of herbalism along with his skillful observance of human nature to aid the law in solving murders.
Perfect for: the lovers of murder investigation and the ones interested in the English Anarchy (1135-1153)
4. The Dreaming: A Novel of Australia by Barbara Wood
Goodreads Rating: 3.96/5
My Rating: 5/5
Following her mother’s sudden death in 1871, Joanna Drury sets sail from India and arrives in Melbourne to claim the property left to her by her mother and to trace the mysteries of her family’s past.
From her first steps on shore, Joanna becomes entangled with a lost boy who leads her to the fascinating Hugh Westbrook. She agrees to look after the child, Adam, in exchange for Hugh s help in finding her inheritance. But she falls deeply in love with Hugh and with life at his sheep station, Merinda.
When strange nightmares begin to plague her the same that tormented her mother Joanna starts to notice the Aborigines strange reaction to her. Delving into Australia s past, she searches out the tragic events that have marked her family s destiny and her own life, events that happened long ago in the time the Aborigines call the Dreaming .
Ideal for: historical romance and Aborigine/Australia enthusiasts
5. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Goodreads Rating: 3.94/5
My Rating: 5/5
One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand, overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.
Ideal for: Jules Verne fans and those who love to travel
6. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Goodreads Rating: 4.57/5
My Rating: 5/5
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.
Perfect for: lovers of stories set in WWII with romantic elements
7. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Goodreads Rating: 3.88/5
My Rating: 5/5
The novel takes place on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky as two enslaved people, Tom and 4-year-old Harry, are sold to pay the Shelby family debts. Focused on Tom, a strong religious man who lives with his wife and three young children, and Eliza, Harry’s mother, we follow their journey as they try to overcome challenges.
Ideal for: those sympathizing with the lives of enslaved people in America prior to the abolishment of slavery
8. World Without End by Ken Follet
Goodreads Rating: 4.26/5
My Rating: 4/5
Set in the town of Kingsbridge in the 1300s, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroads of new ideas—about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice.
In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race—the Black Death.
Perfect for: those intrigued by the Middle Ages
9. Michael Stroggof by Jules Verne
Goodreads Rating: 3.89/5
My Rating: 5/5
Michael Strogoff, a 30-year-old native of Omsk, is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan (prince), incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines.
Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, a brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Strogoff is sent to Irkutsk to warn the governor about the traitor Ivan Ogareff, a former colonel, who was once demoted and exiled and now seeks revenge against the imperial family
Perfect for: lovers of Jules Verne fiction and Russian monarchy
10. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Goodreads Rating: 3.79/5
My Rating: 3/5
Late one night while exploring her father’s library, a young woman finds an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters. The letters are all addressed to “My dear and unfortunate successor,” and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of, a labyrinth where the secrets of her father’s past and her mother’s mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.
The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula.
Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now this young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself–to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world?
Ideal for: Dracula and dark academia enthusiasts
