Favorite Historical Fiction

So, I actually haven't read much Historical Fiction recently (read a ton as a teenager though,) and as I continue to work on my novel, I want to explore others in the genre.

What are some of your favorites? They don't need to be in the same time period as mine (though maybe that'd help with the research...hmmm.. :D) but for reference, I'm writing in America at the 1890's and at the turn of the century.

Mine would have to be the turn of the century as well. In addition to everything from 1920 to 1950. Oh yeah, and Ming China.

Anything by Sharon Kay Penman. I've also heard that Elizabeth Chadwick is good (not the romance novelist, the other one).

I liked "The Heretic Queen" by Michelle Moran and "Selene: a novel of Alexandria" by Faith L. Justice. M.L. Eqatin writes really good Spanish and Incan HF.

Louis L'Amour is the unquestioned king of Westerns, in my book anyway and he also wrote one medieval book called "The Walking Drum."

I love all levels of history but medieval Europe and Colonial America are my favorites. I love castles.

Also like the Regency period in England. Georgette Heyer is good for that.

I know technically the follow authors did not write historical fiction, but I am a rather large fan of Mrs. Gaskell, a Victorian author, Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Caleb Carr's The Alienist and The Angel Of Darkness, while not terribly great novels (while enjoyable, their main character is a huge ponce, possible self-insert, and near Mary Sue), are set during your time period -- and, befitting the fact that Carr is a historian by trade, are really well researched.

If you'd rather relax a bit, Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is partially set in the late nineteenth century, but is mostly an enjoyable modern-day thriller. The parts that deal with history are very well researched.

And if you're down with YA, Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist series aren't super intense about their setting (the 1880s), but they're fun adventure stories which so happen to be in a different time.

-- If you're not attached to the 19th century, Connie Willis writes excellent time-travel fiction which is, by necessity, set largely in whatever period her characters go to. I've only read Doomsday Book, set during an outbreak of bubonic plague, but I have great confidence in any other novels she's written.

I'm afraid that's all that comes to mind right now -- I hope this helps :3

I like very much Bruce Alexander (Cooks) novels about the blind judge Sir John Fielding. The setting is 18th century London. As well I like the Fandorin novels from Boris Akunin and "The Name Of The Rose" by Umberto Eco. Their style is quite different (and Akunins differ from book to book) but they are quite accurate with facts. (I have to confess, that I don't like most medieval settings because of the lack of knowledge most authors have - there is much too much myth and guesswork).

From the contemporary classics I like the sisters Bronte, Jane Austen, Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas and Honore de Balzac.

Bernard Cornwell. By far and away one of the best. George McDonald Fraser too

Barbara Hambly - anything she wrote. Her lonngest running historical fiction series is Ben January about a free black surgeon in 1830's New Orleans who has to use his skills as a musician because he isn't allowed to practice as a doctor. Also, he solves murder cases :D

She also wrote a book that takes place in 2nd century AD Rome, which is great, too (and it took me ten years to find an affordable copy in English because it's been out of print for ages)!

I'm reading Hambly because she is my favourite author, my favourite time frame to read, however, is Neolithic to Ancient Rome (and the Byzantine Empire which is basically a Christian sort of Ancient Rome in Greek).

My second favourite author for historical fiction is Gillian Bradshaw, especially her novels set in late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire (The Bearkeeper's Daughter, The Beacon at Alexandria and Imperial Purple) but all her works are very good.

For the late Neolithic my favourites are the books by Judith Tarr (White Mare's Daughter and Lady of Horses) which are absolutely fascinating (although they might as well be Fantasy or some sort of AU because relatively little is known about that time). Her books taking place in Ancient Egypt are great too, especially Pillar Of Light.

My guilty pleasures are the books of Suzanne Frank (Reflections on the Nile, Shadows on the Aegean, Sunrise on the Mediterranean and Twilight in Babylon) about a time travelling woman from the 21st century. They are no great literature by any means but really entertaining. Only the last book gets progressively... crazy *lol*.

Oh, well, I just don't find the Middle Ages and the early Modern Era interesting. It needs a gifted author like Barbara Hambly to make me read anything about it.

I love Bernard Cornwell's novels haha. My dad and I are working our way through Simon Scarrow's Eagle series, based on the Roman Empire.

My historical fiction guilty pleasure is Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court novels. Great to read, but heavily romanticised. Elizabeth Chadwick's historical fiction is better than Gregory's but the books are huge and quite dense with (real) details and action.

I love anything written by Judith Merkle Riley. She's done things set in fourteenth-century England, sixteenth-century England and seventeenth-century France, and her novels are just delightful. Well-researched, and very satisfying.

I am lazy when it comes to reading but have decided if I am to be any kind of writer I will need to buckle down and read more books of the same genre.
I started - in 4 days read a book set in 1855, Australian Goldfields, called 'Mosquito Creek," by Robert Engwerda. I wouldn't say it was a brilliant read but enjoyed reading someone else's interpretation of that era in which I am writing about. I will read a lot more in 2012 - a promise to self.

I love Elizabeth Chadwick. She writes mostly about medieval England. Of the four novels of hers I've read, one of them was set in 1066, just before and after the Norman Conquest, while the other three took place around the time of the reigns of Richard I, John, and the Magna Carta. I love how in-depth they feel.

I also really enjoyed Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth and World Without End as well, long as they were.

And I used to love Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels as well.

My favourite historical novel - indeed, one of my favourite of all novels - is 'This Thing of Darkness' by Harry Thompson. It's a fictional account of the career of Robert Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle during the Darwin expedition (among other things). It's beautifully written and feels very authentic. It's a tragedy that this was Thompson's only novel - he died of cancer before he could write any more. It made the Booker longlist, not bad for a first novel.

In a not-dissimilar vein, The Terror by Dan Simmons is a fictional account of the lost Franklin expedition to find the North West Passage. It is not strictly historical fiction, as it has distinct fantasy and horror crossovers, but the historical detail and texture is every bit as well realised as a Patrick O'Brian novel, to the extent where the fantastical elements seem all but incidental.

For deft integration of historical incidents into the lives of fictional characters, for my money the sea novels of Richard Woodman can't be beaten. C.S. Forester tended to avoid difficulties with history by sending Horatio Hornblower far away from the big historical events. Woodman gives his hero, Nathaniel Drinkwater, no such get-out. The character appears at the moonlight battle of 1780, Camperdown, Copenhagen, Trafalgar and even events such as the signing of the treaty between Napoleon and the Russian Tsar, without it seeming in the least bit implausible, or messing with the history.

The River of Time Series by Lisa T. Bergren. Granted, they're YA, but awesome. Also things actually written in historical times. Like Ssherlock Holmes.
And Louis L'Amour.

I love Umberto Eco, especially his 'In the name of the Rose'. brilliant, brilliant!
I also like Hella Haasse's work. My all-time favorite of her, 'in a dark wood wandering', is a great telling of the Hunderd Years War. Other historical books by her mainly deal with the Dutch East Indies in the 19th and 20th century (most famous one being 'Lords of the Tea').
I have yet to come across other historical fiction dealing with the middle ages that is as well researched and well written as those two books! I tried Elizabeth Chadwick as I heard so much about her, but I'm a bit disappointed. While it is thoroughly researched, it isn't as well-written as I had hoped...

Books I read dealing with other time periods (19th-20th centuries) are mostly written during that time - Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary is brilliant!), Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Mark Twain...

oh and I love C.S. Forester's Hornblower series.

And nobody has yet mentioned Charles Dickens; I still have great memories of "A Tale of Two Cities" (which was historical when he wrote it since it took place 50+ years beforehe wrote it) from when i was in school. Dickens is very long on description so if you don't like that as much you might not enjoy it, but I really liked it.

I had no idea there were so many who wrote on different time periods like that. It confirms my belief that I did the right thing not trying an adventure with Waldensians in the Middle Ages (I may have ancestors who were Waldensians; I definitely have Huguenot ancestors.) Too many books that do a lot more research than I'd ever have time for.