Fairly Decent Historical Fiction

From Zeugma

===Roman/Classical===

• I, Claudius. Robert Graves. This is considered one of the best books of the century. It's about the guy who manages to survive the various murders of most of the imperial family by looking completely harmless--and of course lives long enough to become emperor himself.

Contents 1 Medieval 2 Medieval/Arthurian 3 Renaissance 4 Restoration through the 18th c 5 Victorian

[edit] Medieval

• The Archer's Tale. Bernard Cornwell. On the Battle of Crecy during the Hundred Years War. You learn all about the greatness of the English longbow in this one.
• Bellarion. Rafael Sabatini. Lots of good stuff on medieval battle techniques here, back in the days before a bigger army determined the outcome.
• The Doomsday Book. Connie Willis. A time-travel story about an archeologist who misses her jump and ends up in the middle of the Bubonic Plague.
• The House on the Strand. Daphne Du Maurier. Another time travel book, but the category doesn't do it justice. Here the hero takes a hallucinogenic drug that puts his mind back in the 14th century, while his body stays firmly in the present. Also a psychological thriller.
• Morality Play. Barry Unsworth. This one is a creepy murder mystery involving a band of medieval players who perform an updated cycle play to comment on what's happening around them.
• The Name of the Rose. Umberto Eco. Nobody knows more about medieval Italy than Eco. This book is full of medieval philosophy, politics, and culture. The best way to immerse yourself in the thinking of the time.
• The Dream of Scipio. Iain Pears. A sadly beautiful murder mystery that uses the past to explain the present.
• King Hereafter. Dorothy Dunnett. A retelling of Macbeth.
• The White Company. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This was Doyle's favorite work, even more than his Sherlock Holmes stories.
• Thirteenth Night. Alan Gordon. The first of a medieval mystery series involving the guild of jesters. This one is a sequel to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

[edit] Medieval/Arthurian

• The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. Steinbeck. Did you know Steinbeck wrote about the Arthurian tragedy? This is a very introspective, moody retelling of Malory.
• The Mists of Avalon. Marion Zimmer Bradley. The feminist flipside of the saga.
• The Warlord Chronicles. Bernard Cornwell. The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur.A gritty look at the Arthurian saga that places events squarely in the early 6th century, when the Romans were pulling out of Britain. This is not the romanticized King Arthur.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Mark Twain. The classic in the field. Hilarious.

[edit] Renaissance

• The Fifth Queen. Ford Madox Ford. Another classic. It's about Katharine Howard, Henry VIII's doomed queen.
• The Lymond Chronicles. Dorothy Dunnett. Follows the rise of an antihero who rallies Scotland against her enemies. The first is A Game of Kings.

[edit] Restoration through the 18th c

• The Aubrey/Maturin saga. Patrick O'Brian. If you liked the movie Master and Commander, you'll like these.
• The Sharpe novels. Bernard Cornwell. All Cornwell's books are good. These are about the Napoleonic wars. Chronologically the series starts with Sharpe's Tiger, kind of a prequel.
• Scaramouche. Rafael Sabatini. I loved this book. It's a fun historical adventure story that takes place during the French Revolution. Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk are pretty good, too.
• An Instance of the Fingerpost. Iain Pears. A very literary mystery that takes place during the reign of Charles II. Each chapter covers a different character's perspective, so you never really know for sure what's what.

[edit] Victorian

• Anubis Gates. Tim Powers. Another time travel book, this time to Victorian England. Very creepy, makes lots of use of supernatural and weird cultic devices.
• The Flashman Series. George MacDonald Fraser. A send-up of the British aristocratic class told from one of its most successful (fictitious) generals: a self-confessed bully, coward, and opportunist. These are darkly funny.
• Possession. A. S. Byatt. The book is so much better than the movie. It's an academic mystery in which two modern-day researchers unearth a previously unknown love affair between two great Victorian poets and try to figure out what happened to it.
• The Prestige. Christopher Priest. Two sleight-of-hand magicians in the Victorian Age develop a bitter rivalry--finding out why is one of the things that keeps you reading. Lots of creepy supernatural effects here.
• To Say Nothing of the Dog. Connie Willis. Also a time travel book--a real time travel book, involving time machines and such--also to Victorian England. But this one is light-hearted and fun. It traces a mystery across several centuries: it's like reading three-dimensionally.