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  • Genre Guide
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Seattle Picks: Historical Fiction

Recently published historical novels with a rich variety of settings and time periods. (Updated June 2025)

User from The Seattle Public Library

30 items

  • A gutsy female journalist travels from San Francisco to Chile in the 19th century, trying to discover the truth about her father while civil war looms.
    Book, 2025New York, NY : Ballantine Books, [2025] — FIC ALLENDE 2025
  • Two sisters flee genocide in 1920s El Salvador, traveling to California and France but followed by ghosts.
    Book, 2024New York : Pantheon Books, [2024] — FIC BALIBRERA 2024
  • A fierce adventure tale based on true-life female pirates sailing the Caribbean in the 17th century.
    Book, 2024New York : Atria Books, 2024. — FIC CAMERON 2024
  • Magic and myth intertwine with history in this retelling of the story of the Nahua woman who was forced to interpret for the Spanish conquistadors in 16th century Mexico.
    Book, 2025New York, NY : Primero Sueño Press, Atria, 2025. — FIC CHAPA 2025
  • Set in 17th century India, England and colonial Virginia, this novel follows the travails of an orphaned boy who becomes an indentured servant and strives to become a doctor.
    Book, 2023New York : Scribner, 2023. — FIC CHARRY 2023
  • Stories within stories explore an 18th century French botanist’s obsession with finding a legendary Senegalese woman who was sold into enslavement and managed to escape.
    Book, 2023New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. — FIC DIOP 2023
  • In 1895, a French anarchist boards a train to Paris, planning to destroy all aboard with a homemade bomb.
    Book, 2025New York : Summit Books, 2025. — FIC DONOGHU 2025
  • Indigenous author Earling reclaims the mythologized figure of Sacajewea, vividly depicting the violence and tenacity of her life.
    Book, 2023Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2023 — FIC EARLING 2023
  • A gripping family saga set against the turbulent background of 1930s Tunisia.
    Book, 2025New York, NY : Europa Editions, 2025. — FIC GHENIM 2025
  • A philosophical Western with magical realism about a Mexican bandido in 1895 and his film star grandson in 1964, based on the author’s family history.
    Book, 2024New York : Simon & Schuster, 2024. — FIC GONZALEZ J 2024
  • An engrossing account of a 16th century noblewoman who is abandoned on a remote island off the coast of New France and fights brutal conditions to survive.
    Book, 2025New York : The Dial Press, [2025] — FIC GOODMAN 2025
  • A sweeping saga of the building of the Panama Canal, told through the stories of the diverse laborers involved in its construction in 1907.
    Book, 2024New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2024] — FIC HENRIQUEZ 2024
  • Drawing on Chinese mythology, this queer love story sweeps across centuries, from the ancient Han dynasty to 18th century China to present-day Los Angeles.
    Book, 2024Toronto, Ontario : Mira, [2024] — FIC HUANG 2024
  • Scholar Deborah Plant rescued this unfinished novel by Harlem Renaissance luminary Hurston, which looks at the Roman king’s life in a new light.
    Book, 2025New York, NY : Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2025] — FIC HURSTON 2025
  • A young man in 18th century India helps build a full-size wooden tiger for the Sultan. A sprawling adventure ensues across continents, incorporating a love story and a critique of colonialism.
    Book, 2023New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023. — FIC JAMES 2023
  • During a turbulent period of race riots and anti-Black violence in 1830s Philadelphia, three women struggle for freedom.
    Book, 2024New York : Ballantine Books, [2024] — FIC LATTIMORE 2024
  • A wide cast of characters from precolonial times to the present are linked – sometimes in ghostly ways –through their connections to a house in rural western Massachusetts.
    Book, 2023New York : Random House, [2023] — FIC MASON 2023
  • The 1972 discovery of a human skeleton leads to an examination of events decades earlier, when a vibrant community of Black folks and immigrants helped each other to endure dark times.
    Book, 2023New York : Riverhead Books, 2023. — FIC MCBRIDE 2023
  • This novel is based on the true story of Lizzie McDuffie, a Black maid in the White House during FDR’s presidency who appointed herself Secretary On Colored People’s Affairs.
    Book, 2025New York : William Morrow, [2025] — FIC MOON 2025
  • Biographical fiction about Jessie Redmon Fauset, the “literary midwife” of the Harlem Renaissance.
    Book, 2025New York : Berkley, [2025] — FIC MURRAY 2025