2024 historical fiction highlights
From England's Bloody Assizes to a pub in Fitzroy, from a Japanese brothel to the centre of power in the Soviet Union – these gripping works of historical fiction span continents and centuries, giving readers a powerful glimpse into fascinating chapters of history. Learn a little something while being caught up in incredible stories with our top picks of 2024's historical fiction.
Rapture by Emily Maguire
The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to the study she is denied as a woman.
So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of the revered Fulda monastery, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge and wisdom and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful – and deadly – currency.
All the Bees in the Hollows by Lauren Keegan
Marytè is a devoted beekeeper. She lives by the old rules: work with fellow beekeepers, be a good Christian and a good harvest will follow. These rules help her cope with her grief when she inherits her husband's tree hollows. But as harsh conditions and tax increases threaten the harvest, Marytè begins to question her faith, her community and her own sanity.
There is little help to be had from her eldest daughter. Austėja is no worker bee. As her mother works, she dreams of escaping their isolated community and finds refuge in the ancient forest and the old beliefs.
When Austėja discovers the mutilated body of the Hollow Watcher and uncovers a honeycomb of lies and betrayal, she is intent on finding the truth and protecting her family. Will mother and daughter overcome their differences, learn the truth behind the murder and complete the honey harvest?
Imperial Harvest by Bruce Pascoe
Yen Se has lost everything to the Khan's brutality.
Left with one eye and one leg, he is forced out of his home village to work in the city as a horse handler. Witness to the Khan's violent crusade, their raids sweeping across Eurasia, he travels with the theatre of war, but exists outside of it; stunned every morning to find himself alive.
Yen Se moves randomly across Europe with a loose band of survivors – men who think of survival, men who think of resistance, and women who dare to dream of peace.
The Players by Minette Walters
England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II's illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle.
Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth's army is quickly defeated by King James II's superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered.
As Dorset braces for carnage, Lady Jayne Harrier and her enigmatic son, assisted by the reclusive daughter of a local magistrate, contrive ways to save men from the gallows.
Compelling and powerful, The Players is a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes.
Cherrywood by Jock Serong
Edinburgh, 1916: Thomas Wrenfether, a rich Scottish industrialist, is offered the opportunity to take on a startling project – to build a paddle steamer from European cherrywood, on the other side of the world in booming Melbourne, Australia. But nothing goes according to plan ...
Melbourne, 1993. Martha is a lonely, frustrated lawyer. One night on impulse she stops at a strange pub in Fitzroy, The Cherrywood, for a bottle of wine. The building and its inhabitants make an indelible impression, and she slowly begins to deduce odd truths about the pub.
A complex puzzlebox of a novel, this is delicious, rich storytelling, with a dark, unusual charm.
A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang
Xishi's beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue – where the best fate for a girl is to marry well and support her family. When Xishi draws the attention of Fanli, the famous young military advisor, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to use her beauty as a weapon; one that could topple the rival neighbouring kingdom of Wu, improve the lives of her people, and avenge her sister's murder. All she has to do is infiltrate the enemy palace as a spy, seduce their immoral king, and weaken them from within.
But the higher Xishi climbs in the Wu court, the farther she and Fanli have to fall. And if she is unmasked as a traitor, she will bring both kingdoms down.
The Defiance of Frances Dickinson by Wendy Parkins
1838, England: When eighteen-year-old heiress Frances Dickinson impulsively marries Lieutenant John Geils, she soon discovers there is much about her husband she did not know. A cruel and violent man, John keeps Frances in isolation on his family's estate in Scotland, while spending her fortune and preying upon their maids.
Frances yearns to break free from her marriage but the law is not on her side. Only when John's abuse escalates can she set in motion a daring plan to secure her freedom.
In the Margins by Gail Holmes
England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector's wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances’s love of books and secretly practised Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn’t report a reclusive and mysterious midwife, to delay her going to gaol.
As Frances takes increasingly bold steps to help the women and children of the parish, she attracts the ire of a patron of the church who questions why Frances collects books that she charges are entertainment. When her mother is gaoled for religious crimes, the secrets Frances hides from her husband begin to surface, and she is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the strict dictates of the law, or risk everything to free the women she cares for.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
In September 1913, Mieczyslaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: will there be war? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
But disturbing events are happening in the guesthouse and its surroundings. Someone – or something – seems to be infiltrating their world. As our student attempts to decipher the sinister forces at work, little does he realise they have already chosen their next target.
The Party by Tessa Hadley
On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students' party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn's misgivings.
As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.
There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
Explore three different storylines, beautifully intertwined across timelines, all connected by a single drop of water.
In Victorian London, Arthur, a gifted boy from the slums, is thrust into a broader world when he encounters a book called Nineveh and Its Remains; which leads him to an obsession with Mesopotamian history.
In modern-day Turkey, we meet Narin, a Yazidi girl travelling a perilous journey along with her grandmother to the sacred waters of Lalish, in order to be baptised. Her peaceful life is shattered by violence, and amid a landscape marred by conflict, she seeks refuge and to reconnect with her ancestral heritage.
In contemporary London, Zaleekhah, a hydrologist recovering from a broken marriage, finds solace in a houseboat on the Thames River. Her story is embedded with the rivers she studies; she reflects on love and loss, and her enduring memories that serve as a crucial link within the story’s broader tapestry.
The First Friend by Malcolm Knox
The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian, Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia.
By his side is Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is dangerous; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. The tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played?
A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
The year is 1903, and tenacious and spirited Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan, becoming the protegee of Shinonome, the oiran, or the highest-ranking courtesan.
Through Shinonome's teachings, fifteen-year-old Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. Education for a courtesan extends beyond the art of seduction, and as Ichi is taught to read and write she develops a voice that refuses to be dampened by the brothel's rigid hierarchy.
Outside the cloistered world of the red-light district, rumours of local worker strikes grow, and as the seasons change in Kumamoto, Ichi, Shinonome and their fellow courtesans begin to wonder how they might redistribute the power and wealth of the brothels among themselves ...
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
It's the Golden Age Hollywood and every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary temptress. So when the film's mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves.
As Vera navigates the glitz and the gilded glamour of her new city, Nancy follows silently behind, trying to take everything she believes Vera has been unfairly handed.
But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself. Consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who foretells the doom of her stepfather, Salome is a woman torn between the decree of duty and the yearning of her heart.
And tragedy is waiting in the wings ... for all three women.
Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey & Leslie Jamison
Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She's in a reflective mood, thinking back on her thrilling, tragic, nearly impossible journey from her sheltered, old-fashioned family in New York to here, iconoclast and independent woman.
Rebecca Godfrey's Peggy is a blazingly fresh interpretation of a woman who defies every expectation. The daughter of two Jewish dynasties, Peggy finds her cloistered life turned upside down at fourteen, when her beloved father goes down with the Titanic. His death prompts Peggy to seek a life of passion and personal freedom, and, above all, to believe in the transformative power of art.
