It’s been an amazing year for historical fiction (just like every year is an amazing year for historical fiction!), so I thought I’d round up some of the best, most richly textured tapestries of history that the fiction world has to offer. As always, I noticed a bit of a 20th century bias when putting this together, so please put older settings that you’ve enjoyed recently in the comments!
As a funny note, there are not one, but two books on this list set in Los Angeles in 1981, one featuring the preppies and the other following LA’s burgeoning punk scene. There are alas no crossovers, although I imagine the characters in the punk novel could easily beat up the characters in a Bret Easton Ellis novel (although the Ellis characters would throw some witty repartee in there that would probably be just as wounding). Anyway, now you, too, can speculate on who would win that fight. Enjoy.
Niklas Natt och Dag, The City Between the Bridges: 1794
(Atria)
Setting: Stockholm, 1794
I adored Niklas Natt och Dag’s brilliantly cynical debut, The Wolf and the Watchman, and The City Between the Bridges is just full of filth and cynicism, the perfect combination for depicting the late 18th century and its terrible iniquities. The watchman of The Wolf and the Watchman returns to solve a new crime, this one the brutal murder of a tenant’s daughter on the eve of her wedding to a seemingly sensitive nobleman. Natt och Dag is particularly adept at savagely ripping the notion of a “civilized age” apart and showing the raw suffering underneath. As a side note, I’ve long believed that historical fiction is only to be trusted when the author is willing to describe bad smells to set the scene, and this book is full of truly disgusting odors.
Sarah Penner, The London Seance Society
(Park Row)
Setting: Paris, 1870s
I don’t know if this is at all useful to mention, but I can almost guarantee you that Arthur Conan Doyle would have run through quicksand just to get his hands on a book with this title. The good news is that it’s definitely much better than the kind of book old Conan Doyle probably would have thought it was (which is to say, a nonfiction book about people who were successfully able to contact the spirit world). No, bestselling author Sarah Penner’s book is a canny romp through the Victorian zeitgeist that cemented Conan Doyle’s interests in spiritualism, a world in which science and rationalism clashed with spectacle and illusion and all of those things clashed with a preoccupation with ghosts and the occult. Anyway, it’s about a famed spiritualist and a non-believer who wind up joining forces to solve a murder… and then find themselves embroiled in a crime. Tell me you yourself wouldn’t run through quicksand to acquire this book, and I won’t believe you. –OR
Victoria Kielland, My Men
Translated by Damion Searls
(Astra House)
Setting: Norway and the United States, late 19th Century
Nasty, brutal, and short, Victoria Kielland’s My Men features Norwegian-American lonely hearts killer Belle Gunness, who lured widowers and their children to her farm with the promise of care and inheritable land, then slaughtered both her lovers and their families. The novel frames Gunness’ murderous quest as an almost-inevitable perversion of the American Dream. Kielland’s lyrical, abstract, and visceral prose, capably translated by Damion Searls, has won acclaim in her native Norway and is a beguiling match to her terrifying subject matter.
Katharine Beutner, Killingly
(Soho Press)
Setting: Massachusetts, 1897
My sister went to Mount Holyoke, which is more known for protesting the removal of midnight cookies from menu options than murder, but this historical mystery is based on the real disappearance of a student in 1897 at the famed women’s university. Beutner uses the student’s disappearance as a wider set-piece to investigate the nature of those who stand apart from the crowd, and are punished for their independence.
Alex Hay, The Housekeepers
(Graydon House)
Turn of the century London
In this delightful, turn-of-the-century-set heist novel, the death of a patriarch becomes the moment that his housekeeper sets in motion a complex plan to rob his home of every valuable inside. How will she do it? First, by assembling a team of circus performers, thieves, seamstresses, and actors, and second, by striking at the perfect time: during the hustle and bustle of a very inappropriate ball. Like the comic operettas of its time, The Housekeepers is riotous good fun!
Victor LaValle, Lone Women
(One World)
Setting: Montana, 1915
Adelaide Henry is the last of her line, burdened with a curse that she lugs across half the continental United States from warm California to freezing Montana. There, she finds friendship, companionship, and a fresh start, but will she be able to control whatever lurks in her strangely heavy steam-trunk? Lone Women is a searing and unsettling mixture of historical detail, western imagery, and terrifying twists and turns, from an author who continues to reinvent horror with every page.
Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets
(Anchor)
Setting: New York City, 1920s
Brendan Slocumb burst onto the scene with the brilliant literary mystery The Violin Conspiracy, and his follow-up is just as good. Split between the present day and 1918, the story slowly reveals how a renowned composer may have stolen all that made his music great from the autistic Black woman who was once his best friend. Like Slocumb’s debut, Symphony of Secrets uses the framework of classic detective fiction to tell a larger story of cultural appropriation and how our unequal society determines who gets to reap the benefits of talent and produce art.
Cheryl Head, Time’s Undoing
(Dutton)
Setting: Alabama, 1920s and 2010s
Cheryl Head turned to her own grandfather’s murder for the inspiration behind this timely tale of injustice and protest. Time’s Undoing is split between two time periods—the 1920s, when the narrator’s grandfather is murdered by a police officer in Birmingham, and the 2010s, when the narrator heads to Alabama on a journalistic assignment to connect what happened to her grandfather to ongoing issues with racist policing. She quickly finds herself up against those who would rather the truth be buried, but finds unlikely allies ready to help her fight for the truth, no matter its implications.
Kevin Jared Hosein, Hungry Ghosts
(Ecco)
Setting: Trinidad, 1940s
Set in the dying colonial era, Kevin Jared Hosein’s searing debut examines race, class, and decolonization through the lens of two families, one white and wealthy, the other Black and disenfranchised, as their lives become ever more entwined after the disappearance of the white family’s patriarch. Like the best historical fiction, Hungry Ghosts is immersed in the ideas and complexities of its’ shifting time period, for a triumph of well-researched storytelling.
Tara Ison, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf
(IG Publishing)
Setting: WWII France
In one of those amazing life twists that feels as bizarre as it is inspiring, Tara Ison, the writer of the cult hit Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead has crafted one of the best tales of collaboration ever written. In Between the Hour of Dog and Wolf, Tara Ison takes us into the mind of an adolescent Jewish girl being hidden with a French family during WWII. She spends so much time pretending to align with the ideals of the occupiers that she finds herself beginning to agree with them, in what reads as a Jewish version of Lacombe, Lucien. Perhaps it’s not such a twist—both book and film are about the ways we assume new roles when necessary to survival, whether that’s taking a job as a fashion consultant to feed siblings and putting on a batshit fashion show (a la Babysitter) or pretending to be a fascist to to protect from others knowing that you are Jewish. Okay, maybe that last comparison is a bit of a stretch, but still, everyone should read this book and also everyone should should rewatch that movie.
Naomi Hirahara, Evergreen
(Soho)
Setting: Post-War Chicago
Hirahara’s Clark and Division was one of the more accomplished crime novels in recent memory, and this year she’s following it up with Evergreen, following Aki Ito and her family as they make the journey from Chicago back to California, where they find the Japanese-American community in distress. Evergreen dives into the shadows of Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo to tell a story about one of the darker chapters of American history. With these books focused on the Japanese-American experience of post-WWII America, Hirahara has found a pivotal subject and brought her immense talents to bear. –DM
Josh Weiss, Sunset Empire
(Grand Central)
Setting: Los Angeles, 1950s
I loved Josh Weiss’s speculative alternative history noir Beat the Devils, and his follow-up, Sunset Empire, looks to be just as compelling and imaginative. The setting is fascinating, and explored with a seriousness towards in-world logic: an alternate timeline where McCarthy wins the presidential election, the war in Korea continues after years with no signs of ending, and anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia are at an all-time high. In the second in this series, a young Korean-American man blows up a department store in a suicide bombing probably caused by hypnosis for what I’m speculating is going to be a reverse Manchurian Candidate plotline. Meanwhile, Weiss’ policeman hero is under suspicion for the death of his ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth Short, and needs to solve both the bombing and Short’s murder before his time runs out to make a difference or clear his own name.
Thomas Mallon, Up With the Sun
(Knopf)
Setting: Hollywood, 1950s, New York City, 1980s
Dick Kallman was a real-life actor whose career was poisoned by homophobia against him and his own bad behavior, around in the 50s and 60s as an up-and-comer only to vanish in the wake of scandal and reappear in the news as a murder victim in 1980. There’s nothing more cynical than a crime novel about failed Hollywood dreams, and this novel is a perfect accompaniment to the ongoing labor fight in Hollywood.
John Manuel Arias, Where There Was Fire
(Flatiron)
Setting: Costa Rica, 1960s and 1990s
In 1968 Costa Rica, a fruit plantation burns after a family argument. Decades later, the family is still riven by their secrets. What caused the fire? What happened to the family’s patriarch? And what truths will characters learn about themselves, trapped with their thoughts and unpredictable company during an epic hurricane?
Rachel Cochran, The Gulf
(Harper)
Setting: Texas Gulf Coast, 1970s
Set in 1970s Texas in a conservative town amidst the rise of the feminist movement, The Gulf is one of several thrillers that show that the Third Coast has come into its own. The Gulf follows a young queer woman searching for answers after the murder of a powerful woman she’d admired greatly, but who was hated by most of the men in town—and her own children. A refreshing read and a strong debut from a powerful new voice.
Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night
(Hogarth)
Setting: Argentina, 1970s
What a strange and luminous novel. Mariana Enriquez stunned with her collection The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, and Our Share of Night is just as fantastic (and fantastical). Beginning in Argentina in the years of the dictatorship, Our Share of Night follows a father and son on a grief-driven road trip as they mourn the loss of the woman who united them, her dangerous (and possibly immortal) family close in pursuit. A dark vampiric noir that heralds a new era in South American horror.
Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto
(Doubleday)
Setting: New York City, 1970s
Pulitzer Prize winner Whitehead continues his journey through the history of modern New York City, this time taking on the 1970s, as the cast of characters from Harlem Shuffle get swept up in political action, civil unrest, corrupt policing, the rise of Blaxploitation culture, and more. It’s a rich backdrop for Whitehead’s powerful human dramas, and he paints a vivid portrait of people moving between the straight and the crooked world, just trying to get by. –DM
Kyle Decker, This Rancid Mill
(PM Press)
Setting: Los Angeles, 1981
Punk rock PI!!! Like the genre that inspired it, Decker’s This Rancid Mill embodies a punk ethos of DIY, not giving a shit, social critique, and a heavy dose of sardonic humor. This Rancid Mill is set in 1981 Los Angeles, so just keep The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization: The Punk Years in the back of your mind while reading it and you’ll have the exact era captured. In fact, perhaps the best way to describe this book is, what if Darby Crash had been murdered, and what if a PI with a Mohawk straight out of SLC Punk was hired to take on the case?
Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards
(Knopf)
Setting: Los Angeles, 1981
Bret Easton Ellis is back, this time with a new serial killer novel that brings together all the best aspects of Less Than Zero and American Psycho. It’s 1981, Missing Persons is playing on the stereo, and future writer Bret is doing bumps with his prep-school friends by the poolside, dressed sharply in Ralph Lauren, as a killer makes his way closer and closer to their wealthy enclave. Ellis’ teenage emotional truths collide with violent fictional set-pieces for an epic tale of Southern Californian sins.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Silver Nitrate
(Random House)
Setting: Mexico City, 1990s
Both of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s parents worked in radio, so perhaps that’s part of the inspiration behind this bonkers ode to sound engineering and the (literal magical) power of the human voice. Silver Nitrate features a sound editor and a has-been actor as they befriend an elderly icon from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, only to find themselves drawn into a vast conspiracy to harness the magic of the silver screen and bring an occult-obsessed Nazi back from the dead. This book has everything, and I could not recommend it enough!
