The Historical Novel Society lists a comprehensive range of titles from mainstream and small press publishers for novels set from ancient times to the mid-1970s.
Titles are listed alphabetically by author last name within their expected publishing month (see links below) and cover all historical fiction sub genres.
Details are pulled from publisher catalogues and websites; Amazon; NetGalley; Edelweiss US & Canada Trade and BNCCatalist Canada Trade.
Information is compiled by Fiona Sheppard (US, CAN, UK, ANZ).
See our guide to forthcoming historical novels for 2025 for previous releases.
For children’s titles, see our guides to children’s and YA historical novels out in 2026 and in 2025.
Other than short excerpts, please link to this page rather than copying the entries – thank you!
This list is updated monthly, so please visit us again for more titles!
Last update: July 9, 2025
January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December
January 2026
Jean-Baptiste Andrea, Watching Over Her, Simon & Schuster (a star-crossed love story following a dwarf and skilled sculptor as he recounts the moments in his life that inspired his powerful masterpiece)
Jenny Ashcroft, Secrets of the Watch House, HQ Fiction (1934; when a wealthy widower offers Violet employment, she journeys to his home on the remote Cornish island of Aoife’s Bay, where mysteries await)
Mary Balogh, Remember That Day, Berkley (a Ravenswood novel in which soldier and a pacifist make the unlikeliest of pairs, but there’s nothing that can prevent their love from igniting)
A.D. Bell, The Bookbinder’s Secret, St. Martin’s (a story of mystery and romance set in Oxford, 1901)
Clay Cane, Burn Down Master’s House, Dafina (inspired by the true stories of the men and women who dared to fight back against the barbarism of the Civil War era)
Jennifer Chevalier, The Winter Witch, Simon & Schuster (two sisters set sail on a bride ship from Normandy hoping to leave a curse behind them and find better lives in the wilds of 17th-century Quebec)
Lynn Cullen, When We Were Brilliant, Berkley (novel in which Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold make a deal that will change their lives)
Donna Everhart, Women of a Promiscuous Nature, Kensington (accused of promiscuity in 1930s North Carolina, a young woman, unjustly incarcerated decides to fight back)
Rebecca Ferrier, The Salt Bind, Renegade Books (Cornwall, 1779; historical fantasy explores a world of forgotten sirens, sea gods and the alchemy of the Old Ways)
Janice Hadlow, Rules of the Heart, Henry Holt (a married woman of high social standing in 18th century England tries to hide from the judging eyes of her elite circle)
Cathryn Kemp, They Can’t Burn Us All, Bantam (Iceland, 1655; when a land of ice and fire is swept into the Protestant Reformation, a witch-hunting craze begins, not of women, but of respectable men of learning)
Howard Linskey, Muse of Fire, Canelo (in next in William Shakespeare Mysteries, Will is once again caught between two powerful foes and must choose a side)
Madeline Martin, A Time of Witches, Hanover Square (dual timeline story set between 17th-c witch trials in England & present day)
Javier Moro, The Architect of New York, Counterpoint (fiction chronicling the life, loves, and successes of Rafael Guastavino, an influential yet largely forgotten Spanish architect)
Jennifer Niven, Meet the Newmans, Flatiron (family story about the dual lives we lead, set in 1964)
Pamela Norsworthy, The Florentine Entanglement, Black Rose Writing (Cold War era; the marriage of a CIA officer and his wife is plunged into crisis when a spy mission goes awry)
Rob Osler, The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, Kensington (book two, after The Case of the Missing Maid, delves into Chicago’s criminal aldermen, the Gray Wolves)
Heather Rose, A Great Act of Love, S&S/Summit (novel set among the champagne vines of 19th century France and Australia, follows a young woman searching for her father who has committed an unspeakable crime)
Gabriella Saab, The Star Society, Harper Muse (inspired by Audrey Hepburn, story follows Ada and Ingrid as they reunite after World War II, embarking on a journey amid the backdrop of the Red Scare in Hollywood)
John Sayles, Crucible, Melville House (novel about Henry Ford and the violent rise of the Ford Motor Company in 1920-30’s Detroit)
Angela Tomaski, The Infamous Gilberts, Scribner (spanning the eve of World War II to the early 2000s, novel weaves a tapestry of English country life as readers enter rooms filled with secrets and memories, each revealing the story of the five Gilbert siblings)
Maria Tureaud, This House Will Feed, Kensington (amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a position at a remote manor house)
Max Watman, Tomorrow, the War, Skyhorse (follows the intertwined lives of Jed Stokes, a restless wanderer shaped by violence, and Raleigh, a once-enslaved man seeking justice)
Valerie Wilson Wesley, The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum, Kensington (Harlem Renaissance marks a rebirth of Black cultural in this historical mystery set in the excess of the Roaring Twenties)
Nikesha Elise Williams, The Seven Daughters of Dupree, Gallery/Scout (a feminist literary fiction that explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women)
Peggy Joque Williams, Braving the Dawn, Black Rose Writing (sequel to Courting the Sun; a novel of New France)
Ellen Yardley, Eleanor and the South Beach Murder, Kensington (Eleanor Roosevelt and secretary Kay Thompson become entangled in a deadly international mystery connected to a famous performer
Chi Zijian, trans. Bruce Humes, The Last Quarter of the Moon, Milkweed Editions (a woman from one of the last remote reindeer-herding tribes of northeastern China tells the story of her family and the last century of her country’s history)
February 2026
Shana Abe, A Crown of Stars, Kensington (account of the Lusitania’s fateful last days, drawn from the true story of a young actress who survived the sinking)
Sophie Austin, The Storyteller’s Secret, HarperCollins (Ava Adams is known as The Storyteller, using hypnotism to draw long-buried memories from the lost and the lonely in 19th-century York)
Vicki Beeby, Courage for the Flying Nightingales, Canelo (a nursing orderly in the WAAF is keen to stick with her friends, when they volunteer for the air ambulance and are moved to RAF Starsden)
Rahul Bhattacharya, Railsong, Bloomsbury (novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways of 20th century India)
Denny S. Bryce, Where the False Gods Dwell, Kensington (1935; inspired by choreographer Katherine Dunham, novel imagines the experiences of three different women who accompany her, hoping to find their destinies)
Shelly Dickson Carr, Who Killed Lady Pippa, Level Best-Historia (book 1 in a new historical mystery series)
Megan Chance, The Vermilion Sea, Lake Union (about a luxurious 1925 yachting cruise to the Sea of Cortez that turns deadly for a small group of wealthy passengers when its secondary purpose reveals more than one terrible secret)
Kerry Chaput, The Secret Courtesan, She Writes (dual-timeline adventure about a historian who risks everything to discover the truth about a female Renaissance sculptor unjustly erased by history)
Sarah Domet, Everything Lost Returns, Flatiron (a story of two women separated across time and connected by the arrival of Halley’s comet; set in 1986 and 1910)
Jim Eldridge, Murder at the Pyramids, Allison & Busby (1901; historical whodunnit set in Egypt)
Cristina Rivera Garza, Autobiography of Cotton, Graywolf (reveals a rich social history of agricultural colonization, labor activism, environmental degradation, and cross-border migration)
Michelle Griep, The Bird of Bedford Manor, Barbour (inspirational Regency romance set in Bedfordshire, England, 1820)
Louise Hare, The House of Fallen Sisters, HQ (historical thriller – full description forthcoming)
Esther Hatch, If You’ll Have Me, Shadow Mountain (an unexpected connection arises between a lady seeking freedom and a prosperous younger man)
Devon Jersild, Luminous Bodies, Paul Dry Books (novel weaves a portrait of a Marie Curie, whose struggles and triumphs have much to say to women and men today)
Sadeqa Johnson, Beautiful Children, Keeper of Lost Children, Renegade Books/37Ink
Jasmine Kirkbride, The Forest on the Edge of Time, Tor (historical time-travel crossed with sci-fi fantasy as two women are transported through time to opposite worlds)
Anna Kovatcheva, She Made Herself a Monster, Mariner/Harvill Secker (in 19th-century Bulgaria, a self-proclaimed vampire slayer joins forces with a teenage girl to create a monster)
Andrew Krivak, Mule Boy, Bellvue Literary Press (elegiac novel, set in 1929, of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story)
Sarah E. Ladd, An Unconventional Lady, Thomas Nelson (sweet Regency romance explores the expanding world of science as two childhood friends work together to separate fact from fiction)
Debby Lee, The Caregiver at Wounded Knee, Barbour (the Enduring Hope series brings an inspirational romance between nurse Rose Rushing Water, an Oglala Sioux and tribal policeman Nathaniel Gray Cloud)
Carmella Lowkis, A Slow and Secret Poison, Atria (in the early 1900s, a young gardener at a lush English manor falls in love with her employer)
Shona MacLean, The Cromarty Library Circle, Quercus (a group of leading townspeople are brought together by a newly founded circulating library in 1831, Cromarty, Scotland and must negotiate their changing world)
Patrice Mcdonough, Murder By Moonrise, Kensington (1867; mystery set in the Victorian era, where Scotland Yard’s first female medical examiner finds her holiday sidelined by a murderer)
Ian McGuire, White River Crossing, Crown (novel about the lust for gold and its bloody consequences, set in the unforgiving landscape of the sub-Arctic Canadian wilderness
Mary-Jane Riley, Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway, Allison & Busby (Beattie Cavendish, special operative for a covert section of GCHQ, is sent to Scotland in 1949, during the Cold War)
Gian Sadar, Land of Dreams, Lake Union (1930’s mystery in which scandal, secret loves and murder shatter a woman’s Hollywood dream)
Leila Siddiqui, The Glowing Hours, Hell’s Hundred (1816; revisionist gothic horror about the summer Mary Shelley began work on Frankenstein, as told by her Indian housemaid)
Dana Stabenow, The Harvey Girl, Head of Zeus/Aries (mystery featuring an all-female detective bureau set during the American frontier boom time of the lawless 1890s)
Cameron Sullivan, The Red Winter, Tor (reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution)
Amy Tordoff, All We Have Is Time, Atria (woven between the biggest events in history from London 1605 to Woodstock 1969 and beyond, a jaded immortal woman and a time traveler fall in love)
Alexandra Vasti, The Halifax Hellions, St. Martin’s Griffin (story in which the most scandalous ladies in London finally meet their match)
March 2026
Michelle Collins Anderson, The Moonshine Women, Kensington (in Prohibition era Missouri Ozarks, three sisters take over their father’s moonshine business)
Michael Arnold, The River Warriors, Canelo (in Savage Isle book 2, Cullen, now a warrior of renown, is dispatched by Aoife the Dread to seek out a mystic religious totem which could help unite the bickering clans of Britannia)
Amy Rose Bennett, The Governess’s Handbook for Managing Misfit Marquesses, Kensington (graduates of The Parasol Academy for Exceptional Nannies and Governesses are prepared for every circumstance, and know a little magic on the side)
Marie Benedict, Daughter of Egypt, St. Martin’s Press (tale of a young woman who unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharoah—rewriting both of their legacies forever)
Nelio Biedermann, trans. Jamie Bulloch, Lázár, MacLehose/S&S/Summit (story of a noble Hungarian family and their decline, taking us from the beginning of the 20th century through the Nazi and Soviet eras to the Hungarian national uprising in 1956)
Rhys Bowen, Clare Broyles, Vanished in the Crowd, Minotaur (retired detective Molly Murphy Sullivan investigates the disappearance of a female scientist)
Christopher Cosmos, Island of Ghost and Dreams, Pegasus (Chania, Crete, 1941; a woman from a small Greek village finds herself swept up in the long and storied history of her island)
Elizabeth Crowens, Round Up the Usual Suspects, Level Best-Historia (The Hollywood Baskervilles, book 3, where the sleuths concoct a plan for Basil to assume his on-screen persona and round up possible suspects)
Lynn Cullen, When We Were Brilliant, Berkley (1952; novel featuring Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold who make a deal that will change their lives)
Sandra Dallas, The Hired Man, St. Martin’s (set in Dust Bowl Kansas as a teenager is murdered just after a handsome stranger arrives in town)
Alba De Céspedes, trans. Ann Goldstein, There’s No Turning Back, Washington Square Press (originally published in 1938 and banned, story centers on eight women with radically different backgrounds who attend the same college in Rome)
A. Rae Dunlap, The Dreadfuls, Kensington (true crime and historical fiction combine in Victorian-era thriller featuring a young heroine determined to solve the case of the serial killer, Jack the Ripper)
Florencia Etcheves, Frida’s Cook, Atria/Primero Sueno Press (debut set in the home of Frida Kahlo, in 1939, where food, art, and love weave together a story of friendship and loyalty)
Tara Gereaux, Wild People Quiet, Scribner Canada (explores the repercussions of a woman’s decision to hide her Métis identity while living in a small, predominantly white prairie town in the 1940s)
Linda Hamilton, The Fourth Wife, Kensington (a historical Gothic horror story inspired by Mormon folklore and the concept of plural marriage)
Nicola Harrison, The Island Club, St. Martin’s (a novel of loves lost and found, shocking secrets, and the power of female friendship, set in 1956)
Ariel Kaplan, The Kingdom of Almonds, Erewhon (historical fantasy conclusion to the Mirror Realm Cycle set in late 1500s Mediterranean)
Jim Kelly, The American Suspect, Allison & Busby (1942; a story of love and revenge which spans two world wars)
Mary Monroe, Bad Seeds, Dafina (Depression-era Alabama novel tells of a businesswoman who discovers her dark side when she’s betrayed by friendship)
Santa Montefiore, Secrets of the Starlit Sea, Simon & Schuster (Timeslider, book 2; time-travel romance series takes Pixie Tate on a gilded-age collision course with history)
Erica Ruth Neubauer, Vengeance in Venice, Kensington (1927; Jane and Redvers have arrived in Venice for their honeymoon, but behind a mask at a costume ball hides the gaze of a heartless killer)
Gin Phillips, Ruby Falls, Atlantic (a twist on the locked-room mystery and an exploration of loss and what it means to start over, set against the true story of the discovery of Ruby Falls)
Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, Scribner (tale about an ambitious young woman who must thwart an occult plot by time-traveling fascists during the chaos of the London Blitz)
ReShonda Tate, With Love from Harlem, William Morrow (a romantic historical drama set against the backdrop of twentieth-century Harlem)
Seána Tinley, The Irish Midwife at War, Hodder & Stoughton (second book in series following the lives of Peggy and her midwife friends)
Colm TóibÃn, The News from Dublin, Scribner (collection of eleven short stories, set across Ireland, Spain, and America—about the complexities of family, longing, loss, and love)
Solitaire Townsend, Godstorm, Bedford Square (in an alternate fantasy petrol-fuelled Roman Empire which never fell, a gladiatrix turned governess must rescue the child she has loved as her own)
Evie Woods, The Missing Notes, HarperCollins (historical fantasy in which one violin charts its own course through history whereby its origins unlock a mystery stretching back decades)
April 2026
Brianne Baker, Edmonia, Dafina (the story of Black and Native American Neoclassical sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who overcame adversity to create enduring tributes in stone to her race and times)
Ellen Barker, Nothing North of Delmar, She Writes (a novel of one young woman’s post-college foray into the adult realities of landlords, economics, and urban politics, set against the Bicentennial summer of 1976)
Maryka Biaggio, Margery and Me, Regal House (based on the true story of Margery Crandon, the medium who tangled with magician and spiritualism detractor, Harry Houdini)
Jennifer N. Brown, The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton, St. Martin’s (dual-timeline murder mystery set in the English countryside, when an ambitious professor discovers the long-lost manuscript of a Reformation-era prophetess)
Colleen Cambridge, In the Spirit of French Murder, Kensington (Paris, 1950; after moving to France, Tabitha Knight has a new friend in fellow expat and Cordon Bleu student Julia Child)
KJ Charles, How to Fake it in Society, Tor Bramble (1821; Nicolas-Marc Compte de Valoise, infamous for stealing a priceless diamond necklace meant for Marie Antoinette, hopes to restore his wronged mother’s reputation)
Jennifer Chiaverini, The Patchwork Players, William Morrow (a new installment of the author’s Elm Creek Quilts series)
Anna Cowan, The Duke, St. Martin’s Griffin (sapphic regency romance about the duke who fears nothing, until the woman she never forgot walks through the door)
Emily Franklin, Love & Other Monsters, David R. Godine (story of love, lust, art and betrayal, based on the largely forgotten life of eighteen-year-old Claire Clairmont)
Genevieve Graham, The Chambermaid’s Key, Simon & Schuster (novel set in Toronto in 1929, about a young chambermaid, a handsome waiter, and a murder)
Jiyoung Han, Honey in the Wound, Avid Reader Press (debut novel about a mysteriously gifted Korean family confronting the brutality of the Japanese empire)
Elizabeth Hardinger, Won’t Be Long Now, John Scognamiglio (set in same fictional town as All the Forgivenesses, novel brings to life a misunderstood young woman who finds her way to an unexpected grace)
Kate Hilton, City of the Muse, Simon & Schuster (dual-timeline novel about the death of a female papyrologist during an archaeological dig in the early 1900s and a present-day quest to find out who killed her)
Conn Iggulden, Inferno, Pegasus (third novel in trilogy as Nero faces the last challenges in his quest for ultimate dominion over the Roman Empire)
Sabrina Jeffries, Nearly A Bride, Kensington (next installment of the Lords of Hazard series set in the Regency Napoleonic era an English nobleman is finally free from exile—but can his heart still be captured?)
Ariel Lawhon, The Pirate Queen, Doubleday (adventure inspired by the life of Grace O’Malley, an Irish sea captain and folk heroine who risked everything to protect her people against the Elizabethan regime)
Andre Ludington, Double Shadow, Minotaur (2nd installment of the Splinter Effect series, in which time-traveler Rabbit Ward returns to the past to save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem)
Tom Perotta, Ghost Town, Scribner (tale about a summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer, looking back on a series of events that changed his life)
Kelly Rimmer, The Midnight Estate, Graydon House/Piatkus (told across dual timelines, novel weaves a tale inviting readers into the heart of a family’s darkest secrets)
Muna Shehadi, The Jewel of Cairo, Headline (dual timeline cross-generational novel set in Cairo 1915 and 1976)
Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club, Spiegel & Grau/Fig Tree UK/Doubleday Canada (story of a group of women whose fates converge as summer turns to fall and the Depression tightens its grip)
Karen Tei Yamashita, Questions 27 & 28, Graywolf (polyvocal history of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War II)
May 2026
Anna Jacobs, Hope Comes to Eastby End, Hodder & Stoughton (new family saga series)
Douglas Skelton, A Thief’s Revenge, Canelo (A Company of Rogues book 6–Jonas Flynt returns from the Caribbean to London to claim revenge against an old enemy)
Amanda Skenandore, When No One Else Will, Kensington (based on the true story of an illegal women’s clinic at the center of a high-profile trial in 1940s Chicago)
Shaina Steinberg, Echoes of Infamy, Kensington (in postwar Los Angeles, former spies Evelyn Bishop and Nick Gallagher dig into shady real estate dealings, murder, and the aftereffects of WWII Japanese American internment)
Ayelet Waldman, A Perfect Hand, Knopf (amusing novel of love and subterfuge between a lady’s maid and her clandestine lover, set in the country estates of 19th century England)
Heather Webb, The Hope Keeper, Sourcebooks Landmark (story of the legendary Hope Diamond and the last woman to own it)
June 2026
Johanna Bell, The Orphan’s Garden, Hodder (WWII inspirational saga)
Alex Gough, Caesar’s Nemesis, Canelo (fourth book in The Mark Antony series featuring the battle that shook the world and gave birth to the Roman Empire)
Elizabeth Hand, Unspeakable Things, Mulholland (loosely inspired by Du Maurier’s Rebecca, in which two queer teenager girls in 1920s London go on a killing spree)
Rose Tremain, The Housekeeper, Chatto & Windus (1930s England; fictionalises the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca)
July 2026
India Hayford, Days of Sun and Shadow, John Scognamiglio (book two sequel to The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree)
M. R. C. Kasasian, The Terror of Tannery Lane, Canelo (third in the Victorian mystery series in which Lady Violet Thorn overhears a young woman accusing a married couple of murdering her parents)
August 2026
Angus Donald, Templar Assassin, Canelo (second novel in trilogy inspired by a true story about an English Templar knight who joined the Mongol horde of Genghis Khan)
Sherrilyn Kenyon, All Things Hidden, Blackstone (supernatural WWII historical thriller in which two people are both as eager to stop the war as the other)
Rose Warner, A Christmas Proposal, Canelo (saga about a woman who must make her own way after losing her fiancé and brothers in the Great War)
September 2026
Rosie Goodwin, The Winter Bride, Zaffre (third book in the new Rags to Riches Trilogy)
October 2026
November 2026
December 2026
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