The Long Song

Linked stories follow two half-sisters’ lineages across centuries of African and American history.

A healer’s daughter navigates slavery’s end and dangerous secrets (SAH Prize 2021).

Five Russian families move through court, love, and the Napoleonic invasion as 1805 becomes Borodino and Moscow burns. Tolstoy’s epic is Napoleonic historical fiction on a national scale—ballrooms and battlefields, Pierre and Natasha, and the question of who makes history.

An enslaved woman’s escape reimagines the Underground Railroad as a literal train—and faces America’s brutal history.

Two families—one Northern, one Southern—are torn by the approach of the Civil War.

In 1815, convict Jean Valjean is released from the galleys and tries to live honestly under a stolen name, while Inspector Javert hunts him through Restoration and July-Monarchy France. Hugo’s novel follows Fantine, Cosette, Marius, and the 1832 Paris barricades—crime, mercy, and a social epic that still defines French historical fiction after Waterloo.