The Mysteries of Udolpho

In Brittany on the eve of the Revolution, lawyer André-Louis Moreau watches a marquis kill his closest friend, then goes from a Rennes courtroom to a traveling theater—where he plays the clown Scaramouche—and on to a Paris fencing hall as France turns on its nobles. Rafael Sabatini’s 1921 novel is French Revolution historical adventure of disguise, the sword, and a man born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

In October 1783 Ross Poldark comes back from the American war to Nampara in Cornwall and finds his father dead, the land derelict, and Elizabeth Chynoweth promised to his cousin Francis. Winston Graham’s 1945 novel is early-modern saga historical fiction of the years through 1787—a mine he fights to reopen, the bankers and gentry of Truro, and Demelza Carne, the miner’s daughter he takes in from a fair, who is his wife by the end of this first volume.

Lockwood, new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, takes shelter at Wuthering Heights and hears how the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw loved each other on the Yorkshire moors—until Cathy married Edgar Linton, died in childbirth, and Heathcliff’s revenge closed on the next generation at both houses. Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel is eighteenth-century gothic literary historical fiction of obsessive love, class, and a house that will not let the dead go.

In nine snowy days of 1591, Black comes home to Istanbul and finds the Sultan’s miniaturists split over a secret book that would paint faces the Frankish way; Elegant has already been killed, and the corpse, a dog, a gold coin, and the color red take turns naming the murderer. Orhan Pamuk’s 1998 novel (English translation 2001) is early-modern mystery historical fiction of Ottoman book art, heresy, and a workshop that may go blind before it tells the truth.

In 1660, sixteen-year-old Amber St. Clare comes up to London as Charles II returns and, left penniless when Bruce Carlton sails, climbs from the streets and the playhouse to the king’s favor. Kathleen Winsor’s 1944 novel is early-modern romance historical fiction of that Restoration life—the plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and Amber’s long pursuit of Carlton, who will not marry her and settles in Virginia.

A young wife in 1680s Amsterdam receives a cabinet house—and cryptic dolls that seem to know too much.