The Women
Kristin Hannah
A young American nurse serves in Vietnam and struggles to be seen when she comes home.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Military & war · Family saga
Historical fiction · ~1945–1991
Cold War historical fiction books
Cold War historical fiction (~1945–1991): Spies, partition, civil rights, decolonization. Cold War historical fiction includes spies, partition, civil rights, and decolonization. Tone ranges from thriller to literary family saga.
Curated on HisFic (22)
Hand-picked titles from HisFic's catalog tagged for this era.
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
Linked stories follow two half-sisters’ lineages across centuries of African and American history.
Early modern · Victorian / Gilded Age · Family saga · Literary
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
Four generations of a Korean family navigate life under Japanese rule and in Japan.
World War II era · Cold War · Family saga · Literary
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Black maids and a young white writer risk everything to tell the truth about life in 1960s Mississippi.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Family saga
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
A boyhood betrayal in Kabul echoes through war, exile, and a chance at redemption.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Family saga
The Rose Code
Kate Quinn
In 1940 three women—society girl Osla, East End clerk Mab, and shy Beth—are recruited to Bletchley Park to break German codes, then torn apart by secrecy and betrayal. In 1947 an encrypted letter pulls them back together to hunt a traitor still hiding in the rose code—World War II historical fiction of friendship, cryptanalysis, and a postwar reckoning.
World War II era · Cold War · Time-slip · Mystery
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel as the Soviet century remakes the world outside. Over three decades he builds a life of friendship, purpose, and quiet resistance within the hotel’s walls.
Interwar · World War II era · Literary
The Alice Network
Kate Quinn
In 1947 a pregnant American college student hunts for a missing Frenchwoman and collides with Eve Gardiner, a damaged veteran of a real World War I spy ring. Dual timelines braid the Alice Network’s 1915 missions in occupied France with a postwar reckoning.
World War I era · Cold War · Time-slip · Military & war
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
An evangelical family arrives in the Congo on the eve of independence—told through the daughters’ voices.
Cold War · Late 20th century · Family saga · Literary
A Dangerous Friend
Ward Just
American idealism collides with Vietnam’s reality (SAH Prize co-winner 2001).
Cold War · Literary · Military & war
Gain
Richard Powers
A corporation’s rise and a woman’s illness braid American industrial history (SAH Prize 1999).
Victorian / Gilded Age · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
Hungry Ghosts
Kevin Jared Hosein
A Trinidadian epic of hunger, ambition, and a missing boy (Walter Scott Prize 2024).
World War II era · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
In the Lake of the Woods
Tim O'Brien
A politician’s marriage unravels under the shadow of Vietnam (SAH Prize 1995).
Cold War · Late 20th century · Literary · Mystery
Matterhorn
Karl Marlantes
Marines fight for a hill in Vietnam—brutal, unforgettable (SAH Prize 2011).
Cold War · Military & war · Literary
On Canaan's Side
Sebastian Barry
An Irishwoman looks back across a century of war, migration, and loss (Walter Scott Prize 2012).
World War I era · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
Saint Monkey
Jacinda Townsend
Two Black girls from Kentucky—and the different Americas they enter (SAH Prize 2015).
Cold War · Literary · Family saga
The Garden of Evening Mists
Tan Twan Eng
A judge in Malaya tends a Japanese garden and confronts wartime memory (Walter Scott Prize 2013).
World War II era · Cold War · Literary
The Land in Winter
Andrew Miller
Two couples weather Britain’s Big Freeze of 1962–63 (Walter Scott Prize 2025).
Cold War · Literary
The Long Take
Robin Robertson
A D-Day veteran drifts through postwar American cities in verse-novel form (Walter Scott Prize 2019).
Cold War · Literary
The Narrow Land
Christine Dwyer Hickey
Cape Cod summer intersecting the world of Edward Hopper (Walter Scott Prize 2020).
Cold War · Literary · Biographical
There There
Tommy Orange
Urban Native lives converge toward a powwow in Oakland (SAH Prize 2019).
Late 20th century · Cold War · Literary · Family saga
Tightrope
Simon Mawer
A female SOE agent’s wartime courage and Cold War aftershocks (Walter Scott Prize 2016).
World War II era · Cold War · Literary · Military & war
Story types in Cold War
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