Shōgun
James Clavell
An English pilot is shipwrecked into the deadly politics of feudal Japan.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Biographical
Early modern · Adventure & epic · ~1500–1789
Early modern adventure & epic historical fiction books
Looking for historical fiction in the adventure & epic lane set during the Early modern (~1500–1789)? Early modern adventure & epic historical fiction books collects historical novels that match both filters—Tudors, exploration, Reformation, revolutions brewing. Sweeping quests, voyages, and large-canvas history HisFic is a free historical fiction discovery app: open a full reading journey with the same era and story-type filters, then add region, themes, or audience. Shelves mix curated historical fiction picks with Open Library titles so even thin combinations still have books to explore.
Shelf · 13 titles
Curated HisFic picks first, plus Open Library fills for this era + story type.
Musashi
Eiji Yoshikawa
In 1600, after the Battle of Sekigahara, a village youth called Takezo is left among the dead and hunted as an outlaw until the monk Takuan shuts him up with the books that turn him into Miyamoto Musashi. Eiji Yoshikawa’s novel, serialized from 1935 and read in English in Charles Terry’s translation, is early-modern adventure historical fiction of the years that follow—the road to Kyoto, the Yoshioka swordsmen, and the 1612 duel with Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryu Island.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Biographical
Outlander
Diana Gabaldon
A WWII nurse walks through standing stones into Jacobite Scotland—and a complicated love story.
Early modern · World War II era · Time-slip · Romance
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini
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.
Regency / Napoleonic · Early modern · Adventure & epic · Romance
The East Indian
Brinda Charry
A boy from India arrives in colonial Virginia—America’s earliest Asian immigrant story (SAH Prize 2025).
Early modern · Literary · Adventure & epic
The Gallows Pole
Ben Myers
Coin-clippers in 18th-century Yorkshire defy king and crown (Walter Scott Prize 2018).
Early modern · Literary · Adventure & epic
Aztec
Gary Jennings
In 1529 Bishop Juan de Zumárraga has the elderly Mexica Mixtli—born on the island of Xaltocan in 1466—dictate his life for King Carlos: a stonemason’s son who becomes a scribe, a trader, a warrior, and a councilor to Moctezuma, then watches Hernán Cortés bring down the Triple Alliance. Gary Jennings’s 1980 novel is adventure historical fiction of the Aztec world from a fifteenth-century childhood to the fall of Tenochtitlan, told by a man the bishop will prosecute for heresy once the chronicle is finished.
Medieval · Early modern · Adventure & epic · Family saga
The Game of Kings
Dorothy Dunnett
In 1547, during the Rough Wooing, Francis Crawford of Lymond comes back to Scotland an outlaw accused of treason, with the English army already in the kingdom and his brother Richard still at Culter. Dorothy Dunnett’s 1961 novel is early-modern adventure historical fiction of the double game he plays from the Borders to Edinburgh, and of the trial that has to name what he has actually been doing.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Literary
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
In 1625, Gascon cadet d’Artagnan rides to Paris to join Louis XIII’s musketeers and falls in with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—then into Cardinal Richelieu’s war of spies, diamonds, and honor. Dumas’s novel is early-modern historical adventure: duels, the queen’s honour, and the friendship behind “all for one, one for all.”
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Military & war
Lorna Doone
R. D. Blackmore
On Exmoor in the 1670s, yeoman’s son John Ridd sees the Doone clan kill his father, then finds a child named Lorna in their hidden valley and grows up set on winning her out of that stronghold. R. D. Blackmore’s 1869 novel is early-modern romance historical fiction of the Doone Valley, the Great Winter, and Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685—a Somerset love story against an outlaw clan the law will not touch.
Early modern · Romance · Adventure & epic
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
In 1757, during the French and Indian War, scout Hawkeye and the Mohican warriors Chingachgook and Uncas guide Cora and Alice Munro through the forests around Fort William Henry as the siege, a massacre, and a pursuit up the lakes close in. James Fenimore Cooper’s novel is early-American historical adventure: wilderness warfare, a famous frontier friendship, and the Leatherstocking tale readers still know by title.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Military & war
The Devil and His Boy
Anthony Horowitz
Fiction · Theater · Adventure and adventurers · Adventure and adventurers in fiction
Early modern · Mystery · Adventure & epic · Open Library
The Tao of Poison
Isham Cook
Historical fiction · Literary fiction · Adventure fiction · Picaresque fiction
Adventure & epic · Family saga · Open Library
Other story types in Early modern
Looking for a broader list? See Early modern historical fiction or adventure & epic historical fiction.