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
Early modern · Literary · ~1500–1789
Literary historical fiction books: Early modern
Looking for historical fiction in the literary lane set during the Early modern (~1500–1789)? Literary historical fiction books: Early modern collects historical novels that match both filters—Tudors, exploration, Reformation, revolutions brewing. Character- and prose-forward novels set in the past 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 · 22 titles
Curated HisFic picks first.
Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell, now Master Secretary, engineers the fall of Anne Boleyn as Henry VIII turns toward Jane Seymour. The middle novel of Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is court politics at close range—cool, lethal, and intimate.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell rises through Tudor England’s deadly court, told in close, modern-feeling prose.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell
The plague, a marriage, and the death of Shakespeare’s son—told with intimate, luminous focus.
Early modern · Literary · Biographical
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
Margaret George
Henry VIII’s manuscript, glossed in the margins by his fool Will Somers, runs from a 1491 childhood through six wives, the break with Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries, with Cromwell, Wolsey, More, and Anne Boleyn on the same pages as the king who signs their fates. Margaret George’s 1986 novel is early-modern biographical historical fiction of Tudor England told from the throne, not from the minister’s rooms.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The House of Boleyn
Tracy Borman
Tudor historian Tracy Borman tells the Boleyn family's rise and fall from Hever Castle—Anne, Mary, Thomas, and the household watching Henry VIII's court close in.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks
A Derbyshire village quarantines itself during the plague—and a servant girl finds her strength.
Early modern · Literary
News of the Dead
James Robertson
A Highland glen’s stories across centuries of saints, strangers, and secrets (Walter Scott Prize 2022).
Medieval · Early modern · Literary · Time-slip
The Cattle Killing
John Edgar Wideman
Linked narratives of plague, prophecy, and Black life across centuries (SAH Prize 1997).
Early modern · Late 20th century · Literary · Time-slip
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
The Mirror & the Light
Hilary Mantel
The final act of Thomas Cromwell’s rise and ruin (Walter Scott Prize 2021).
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier
A servant in Vermeer’s household becomes entangled in the making of a famous portrait.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Irving Stone
Apprenticed in Medici Florence, Michelangelo Buonarroti wrestles marble, popes, and his own fury from the David through the Sistine ceiling to the dome of St. Peter’s—while Renaissance Italy tears through poisoning princes and warring pontiffs. Irving Stone’s 1961 novel is early-modern biographical historical fiction of genius and patronage: the artist’s life at the center of sixteenth-century Florence and Rome.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
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 Marriage Portrait
Maggie O'Farrell
Lucrezia de’ Medici is married at fifteen to the Duke of Ferrara, then isolated in a court where a duchess can be painted, praised, and quietly discarded. O’Farrell turns a famous rumor—that Lucrezia was murdered—into close, tense biographical historical fiction of Renaissance Italy.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
An Instance of the Fingerpost
Iain Pears
In 1663 Oxford, just after Charles II’s return, fellow Robert Grove is found dead at New College and the servant Sarah Blundy is accused of poisoning him. Iain Pears’s 1997 novel is early-modern mystery historical fiction of four witnesses who will not agree—a Venetian visitor, a dispossessed student, the mathematician John Wallis, and the antiquary Anthony Wood—each telling a Restoration in which the murder is also a political plot.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk
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.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
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.
Early modern · Regency / Napoleonic · Literary · Romance
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
After eighteen years in the Bastille, Dr Manette is restored to his daughter Lucie in London—then the French Revolution draws an exiled aristocrat, a wasted English lawyer, and the Manettes back to Paris and the shadow of the Guillotine. Dickens’s novel is historical fiction of 1775–1793 London and Paris: sacrifice, revenge, and the best and worst of times.
Regency / Napoleonic · Early modern · Family saga · Literary
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton
A young wife in 1680s Amsterdam receives a cabinet house—and cryptic dolls that seem to know too much.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In 1640s Boston, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet A after bearing a child out of wedlock, while the town’s beloved minister hides his share of the secret and her long-lost husband returns under a new name to hunt the father. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is Puritan historical fiction of shame, hypocrisy, and a woman who will not name her lover—the American classic readers still search by title.
Early modern · Literary
Other story types in Early modern
Looking for a broader list? See Early modern historical fiction or literary historical fiction.