When they're done well, historical novels are a really exciting way to learn about history, because they combine the emotional involvement of fiction with the narrative of events that took place and details of how life was lived in the past. For that reason, we're always excited when a historian chooses a work of historical fiction as one of their expert recommendations.
HISTORICAL FICTION The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
“The Mercies is based on real events: a 1617 storm in Vardø, Norway, and the witch trials that followed…This is a pretty stunning book”—Paul Carlucci, novelist
NONFICTION BOOKS
🏆 Winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich
“This is an early work, recording and retelling the stories of elderly Soviet citizens about the days in the Second World War when the war reached their villages…It is the most beautiful, brilliant, heartbreakingly sad book I have ever read”—James Rebanks, writer
HISTORY BOOKS Stalingrad by Antony Beevor
“He’s written a lot of good books and he’s rightly considered to be a preeminent historian of World War Two. For me, Stalingrad is by far his best book, and I’ve read nearly all of them. It’s magnificent and gripping”—Alex Kershaw, historian
HISTORICAL FICTION The Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault
“There are quite a lot of novels about Alexander and I think that, of them all, Mary Renault’s is the most readable and the most entertaining…Mary Renault really knew her sources”—Hugh Bowden, historian
BIOGRAPHY Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown
“I would say that this is the outstanding biography of the 20th century…Augustine is the giant thinker and writer of the Latin Christian world. He was born in 354…in a little town called Thagaste in North Africa—Robin Lane Fox, historian
SCIENCE FICTION Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
“It’s a difficult book to summarise, because it’s very hallucinatory and weird! Every aspect of it is brighter than life, somehow”—Natasha Pulley, novelist
FANTASY The Scar by China Miéville
“He created this world called Bas Lag, within which exists a massive city called New Crobuzon, which is like a mad fantastical London…He’s got such a fecund imagination, it’s almost like he’s got about a hundred books’ worth of ideas crammed into these novels.”—Richard Swan, novelist
THE BEST KINDLES IN 2025 Which Kindle to get?
“That’s an easy question for me, Kindle Paperwhite is the most popular Kindle by far…It has all the best features that you would want”—Maneetpaul Singh, Kindle reviewer and author of Kindle Bookworm
CLASSIC LITERATURE War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
“Tolstoy famously said of War and Peace that it wasn’t even a novel. In a sense, it’s a total history of that epoch in Russia in a fictional form”—Orlando Figes, historian
THRILLERS Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
“You feel the layers in the book, the density. It’s packed with ideas, with observations. And it’s a mystery as well. You want to know what happened. Where is the girl? What happened to her?”—Cara Hunter, crime novelist
MYSTERIES/PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin
“There is this central device that is so clever, that at the end you both hug yourself with glee at how good it is and kick yourself because you didn’t get it”—Simon Brett, mystery novelist
HISTORY BOOKS Wilderness at Dawn by Ted Morgan
“This book shaped my understanding of human geography. It reminds readers that America was settled by several different cultures and countries. It’s a triumph of storytelling about the different frontiers of America”—Brent Glass, public historian
FICTION Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
“This isn’t a novel using government statistics and scientific studies to preach to the choir: it goes for the reader’s EQ rather than her or his IQ…All cli-fi books should be like this. I couldn’t stop reading, over a period of several days, as I entered Kingsolver’s world”—Dan Bloom, journalist
FUNNIEST BOOKS OF 2024 Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon
“If you can take something like the failed invasion of Sicily in 412BC, and make a buddy comedy out of it—well, you’ve got something very unique.”—Justin Albert, judge, Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
THE BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS Mythos by Stephen Fry
“Mythos by Stephen Fry is a humorous retelling of the Greek myths…after listening to it one time, my children (aged 12, 11 and 10) insisted on listening to it again”—Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books
The Best Mystery Books of 2025
“On this list, we also include books that have been nominated for prestigious awards, like the Edgars in the US and the Dagger Awards in the UK”
AI BOOKS ChatGPT-4 offers its own opinions on artificial intelligence “These books offer valuable insights into the development, challenges, and future prospects of AI”—ChatGPT-4, AI chatbot
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