These Historical Fiction Novels Will Sweep You Away

As it turns out, you don’t need a TARDIS to travel through time. All it takes — pardon our cheesiness — is a library card. But it’s true: More than any other medium, literature gives us the ability to experience eras and lives different far removed from our own. For a couple hundred pages, a light turns on in the darkness of history, illuminating the way things were.

Here’s all the stuff you slept through in history class, made interesting and palatable by a novelist’s touch. Welcome to New York in the Gilded Age, colonial Australia, and WWII on the Greek islands. If you want a deeper understanding of the present, read these books about the past.

The best part? By following empathetic characters through richly textured historical details, you might learn quite a bit, too. With these books, you'll broaden your intellectual curiosity as well as enjoying wonderful stories.