This year’s crop of give-me-now historical fiction includes the second release from one of our favorite debut novelists of 2015, a heroine-heavy anthology from an all-female authorial crew, and an irreverent telling of the story of England’s shortest lived queen. Here are 14 books that’ll take you back through time and around the world, because the best vacation is a book-cation.
See all 2016 previews here.
My Name Is Not Friday, by Jon Walter (January 5)
In the waning days of the Civil War, Samuel is an orphaned, free-born black American, sold into slavery by a priest he believed was his protector. Renamed Friday, he’s bought by the master of a Mississippi cotton plantation, where he faces further injustices and brutality. But he maintains both his faith and his iron grip on literacy—and his wish to be reunited with his younger brother. Samuel’s fight for freedom begins but doesn’t end with the dangerous decision to teach his fellow slaves to read and write.
Front Lines, by Michael Grant (January 26)
Grant imagines a world in which American women won the right to enlist during World War II, following three newly minted female soldiers from training to war: Rio, seeking direction after her sister’s death in combat; Frangie, an aspiring African American doctor with a disabled father; and Jewish Rainy, for whom the fight is personal. The woman encounter racism, sexism, and violence among the ranks, in a well-researched tale early readers say feels less speculative than purely, convincingly real.
Salt to the Sea, by Ruta Sepetys (February 2)
Master historical fiction writer Sepetys returns to World War II for the first time since Between Shades of Gray. Narration is shared among three refugees—a pregnant, undocumented Polish girl; a Prussian boy with a secret; a guilt-stricken Lithuanian nurse—and Alfred, a German soldier dreaming of a girl he left behind. The refugees meet when attempting to evacuate on Alfred’s ship, the ill-fated Wilhelm Gustloff. Just hours after the ship leaves shore, it’s torpedoed by Soviet fire, kicking off a new struggle to survive. Through four distinct voices, Sepetys highlights a significant but little-known chapter of WWII maritime history.
The Forbidden Orchid, by Sharon Biggs Waller (February 2)
On the verge of poverty and the end of life as she knows it, Elodie, the oldest of 10 sisters, stows away with her plant hunter father on a dangerous mission to restore their fortunes. They leave their England home for China in 1861, seeking a rare orchid he owes a collector. Elodie braves culture shock, defies convention, and finds romance—and learns she may prefer a dangerous explorer’s life to the corseted existence waiting for her back home. This sounds like a perfect follow-up to Waller’s A Mad Wicked Folly, another story of a young woman seeking a bigger life than she was born to.
Blackhearts, by Nicole Castroman (February 9)
Before he was notorious pirate Blackbeard, Edward Drummond was the son of a rich British merchant, set to inherit a landlocked life he despised while hungering for a return to the sea. His tempestuous romance with Anne, a maid-turned-ward in his house, puts his loveless betrothal to a fellow aristocrat at risk—and the cracks in his and Anne’s relationship speeds his spiral into becoming the infamous Blackbeard.
The Smell of Other People’s Houses, by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (February 23)
In a vividly evoked 1970s Alaska, Hitchcock sets hardscrabble poverty and domestic violence against transcendent natural beauty and the secret riches to be found in an unforgiving landscape. Her characters are fighting to build good lives amid harsh circumstances—Ruth is an almost-orphan grappling with a terrible secret, Dora is terrified she’ll be forced back under her violent father’s roof, Hank and his brothers have no choice but to escape, and Alyce doesn’t know how to claim her future without losing her past. All take a circuitous path toward finally making the connections they need to survive.
The Steep and Thorny Way, by Cat Winters (March 8)
Like Shakespeare’s play, this Prohibition-era riff on Hamlet opens with (rumor of) a ghost: Hank Denney, father of 16-year-old Hanalee, who died in a drunk driving accident. But the boy who allegedly killed him has another story, in which the doctor who treated African American Hank murdered him in order to marry Hanalee’s white mother. In a rural Oregon steeped in superstition, bigotry, and danger, Hanalee sets out to discover what really happened, even if it requires chasing her father’s ghost.
Burn Baby Burn, by Meg Medina (March 8)
During the hot, violent summer of 1977, New Yorker Nora Lopez deals with a disintegrating family life, a new crush, and the desire to make a clean start on life when she turns 18. Against the backdrop of a city under siege by serial killer the Son of Sam, Nora fears a murderer who targets girls who are out after dark. But while she’s on high alert for peril from without, she might be ignoring a worse threat close to home. I can’t wait to read Medina’s take on a vanished, gritty New York.
A Tyranny of Petticoats, edited by Jessica Spotswood (March 8)
With a subtitle like, “15 Tales of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls,” there’s no way we’re not going to love this book. Editor Jessica Spotswood has gathered stories from female authors including Marie Lu, Elizabeth Wein, and Kekla Magoon, whose heroines fight, flee, cross-dress, and sweet talk their way around settings ranging from the wild frontier to mid-century Los Angeles to Alaska in the 1700s. The anthology promises loads of feminist adventure, narrative magic, and a touch of the supernatural.
Girl in the Blue Coat, by Monica Hesse (April 5)
In Amsterdam in 1943, Hanneke buries her grief for her boyfriend, killed in combat, in delivering black-market goods. Her work is illegal but flies under the radar in a dangerous time—until a customer asks for her help in locating not an item but a person, a Jewish teen who disappeared from her hiding place within the woman’s house. Soon Hanneke has seen too much to remain uninvolved, and her life is transformed by her commitment to the Resistance.
Traitor Angels, by Anne Blankman (May 3)
For Elizabeth, the daughter of poet John Milton, life under the rule of King Charles II is fraught with peril. When the king’s men come to arrest her father, controversial author of epic poem “Paradise Lost,” it’s left to Elizabeth to retrieve him, with the help of a vague clue and an intriguing young scientist. What they discover is a life-changing secret embedded in the text of the poem itself—the kind of secret men would kill for, and that, if Elizabeth chooses to uncover it, will change her life forever.
Outrun the Moon, by Stacey Lee (May 24)
Lee follows up irresistible debut Under a Painted Sky with another feminist historical that eschews easy anachronism in favor of an authentic depiction of an oppressed girl fighting for a better life. Mercy Wong, living impoverished in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1906, is determined to rise above her station through education—but as the only Chinese student at stuffy St. Clare’s, she faces off daily against her classmates’ bigotry. Then a historical earthquake strikes the city, leaving Mercy and thousands of others homeless. Thrown together with other St. Clare’s girls while waiting for help from the outside, Mercy decides to do more than just stand by.
My Lady Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (June 7)
I cannot WAIT to read this cowritten take on the short life and shorter rule of Lady Jane Grey. In 1553, a tangled web of succession led to Grey’s being crowned Queen of England, a title she held for just nine days, all of them spent imprisoned in the Tower of London (she was beheaded for her trouble the following year). But enough about the actual history: My Lady Jane promises to be irreverent, deliciously anachronistic, and not at all beholden to the facts, described as a fantasy “in the tradition of The Princess Bride.” SWOON.
Ivory and Bone, by Julie Eshbaugh (June 14)
This one falls into the historical fantasy camp, set in a prehistoric world of deadly stakes and desperate love. Kol’s life is whittled down to the essentials: feed himself and his family. Survive. Then Mya joins their band, and suddenly his world expands. Attempts to win her backfire, but soon Kol has bigger problems: another clan arrives, including Lo, a boy who carries the key to Mya’s dark history. As the clans speed toward a violent conflict, Kol is forced to question everything, especially his love for a near-stranger.