6 Historical Fiction Books Taking You Around the World

Our first stop is Ireland, a place close to my heart as I got engaged at the Giant’s Causeway. Maggie O’Farrell transports us to 1865 for her latest masterpiece; an epic multi-generational saga follows one family over many years in a story of separation, longing, resilience, hope and love.

It begins on a windswept peninsula as 10-year-old Liam and his father, Tomas, are mapping the land as part of the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. But when Tomas comes across a copse where he has an unusual encounter, everything changes for him and his family.

Haunting, visceral and deeply human, this is an ancient story with a hint of the supernatural that will hold you captive from start to finish. 

Next we travel across the Ocean to Alabama, USA. Set in 1973 the story follows Civil Townsend, a newly qualified nurse working at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. Civil passionately believes in the work she’ll be doing to serve poor Black women and believes a difference can be made to their lives through contraception and good care. But when she is given her first case she is shocked to discover her patients are sisters aged just eleven and thirteen on the new Depo-provera shot.

Based on a true story that shocked the whole of the United States, this story left me outraged and heartbroken. A must read for anyone who believes in the perseverance of female productive rights.

Our next book takes us to the place we had our first family holiday: Cornwall on the south coast of England. Based on a true story, The Lamplighters tells the story of three missing men, their warring widows, ghostly goings-on and the power and mystery of the sea.

Told in dual timelines, we follow the men in the days leading up to their disappearance and then their widows twenty years later as they are interviewed by a writer who hopes to finally discover what really happened on that frigid winter day.

This extraordinary debut is told so evocatively that you will smell the salty sea air, see the waves and hear the siren song of the sea as she whispers her secrets. A must read if you like your historical fiction with a bit of mystery and the supernatural.

Rome was our first stop on our Italian honeymoon, so I had to include it in this list. Taking us back to the 17th Century, this is the story of the first female serial killer, Giulia Tofana. This book was my introduction to her and I’ve been lost down a rabbit hole ever since.

Giulia was accused, along with four other women, of selling poison to the women of Rome so they could kill their husbands. They were thought to have hundreds, maybe even thousands of victims.

Atmospheric, dark and immersive, it is a story brimming with female rage, power and revenge. A story that will fuel your fury at the injustices they faced and leave you rooting for the anti-hero as they take back their power against abusive or cruel men.  

Our penultimate stop is 18th Century France. The Oberst Factory crafts exquisite and particular toile de Jouy wallpaper for the country’s most fashionable and elite homes. But it has been shrouded in mystery ever since the death of Madame Oberst in strange circumstances five years earlier.

There are whispers she haunts the grounds and that it is her image that is featured on all of the factory’s prints. Sisters Sofi and Lana arrive at the factory to begin a new life following the death of their father and when Lana moves into a new bedchamber to begin work as a lady’s maid, she is shocked to find it covered with violet wallpaper patterned with vignetted scenes from a woman’s life. Unnervingly, the woman looks exactly like her and scenes from her own life are mirrored on the paper. 

Set against a backdrop of the French revolution, this haunting debut is infused with a chilling gothic malice that had shivers running down my spine. 

Our final stop on our around-the-world-tour is the place I first went abroad to when I was ten years old: Portugal.

Librarian Ava is happy working at the Library of Congress. But when she is asked to serve her country she finds herself in Lisbon posing as a librarian but working undercover as a spy to gather intelligence. Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press secretly run by the Resistance. When a young mother and her son need help fleeing the Nazis, the two women find themselves connecting through coded messages to try and help them.

Based on a true story, this moving, uplifting and suspenseful novel reminds us that hope and light can exist even in the darkest of times.