New Historical Fiction To Read in 2024 | Penguin Random House (2024)

You Dreamed of Empires

by Álvaro Enrigue

From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story. You Dreamed of Empires brings to life Tenochtitlan at its height, and reimagines its destiny. The incomparably original Alvaro Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution, a restitutive, fantastical counter-attack, in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.

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$28.00

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Becoming Madam Secretary

by Stephanie Dray

She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it… New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about the American heroine Frances Perkins.

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$29.00

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The Warm Hands of Ghosts

by Katherine Arden

During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

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$28.99

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The House on Biscayne Bay

by Chanel Cleeton

As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide in New York Times bestselling author Chanel Cleeton’s atmospheric new novel.

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$29.00

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The American Daughters

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

A gripping historical novel about a spirited girl who joins a sisterhood working to undermine the Confederates — from the award-winning author of We Cast a Shadow.

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$28.00

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The Evolution of Annabel Craig

by Lisa Grunwald

Annabel Hayes is thrilled to find herself falling quickly and deeply in love with George Craig, a sophisticated attorney newly arrived from Knoxville. But before the end of their first year of marriage, their lives are beset by losses. The strain on their relationship is only intensified when John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution at the local high school. A young Southern woman sets out on a journey of self-discovery as the infamous 1925 Scopes Trial tests her faith and her marriage in this moving novel.

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$30.00

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Ours

by Phillip B. Williams

An epic novel set in mid-nineteenth-century America about the spiritual costs of a freedom that demands fierce protection. Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.

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$32.00

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The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

by Helen Simonson

A timeless comedy of manners — refreshing as a summer breeze and bracing as the British seaside — about a generation of young women facing the seismic changes brought on by war and dreaming of the boundless possibilities of their future.

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$29.00

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The Sicilian Inheritance

by Jo Piazza

From the bestselling author and award-winning journalist Jo Piazza, comes a transporting novel rooted in the author’s own family history about a long-awaited trip to Sicily, a disputed inheritance, and a family secret that some will kill to protect…

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$28.00

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Finding Margaret Fuller

by Allison Pataki

An epic imagining of the life of Margaret Fuller — America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation — from the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.

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$30.00

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Table for Two

by Amor Towles

From the bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow comes a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories, including a novella featuring one of his most beloved characters.

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$32.00

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The Volcano Daughters

by Gina María Balibrera

A saucy, searingly original debut about two sisters raised in the shadow of El Salvador’s brutal dictator, El Gran Pendejo, and their flight from genocide, which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to cannery row, each followed by a chorus of furies, the ghosts of their murdered friends, who aren’t yet done telling their stories.

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All We Were Promised

by Ashton Lattimore

The paths of three young Black women in pre-Civil War Philadelphia unexpectedly — and dangerously — collide in this debut novel inspired by the explosive history of a divided city.

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$30.00

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Island Witch

by Amanda Jayatissa

Set in 19th century Sri Lanka and inspired by local folklore, the daughter of a traditional demon-priest — relentlessly bullied by peers and accused of witchcraft herself — tries to solve the mysterious attacks that have been terrorizing her coastal village.

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My Beloved Life

by Amitava Kumar

Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’s mother, while pregnant with him, nearly dies from a cobra bite. As his life skates between the mythical and the mundane, and as changes big and small sweep across India, Jadu finds meaning in the most unexpected places. Piercing, fleet-footed, and undeniably resonant, here is a novel from a singularly gifted writer about how we tell stories and write history, how individuals play a counterpoint to big movements, and how no single life is without consequence.

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All Our Yesterdays

by Joel H. Morris

A propulsive and piercing debut, set ten years before the events of Shakespeare’s historic play, about the ambition, power, and fate that define one of literature’s most notorious figures: Lady Macbeth.

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James

by Percival Everett

From the “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime comes a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

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Shelterwood

by Lisa Wingate

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a sweeping novel inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought to protect children caught in the storm of land barons hungry for power and oil wealth.

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A Wild and Heavenly Place

by Robin Oliveira

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Mary Sutter comes a sweeping story of star-crossed lovers and the birth of Seattle. Poignant and lyrical, A Wild and Heavenly Place is an ode to the Pacific Northwest, to those courageous enough to chase the American Dream, and to a love so powerful it endures beyond distance, beyond hope.

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by Beatriz Williams

Two women — separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom — reclaim family secrets and lost loves in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

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The Tower

by Flora Carr

A bold, feminist debut novel, reimagining Mary, Queen of Scots’s darkest hour, when she was held hostage in a remote Scottish castle with a handful of loyal women while plotting a daring escape to reclaim her country and her freedom.

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All the World Beside

by Garrard Conley

From the New York Times bestselling author of Boy Erased, an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England.

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I Am Rome

by Santiago Posteguillo

Discover the runaway #1 international bestseller that has captured readers the world over — and reminds us all why we remember the name Julius Caesar. An irresistible page-turning novel of politics and betrayal, grand battles and impossible odds, shocking villainy and even greater acts of courage, I Am Rome brilliantly animates the moments that shaped this extraordinary young man’s fate — and in so doing, changed the course of history itself.

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$31.00

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The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

by Shubnum Khan

“A dark and heady dream of a book” (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous.

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The Titanic Survivors Book Club

by Timothy Schaffert

From the author of The Perfume Thief, a remarkable tale about the life-changing power of books and second chances, following the Titanic librarian who opens a bookshop in Paris where he meets a secret society of survivors.

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$29.00

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The Songbird of Hope Hill

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

A young woman sings of God’s love — even if she doesn’t believe he can forgive her — in this heartwarming novel inspired by historical events, from the bestselling author of A Tapestry of Grace.

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$18.00

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Nicked

by M. T. Anderson

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut, about the quest to steal the mystical bones of a long-dead saint.

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$28.00

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