8 Historical Fiction Books Book Clubs Are Calling 10/10

If your book club loves historical fiction, these books deserve a spot on your reading list. I’ve put together some of the best historical fiction books that readers can’t stop recommending. These are great book club picks for anyone looking for immersive stories, memorable characters, and plenty to discuss. Here are 8 must-read historical fiction books that book clubs are calling 10/10. Also check out some general book club questions to discuss.

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls follows three very different women whose lives are changed by World War II. Caroline is a New York socialite working at the French consulate, Kasia is a Polish teenager who joins the resistance, and Herta is a German doctor who takes a position at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Their stories eventually connect in devastating ways. Since parts of the novel are inspired by real people and events, there’s also plenty to discuss with the book club members. Also read 9 Best Historical Fiction Based on Real Stories to Add to Your TBR


Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.

On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.

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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Set in 12th-century England, The Pillars of the Earth centers on the building of a massive cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. Around that project, Ken Follett brings together builders, monks, nobles, families, and rulers whose lives become tangled in love, ambition, revenge, religion, and political power. It’s a long book, but there is so much happening that it gives a group plenty of moments to compare notes on. Also read 10 Best Books To Read For Women Who Haven’t Loved a Book in a Long Time

Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time the twelfth century; the place feudal England; and the subject the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape.

Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

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The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

The Book of Lost Names begins with an older librarian named Eva who sees a photograph of a book she hasn’t seen in more than sixty years. During World War II, Eva fled Paris and eventually became part of the French Resistance, forging documents to help Jewish children escape to Switzerland. Knowing that many of those children could lose their real identities forever, she and fellow forger Rémy secretly record their names in code. This one can easily lead to a conversation what it means to preserve someone’s name when everything else has been taken from them.


Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr tells the story of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who flees Paris with her father after the Nazi occupation, and Werner, a German orphan whose talent with radios eventually puts him to work for the Nazis. Their lives unfold separately before slowly moving toward each other in occupied France. What makes this especially interesting to read with other people is that Marie-Laure and Werner experience the same war from completely different sides. Also read 10 Captivating WWII Novels — These Historical Fiction Reads Will Transport You


Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

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The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran begins in 1950s Iran with Ellie and Homa, two girls from very different backgrounds who form a close friendship. As they grow older, their lives take different paths, but they continue to be pulled back toward each other while Iran itself goes through enormous political and social changes. Also check out 33 Book Club Snacks That Are Almost as Good as the Plot


In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing her and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of having a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. As Ellie enjoys her new popularity at the best girls’ high school in Iran, her memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, Homa’s sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transform our lives.

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Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan

Inspired by the life of Pino Lella, Beneath a Scarlet Sky takes readers to Nazi-occupied Italy during World War II. Pino is a teenager who first helps Jewish people escape across the Alps and later becomes the driver for a powerful German commander. That position gives him the chance to secretly spy for the Allies while trying to survive the war himself. Knowing the story is based on a real person makes it especially interesting to talk about where history ends and historical fiction begins. Also read 9 Books Guaranteed to Start Debate in Your Book Club


Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.
In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.
Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.
Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

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The Women by Kristin Hannah

The Women follows Frankie McGrath, a young nursing student who joins the Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War. She arrives completely unprepared for what she will see and quickly learns how much courage it takes simply to make it through another day. But the novel doesn’t end when Frankie leaves Vietnam. A large part of her story is about returning to an America that is divided over the war and often unwilling to acknowledge that women served there at all. Frankie’s experience before, during, and after Vietnam gives readers a lot to discuss. I’d expect some of the strongest conversations to happen around what she faces when she finally comes home. Also read 47 Book Club Questions For The Women by Kristin Hannah


From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women―at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.

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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Set in India during the State of Emergency in 1975, A Fine Balance brings four strangers together in one small apartment: Dina, a widow trying to remain independent; Maneck, a young student; and Ishvar and Omprakash, two tailors who have escaped caste violence in their village. What begins as an arrangement born out of necessity slowly becomes something much deeper as their lives are affected by poverty, politics, discrimination, and forces far beyond their control. This is a heavy book, and it’s the kind that can keep a group talking long after the meeting is supposed to end. Also read 7 Books I Absolutely Loved That Aren’t Typically in the Most Talked About Book Lists


With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.

The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers–a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village–will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

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