Recommend 5 historical fiction books

[Jimbo]

Mauritious Command - Patrick O'Brian

My first Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin book and my favorite. Finding it was just an accident when once looking for just something to read. And what a find! Funnily I don't even remember what it was about or even the big battle which usually caps an O'Brian sea novel. But I remember the vastness of the ocean. Vast. Really vast.

Finding Rommel - Steven Pressfield

Don't remember that plot too clearly either but it took place in the Sahara Desert and boy was that desert vast. Very vast.

To The Last Man - Jeff Shaara

A World War I epic which featured a number of aspects of that war but most memorable were the airplanes. It felt like I was flying one in the vastness of the vast sky. Shaara is a hell of a historical novelist.

Winter: A Berlin Family - Len Deighton

Zeppelins.

Under Enemy Colors - S. Thomas Russell

Another British navy Napoleonic war sea novel which was pretty good. Not O'Brian but if you like the genre and need something pretty good, especially when it comes to showing how the ship sails then this is a good one.

[Jimbo]

I bring this up here because I am curious about how boys choose different reading material from girls, or so I think.

On YouTube I looked for historical fiction recommendations and there are a number of videos which fit this bill. Most of those sites I found were hosted by women and their choices featured books largely authored by women and looking over my collection I have only one woman writer. Hillary Mantel. There was one book I loved by a woman author whose name escapes me and the book title escapes me too. It was something "Bible" about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. I had tried and gave up and then tried again to read Hillary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies and got lost. Too many characters.

It's no big thing, I just think that I am disinclined to read a historical book recommended by a girl.

[Flower]

These come to mind.

I, Claudius ... Robert Graves

I read this after watching the mini series. Also "Claudius the God"

Attila .. William Napier

A trilogy. The third book, "Attila, the Judgement" is by far the best of this series.

[Rorschach]

I don't think I've read very many but the O'Brian novels are superb.

Ken Follet is a terrible writer but I couldn't help enjoying Pillars of the Earth.

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson is terrific.

[Diamond Dog]

[Positive Passion]

Does "historical fiction" mean fiction set in the past, or is it fictional recreations of history?

[mudshark]

I find Hillary Mantel's style in most of her books hard to digest but really enjoyed A Place Of Greater Safety, about the French Revolution. Other historic fiction books I had a good time with are Baudolino and Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.

[Jimbo]

Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson is terrific.

Highly recommended by a couple of of my "lady reviewers." So I went into my collection and started re-listening to "Confusion" by Stephenson. And ya know what? Confusing. Nonetheless, Quicksilver is in my Wish List.

[Darkness_Fish]

I find Hillary Mantel's style in most of her books hard to digest but really enjoyed A Place Of Greater Safety, about the French Revolution. Other historic fiction books I had a good time with are Baudolino and Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco.

A Place of Greater Safety is probably the greatest piece of historical fiction I've read. I liked Mantel's Cromwell books, but this just seems more adventurous in style and scope. The characters are phenomenal, really vivid, elegant, brutal.

Foucault's Pendulum is a work of genius, too. Didn't care for Baudolino at all though.