The Best Books of 2019: Historical Fiction!

2019 saw a bonanza of historical fiction, which is perhaps understandable considering how relentlessly unbearable the present was for every single day of the year. The historical fiction of the year reeled all over the spectrum, from froth to profundity, from books-in-series to unique productions, and depicting all periods of human history. These were the best of them:

10 The Golden Wolf by Linnea Hartsuyker (Harper) This concluding volume in Linnea Hartsuyker’s fantastic Viking-era brings to a multifaceted end the stories of Ragnvald and his sister Svanhild and likewise ends an absolutely first-rate trilogy.

9 Grievous by HS Cross (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) - This second volume in the author’s chronicle of a British boys’ boarding school in the 1930s continues what may be the strangest ongoing historical fiction series currently being published, and yet this second volume is even more oddly beguiling than the first. 

8 The Ventriloquists by ER Ramzipoor (Park Row) - Nazi-occupied Belgium provides the setting for this big, ambitious debut from ER Ramzipoor about renegage journalists risking torture and death to defy the ruling tyranny. The author creates strong, believable characters and a series of very tense climactic reversals. 

7 The Women of the Copper County by Mary Doria Russell (Atria) - The great Mary Doria Russell set her book in 1930s Calumet, Michigan and tells the story of legendary strike leader Annie Clements, bringing the entire world of roughneck copper mining to life in the process. 

6 Inland by Téa Obreht (Random House) - The author of The Tiger’s Wife here writes the surreal misadventures of a man and a woman living through drought in the Arizona Territory of 1893, and as in the previous book, so too here: humor and pathos, the real and the fantastic, blend and play off each other.

5 The Sound of the Hours by Karen Campbell (Amazon) - Occupied Italy during WWII is the very familiar setting for this strong, graceful novel by Karen Campbell, in which she tells the story of a young Italian woman’s coming of age and the story of the black American soldier with whom she eventually shares the drama. 

4 Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (Europa) - The basic plot of this elegant and gripping novel by Andrew Miller is simple: a wounded soldier returns home to England after the Battle of Corunna to recuperate, at first unaware that his homecoming has been observed and tracked. But Miller complicates this plot confidently throughout.

3 Where the Light Enters by Sarah Donati (Berkley) - One one level, this big book by Sarah Donati is a relatively routine mystery historical murder mystery, with two pioneering female obstetricians in 1880s New York being called to consult on a disappearance and a murder. But Donati steadily broadens and deepens the book - and especially its two main characters - into something much more.

2 Meet Me in Monaco by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb (Morrow) - The main character and main event in this wonderfully readable novel - Grace Kelly and her marriage to Prince Ranier of Monaco - might steal the spotlight, but the book’s real heart is the tentative, halting relationship between boutique owner Sophie Duvall and photographer James Henderson. The authors bring off their multi-layered plot with real skill.

1 Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte) - Claude and Blanche Auzello are running the fabled Ritz Hotel in Paris when the Nazis occupy the city in this brutal and at times very moving book by Melanie Benjamin, the best historical novel of 2019, and the story that unfolds from that beginning is full of unsung heroism, deep personal betrayals, and extremely memorable moments.