The Things They Carried
Alpha Company humps through Vietnam carrying rifles, letters, and guilt. O'Brien's linked 1990 collection asks what a true war story really tells.
2,877-word summary · 13 min read
Tag: historical fiction
260 books with this tag.
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The Rose Code
Three Bletchley Park women reunite in 1947 to expose a wartime traitor in Quinn's codebreaking novel.
3,219-word summary · 14 min read
The Paris Wife
Hadley Richardson marries young Ernest Hemingway and follows him to 1920s Paris, fame, and heartbreak.
2,493-word summary · 11 min read
The Lincoln Highway
Emmett and Billy plan California in 1954, but two escapees steal their car and drag them east to New York.
2,954-word summary · 13 min read
The Kitchen House
Irish orphan Lavinia is raised by enslaved cooks in the kitchen house, then torn between that family and the big house.
3,382-word summary · 15 min read
The Invention of Wings
Sarah Grimke and enslaved Handful grow up bound in Charleston, then push toward freedom and abolition.
2,996-word summary · 13 min read
The House of the Spirits
Three generations of the Trueba family face love, ghosts and a coup, from Rosa's strange death to Alba's prison cell.
2,867-word summary · 13 min read
The Historian
A daughter traces her father's search for Dracula through letters and archives across Europe.
3,237-word summary · 14 min read
The Clan of the Cave Bear
A Cro-Magnon girl orphaned by disaster grows up with a Neanderthal clan, learning their medicine and customs while testing their limits.
3,684-word summary · 16 min read
Robinson Crusoe
Shipwrecked near South America, Crusoe spends 28 years farming, building, praying, and facing who he becomes alone.
2,520-word summary · 11 min read
Lilac Girls
Three women meet across World War II: a New York volunteer, a Polish courier turned prisoner, and a German camp doctor.
2,731-word summary · 12 min read
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
A Chinese American boy befriends a Japanese American girl in wartime Seattle, then loses her to the internment camps.
2,973-word summary · 13 min read
Hamnet
Agnes Hathaway holds her Stratford family together while her husband works in London, until plague takes eleven-year-old Hamnet in 1596.
3,164-word summary · 14 min read
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Evelyn meets Ninny in a nursing home and hears the story of Idgie and Ruth and their Alabama cafe.
2,825-word summary · 13 min read
For Whom the Bell Tolls
An American dynamiter joins Spanish guerrillas for three days to blow a mountain bridge, finding love and doomed courage.
2,286-word summary · 10 min read
City of Girls
City of Girls retold: a Vassar dropout, a shabby theater, one scandal, and a love like no other.
2,823-word summary · 13 min read
War and Peace
Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei search for meaning amid the Napoleonic wars.
2,536-word summary · 11 min read
Things Fall Apart
Proud Igbo wrestler Okonkwo rises in 1890s Umuofia, then loses standing through hard exile, a son's conversion, and British missionaries and courts remaking…
2,518-word summary · 11 min read
The Three Musketeers
Young dArtagnan joins Athos, Porthos and Aramis to recover the queens diamonds and face Milady.
2,569-word summary · 11 min read
The Thorn Birds
Meggie loves priest Ralph across decades on Drogheda sheep station.
2,280-word summary · 10 min read
The Name of the Rose
Friar William and Adso investigate 1327 abbey deaths amid library labyrinth.
2,580-word summary · 11 min read
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Footbound Lily and Snow Flower share laotong bond through 19th century Hunan hardship.
2,557-word summary · 11 min read
Redeeming Love
Sold into prostitution as a child, Angel trusts no one in 1850s California until farmer Michael Hosea loves her as Hosea loved Gomer.
2,457-word summary · 11 min read
My Brilliant Friend
Elena and Lila grow up in 1950s Naples bound by rivalry and love.
2,584-word summary · 11 min read