Best Historical Fictions by Reese's Book Club
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Ready to meet the women who refused to be written out of history?
What makes historical fiction immersive isn’t simply the era — it’s how the past suddenly feels close. How you find yourself inside impossible choices. How it reminds you that courage, love, ambition, and survival have always shaped the human story.
Over the years, Reese’s Book Club has picked some truly memorable historical fiction — not just sweeping dramas, but intimate, character-driven stories about resilience, identity, and women finding their strength, whether in war-torn France, 1950s Jaipur, or the haze of the 1970s music scene.
This list has all of Reese’s historical fiction picks gathered in one place — from the newest selections to earlier standouts. Whether you’re planning your next book club read or simply exploring the best historical fiction Reese has chosen over the years, I hope you find your next favorite story.
Happy Reading!
Reese’ 2026 Historical Fiction Picks
In Her Defense
by Philippa Malicka
February ’26 Pick
In this high-profile courtroom thriller, fame and power collide as the truth fractures under national scrutiny. As beloved TV icon Anna Finbow accuses her daughter’s therapist of abuse, dueling testimonies grip the country and expose a battle over who controls the story.
Reese’s Bestselling Historical Fiction Picks
The Nightingale
by Kristin Hannah
March ’23 Pick
In Nazi-occupied France, two sisters are forced to choose how they will survive a war that threatens to erase everything they know. While Vianne fights quietly to protect her daughter within the confines of occupation, Isabelle refuses silence and joins the French Resistance, risking her life to fight back. Through their different paths, The Nightingale reveals the extraordinary courage of women whose strength shaped history in ways both visible and unseen. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it remains one of the most powerful portrayals of women’s resilience during World War II.
The Giver of Stars
by Jojo Moyes
February ’22 Pick
Set in Depression-era Kentucky, Alice Wright arrives from England hoping marriage will give her a new life — but instead she finds herself lonely and confined in a small, suspicious town. When she joins Margery O’Hare, a fiercely independent local woman, and a small team delivering books on horseback to remote Appalachian families, Alice begins to see a different path for herself. Margery lives by her own rules, and through long rides and hard winters, the women build trust, grit, and a beautiful friendship. It’s a terrific story about choosing your own life — even when the world insists you shouldn’t.
Daisy Jones & The Six
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
February ’22 Pick
Now a TV series, this is the story of Daisy Jones, a young singer whose voice and presence are impossible to ignore. As she rises through the 1970s rock scene alongside a rising band, her ambition collides with ego, addiction, and an industry that struggles to make space for women who refuse to be controlled. Daisy is messy, brilliant, and unapologetic — and that’s what makes her unforgettable. Watching her fight to own both her music and her narrative feels electric and deeply human.
Where The Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
February ’22 Pick
Now a major film adaptation, this story follows Kya Clark, the “Marsh Girl” who grows up alone in the wild marshlands of North Carolina after being abandoned by her family. As she teaches herself to survive — studying the land, protecting her heart, and quietly building a life on her own terms — the town continues to misunderstand and judge her. When a local man is found dead, suspicion turns toward the girl they never truly accepted. An incredible story about loneliness, resilience, and a young woman determined to define herself beyond the limits others place on her.
Reese’s 2025 Historical Fiction Picks
The Phoenix Pencil Company
by Allison King
June ’25 Pick
Monica Tsai is a tech-savvy coder whose latest app unexpectedly reconnects her to a family history she barely understands. When an old pencil surfaces and her grandmother Yun’s memory begins to fade, the story slips back to 1940s Shanghai, where Yun and her cousin possessed a rare and dangerous gift: the ability to rewrite stories — and alter lives — with a single stroke. But in a world shaped by war and suspicion, that power made them targets.
Isola
by Allegra Goodman
February ’25 Pick
Inspired by a true story, Marguerite’s life shifts from privilege to peril when she is orphaned and forced to follow a guardian she cannot trust to New France. Betrayed and abandoned on a remote island, she must survive brutal cold, hunger, and isolation with nothing but her will to live. What unfolds is more than a tale of endurance — it’s a portrait of a young woman discovering a strength that no one saw coming.
Reese’s Recent Historical Fiction Picks (2022–2024)
City of Night Birds
by Juhea Kim
December ’24 Pick
Natalia Leonova was once a celebrated prima ballerina — until a devastating accident brought her career to an abrupt halt. Returning to St. Petersburg, she must confront the ghosts of ambition, sacrifice, and the relentless discipline that shaped her life in the world of Russian ballet. As old wounds resurface, Natalia faces an impossible choice: step back into the demanding world that nearly broke her, or finally walk away.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
by Xochitl Gonzalez
March ’24 Pick
In 1980s New York, Anita de Monte is a rising star in the art world — magnetic, ambitious, and impossible to ignore — until her sudden death reduces her to a whisper in the very circles that once celebrated her. Years later, in 1998, Raquel, a young art student navigating her own complicated relationship with a powerful older artist, stumbles across Anita’s story and begins to see unsettling parallels. What happened to Anita isn’t just a mystery — it’s a pattern. And watching Raquel recognize that pattern, slowly and uneasily, is what gives this story its weight.
Save for Later
Redwood Court
by DeLana R.A. Dameron
February ’24 Pick
Mika Tabor is a young girl coming of age on Redwood Court, an all-Black working-class neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina, where every house holds a story. Surrounded by hardworking parents, watchful neighbors, and grandparents who survived Jim Crow to claim a home of their own, Mika grows up wrapped in the strength and pride of her community. But childhood doesn’t stay simple for long. As she begins to understand the weight of history behind her family’s sacrifices, she also faces the quiet, complicated questions of identity and belonging.
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
by Crystal Smith Paul
May ’23 Pick
Once a luminous icon of Hollywood, Kitty Karr Tate seemed to embody the glamour and polish of the silver screen. But when she dies and leaves her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters — three young Black women — the narrative around her carefully crafted life begins to unravel. As Elise St. John digs into Kitty’s past, old Hollywood’s shimmer gives way to buried truths, hidden identities, and choices that ripple across generations.
The House of Eve
by Sadeqa Johnson
February ’23 Pick
In 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., Ruby Pearsall and Eleanor Quarles are two young Black women determined to claim futures that feel just out of reach. Ruby dreams of becoming the first in her family to attend college, even as circumstances threaten to derail everything she’s worked for. Eleanor arrives in Washington with ambition — and carefully guarded secrets — only to find that love and social expectations at Howard University may cost more than she anticipated. As their lives quietly intersect, both women are forced to make choices that will shape not only their own destinies, but the generations that follow.
The Marriage Portrait
by Maggie O’Farrell
December ’22 Pick
In 16th-century Florence, Lucrezia de’ Medici is the overlooked third daughter of a powerful family — until her older sister’s sudden death places her at the center of a political marriage she was never meant to make. Sent to Ferrara to wed a ruler she barely knows, Lucrezia quickly learns that court life is a performance, and survival depends on reading what isn’t said aloud. As she begins to sense that her husband’s charm hides something darker, the walls of her new palace feel less like protection and more like a trap.
On the Rooftop
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
September ’22 Pick
In 1950s San Francisco, the Salvation sisters — Ruth, Esther, and Chloe — are a rising jazz trio rehearsing under the watchful eye of their mother, Vivian, who has built their future note by note. Vivian’s dream is clear: fame, recognition, security. But as the girls begin to imagine lives shaped by their own desires — love, independence, freedom beyond the spotlight — the harmony inside their family starts to fracture. When opportunity finally arrives, it forces each of them to decide whose dream they’re really chasing.
The Dictionary of Lost Words
by Pip Williams
May ’22 Pick
Esme grows up beneath the sorting tables of the Oxford English Dictionary’s scriptorium, quietly listening as men debate which words deserve to be preserved. Fascinated by language from an early age, she began collecting the discarded slips — the words considered too trivial, too common, or simply unimportant. As she matures, Esme starts to notice a pattern: many of the missing words belong to women’s lives. And what begins as curiosity becomes something more deliberate — a quiet act of reclamation.
The Christie Affair
by Nina de Gramont
February ’22 Pick
When Agatha Christie vanished for eleven days in 1926, the world fixated on the mystery she left behind. But this story turns its gaze elsewhere — to Nan O’Dea, the woman entangled in Christie’s marriage and forced into the margins of someone else’s narrative. Told from the mistress’s perspective, what begins as scandal slowly unfolds into something far more layered. Nan is not merely a footnote in a famous disappearance; she is a woman shaped by secrets, survival, and choices that history never fully recorded.
Reese’s Earlier Historical Fiction Standouts
The Island of Missing Trees
by Elif Shafak
February ’21 Pick
On a divided island in Cyprus, Defne falls in love with Kostas, a boy from the “other side” — a quiet, forbidden love that unfolds just as war begins to tear the country apart. Decades later, her daughter Ada grows up in London, carrying the silence and sorrow of a homeland she has never seen. Through memory, exile, and the fig tree that connects past to present, this story traces how love and loss echo across generations.
The Downstairs Girl
by Stacey Lee
Summer Young Adult ’21 Pick
In post–Civil War Atlanta, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan lives in the shadows — working as a lady’s maid by day while secretly writing a bold advice column under the name “Miss Sweetie” by night. What begins as witty commentary quickly turns daring as Jo challenges the rigid ideas about race and gender shaping the New South. As her words gain influence, so do the risks, forcing her to confront both public backlash and the private mystery of her own origins.
Outlawed
by Anna North
January ’21 Pick
In 1894, seventeen-year-old Ada’s life unravels when a year of childless marriage turns her into a target in a town that brands barren women as witches. Forced to flee, she joins a notorious gang of outlaws led by the charismatic Kid, who dreams of creating a refuge for women cast aside by society. As Ada learns to survive on the frontier, she begins to question the rules that defined her life.
The Light in Hidden Places
by Sharon Cameron
December ’20 Pick
Based on the true story of a teenage girl in Nazi-occupied Poland, sixteen-year-old Stefania is left to care for her little sister when war tears through her city. When a young Jewish man escapes a train bound for a death camp and appears at her door, she makes a choice that will change everything: she hides him. One life soon becomes thirteen, all concealed in the attic of her home — even as Nazi officers move in downstairs. What unfolds is a breathtaking portrait of courage, sacrifice, and a young woman whose quiet defiance saved lives.
The Henna Artist
by Alka Joshi
May ’20 Pick
In 1950s Jaipur, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi escapes an abusive marriage and rebuilds her life as a sought-after henna artist to the city’s elite women. Trusted with their secrets but forced to guard her own, she carefully crafts both her art and her independence in a society quick to judge. When her past unexpectedly resurfaces — bringing a husband she fled and a sister she never knew — the life she has so deliberately constructed begins to unravel.
The Secrets We Kept
by Lara Prescott
September ’19 Pick
In 1956, as Doctor Zhivago is banned in the Soviet Union, two seemingly ordinary women in Washington find themselves involved in a quiet Cold War mission. Sally and Irina, recruited as CIA operatives, are tasked with smuggling the forbidden novel back into Russia — a book capable of unsettling more than its censors expected. Working behind desks and closed doors, they move carefully through secrecy and shifting loyalties, their impact felt in ways history rarely records.
The Night Tiger
by Yangsze Choo
April ’19 Pick
Ji Lin is a sharp, ambitious young woman living in 1930s colonial Malaya, caught between expectation and independence — apprenticed as a dressmaker by day and secretly working in a dancehall by night to help repay her mother’s debts. When a mysterious object draws her into a web of superstition and buried secrets, her path crosses with Ren, a young houseboy racing to fulfill his master’s final wish. As whispers of curses and men who turn into tigers ripple through their community, Ji Lin must navigate a world shaped by class, colonial tensions, and tradition.
Next Year in Havana
by Chanel Cleeton
July ’18 Pick
Elisa Perez grows up in 1958 Havana, raised in privilege just as the Cuban Revolution begins to upend everything she knows. When she falls in love with a revolutionary, her world — and her future — shift in ways she never imagined. Decades later, her granddaughter Marisol returns to Cuba to honor Elisa’s final wish, slowly uncovering the truths and sacrifices that shaped her family’s exile. Through both women, the story traces love, loss, and the quiet endurance of those forced to rebuild far from home.
The Light We Lost
by Jill Santopolo
February ’18 Pick
Lucy meets Gabe on a day that changes everything, and from that moment, their lives feel tethered by ambition, distance, and timing. As Gabe’s career takes him into war zones abroad and Lucy builds a life in New York, the choices they make slowly pull them in different directions. What follows is a years-long story of love shaped by history, opportunity, and the quiet weight of “what if”.
The Rules of Magic
by Alice Hoffman
October ’17 Pick
For the Owens family, love has never been simple — it’s been a curse whispered through generations. In 1960s New York, Susanna Owens raises her three children under strict rules meant to protect them from heartbreak: no magic, no moonlight, and above all, no falling in love. But Franny, Jet, and Vincent cannot escape who they are, especially when a visit to their mysterious aunt in Massachusetts reveals the truth about their lineage. As the world shifts around them, so do they — discovering that magic and love are impossible to suppress.
The Alice Network
by Kate Quinn
July ’17 Pick
In 1915 France, Eve Gardiner is recruited into a real-life network of female spies, trained to charm, deceive, and gather secrets from the enemy. Decades later, in 1947 London, Charlie St. Clair arrives searching for her missing cousin — and finds herself pulled into Eve’s fractured past. As their stories converge, what unfolds isn’t simply espionage, but the quiet aftermath of choices made and loyalties that changed everything.
These stories prove that history is never just the past — it’s personal. It lives in letters, in secrets, in music, and in the choices women made as everything around them changed. If one of these Reese picks stayed with you or is heading straight to your TBR, tell me in the comments.
