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You're going to love this if you enjoy historical fiction.

I've watched the Goodreads Choice Awards for 15 years now, and these winners aren't just popular; they're the books that made us cry, kept us up past midnight, and changed how we see history.

Every book on this list won because readers like us voted for it. Not critics. Not publishers. Regular people who couldn't stop talking about these stories.

What do I love most? Nearly all feature women at the centre, women we've never heard of, women history forgot, and women who changed everything.

Whether you're a historical fiction veteran or just starting, this list has your next obsession.

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Best Historical Fiction Books - 2011-2015: The Early Decade

2011 – The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Ernest Hemingway's first wife tells her side of the story, and it's heartbreaking.

Paula McLain gives voice to Hadley Richardson, the woman who loved Hemingway before he became Hemingway. Set in 1920s Paris among the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound—this book captures the glamour and the pain.

Hadley watches her husband's genius grow while their marriage crumbles. McLain doesn't romanticize anything. The jazz clubs and cafés are beautiful, but the betrayal cuts deep. You see how ambition destroys love, how talent doesn't make someone a good partner.

I loved this because Hadley isn't a victim. She's strong and flawed and real. History remembers Hemingway; this book makes sure we remember her too.

• Best for: Readers who love Jazz Age Paris, literary history, and stories about women behind famous men
• Vibes: 1920s Paris, Lost Generation, literary glamour, heartbreak, first love, artistic ambition
• Length: 320 pages—absorbing weekend read

2012 – The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

A lighthouse keeper and his wife find a baby washed ashore in a boat—and decide to keep her.

M.L. Stedman sets this on a remote Australian island after WWI. Tom, the lighthouse keeper, is damaged by war. Isabel, his wife, has suffered multiple miscarriages. When a boat washes up with a dead man and a crying baby, Isabel sees it as a miracle. Tom hesitates but gives in.

Years later, they discover the baby's real mother is still alive, grieving, searching.

The moral questions Stedman raises have no easy answers. Every character's pain feels justified. The Australian island setting—isolated, beautiful, unforgiving—mirrors the story's emotional landscape perfectly.

This book wrecked me. I understood every character's choices and saw how all of them were wrong and right simultaneously. That's what makes it brilliant.

• Best for: Readers who love moral dilemmas, emotional depth, and stories where there are no villains
• Remote island, lighthouse, moral complexity, parenthood, grief, impossible choices, post-WWI
• 345 pages—tissues required

2013 – Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd dies and is reborn, over and over, living different versions of her life each time.

Kate Atkinson creates something wild here. Every time Ursula dies; as a baby, a child, a young woman, her life resets. She gets to make different choices. Sometimes she dies in the London Blitz. Sometimes she survives. Sometimes she prevents tragedies. Sometimes she causes them.

The structure sounds confusing, but it's not. Atkinson makes you feel the weight of every small decision. Each life builds on the last, even though Ursula doesn't consciously remember. You see World War I, World War II, the Spanish flu, history repeating, and lives shifting.

I loved this because it's about second chances and the accidents of fate. Ursula's resilience across multiple lifetimes is stunning. It's literary fiction disguised as speculative historical fiction.

• Best for: Readers who love unconventional storytelling, philosophical questions, and WWI/WWII settings
• Vibes: Time loops, fate vs. choice, London Blitz, multiple timelines, resilience, thought-provoking
• Length: 529 pages—worth every page

2014 – All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

A blind French girl and a German soldier's lives intersect during World War II—and it's devastating.

Anthony Doerr writes like a poet. Marie-Laure goes blind at six, memorizes her Paris neighborhood by touch, then flees to Saint-Malo with her father when Nazis occupy France. Werner, a German orphan with a gift for radios, gets recruited into the Hitler Youth.

Their stories run parallel for most of the book. When they finally meet, it's brief and profound. Doerr's descriptions of Marie-Laure navigating the world through touch, sound, and memory are extraordinary. Werner's moral struggles, knowing he's on the wrong side but trapped, feel achingly real.

The structure jumps through time, but every chapter earns its place. Doerr shows that even in war's darkness, humanity survives in small, beautiful moments.

I cried multiple times. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for good reason.

• Best for: Readers who love lyrical prose, WWII stories, and characters you'll never forget
• Vibes: WWII France, blind protagonist, moral complexity, poetic writing, heartbreaking, Pulitzer winner
• Length: 531 pages—slow, beautiful read

2015 – The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Two sisters in Nazi-occupied France choose different paths of resistance—both are heroes.

Kristin Hannah writes about Vianne and Isabelle, sisters who couldn't be more different. Vianne, the older sister, tries to survive the occupation quietly, protecting her daughter. Isabelle, young and reckless, joins the French Resistance, smuggling downed Allied pilots over the Pyrenees.

Hannah doesn't make one sister braver than the other. Vianne's choice to endure, hiding a Jewish child, sleeping with the enemy to survive, requires different courage than Isabelle's active resistance. Both women sacrifice everything.

The relationship between the sisters, strained and complicated, drives the emotional core. Their bravery isn't the Hollywood kind, it's messy, terrifying, and human.

I've recommended this book to everyone. It's Hannah's best work, and the ending absolutely destroyed me.

• Best for: Readers who love WWII stories, sister relationships, and women's courage under impossible circumstances
• Vibes: Nazi-occupied France, French Resistance, sister bond, women's heroism, heartbreaking, inspiring
• Length: 440 pages—unputdownable

Best Historical Fiction of The Last Decade - 2016-2020: Mid-Decade Masterpieces

2016 – The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Underground Railroad is real, an actual underground train system helping enslaved people escape.

Colson Whitehead reimagines history with magical realism. Cora escapes a Georgia plantation via a literal underground railroad, tunnels, trains, stations. Each state she reaches shows a different horror of American racism: medical experimentation in South Carolina, violent suppression in North Carolina, precarious freedom in Indiana.

Whitehead's writing is unflinching. He doesn't soften slavery's brutality or make Cora's escape heroic in a simple way. Every choice she makes is survival. Every place she reaches is dangerous in new ways.

The magical realism element—the actual railroad—makes the metaphor physical. It's brilliant and unsettling. Whitehead forces you to see what America was built on.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. It's hard to read but essential.

• Best for: Readers ready for powerful, difficult stories about American slavery and Black resistance
• Vibes: Slavery, magical realism, American history, brutal honesty, Pulitzer winner, essential reading
• Length: 306 pages—intense, important

2017 – Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Children are stolen from poor families and sold to wealthy couples—and it actually happened.

Lisa Wingate bases this on the real Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal. Between 1920s-1950s, Georgia Tann kidnapped children from poor families and sold them in illegal adoptions. The book follows Rill Foss, stolen as a child in 1939, and Avery Stafford in present day, discovering her family's connection to this horror.

Wingate alternates between timelines beautifully. Rill's chapters, watching her siblings disappear, enduring abuse, trying to stay together, are heartbreaking. Avery's investigation in the present gives the story urgency.

What makes this powerful is how recent this history is. This wasn't centuries ago. Victims are still alive. Families still don't know the truth.

I couldn't put this down. It's one of those books that makes you furious and grateful simultaneously, furious it happened, grateful someone's telling the story.

• Best for: Readers interested in dark American history, family secrets, and dual timelines
• Vibes: Based on true events, child trafficking, family separation, dual timeline, emotional, justice
• Length: 342 pages—gripping, important

2018 – The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

A family moves to Alaska's wilderness to escape their problems—but the isolation makes everything worse.

Kristin Hannah sets this in 1974. Ernt Allbright, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD, moves his family to remote Alaska for a fresh start. His wife Cora tries to hold the family together. Their daughter Leni, 13, watches her father's violence escalate as winter darkness and isolation close in.

Hannah's Alaska is a character, beautiful, deadly, and unforgiving. The descriptions of endless winter, the community's survival tactics, the landscape's brutal beauty are stunning. But the real story is domestic violence and a girl's coming-of-age in impossible circumstances.

The love story between Leni and a local boy provides hope, but Hannah doesn't give easy answers. Trauma doesn't disappear in beautiful places. Survival requires more than scenery.

This book made me claustrophobic and desperate to visit Alaska simultaneously. Hannah captures both the romance and the terror of wilderness life.

• Best for: Readers who love survival stories, Alaska settings, and complex family dynamics
• Vibes: Alaska wilderness, 1970s, PTSD, domestic violence, coming-of-age, survival, beautiful/brutal
• Length: 440 pages—atmospheric, intense

2019 – Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid 

A fictional 1970s rock band rises and falls—told through interviews like a VH1 Behind the Music documentary.

Taylor Jenkins Reid creates a format I've never seen done this well. The entire book is interviews—band members, managers, spouses, journalists—all looking back on Daisy Jones & The Six's brief, explosive career. No narrator. Just conflicting memories and perspectives.

Daisy, the wild-child lead singer, and Billy, the band's songwriter and recovering addict, have explosive chemistry onstage and constant conflict offstage. Reid makes you believe this band existed. You want to listen to their album (she even includes a track list).

What makes this brilliant is how Reid captures the 1970s music scene, the drugs, the groupies, the sexism, the creative magic, without romanticizing it. These characters are messy and selfish and talented and human.

I finished this book wishing Daisy Jones & The Six were real. That's the highest compliment I can give.

• Best for: Music lovers, 1970s nostalgia fans, and readers who love unique storytelling formats
• Vibes: 1970s rock scene, band drama, interview format, addiction, creative genius, Fleetwood Mac vibes
• Length: 355 pages—impossible to put down

2020 – The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Identical twin sisters. One lives as Black, one passes as white, and their choices echo through generations.

Brit Bennett writes about Stella and Desiree Vignes, light-skinned Black twins from a Louisiana town where colorism rules. At 16, they run away together. Then Stella disappears, passing as white, marrying a white man, building a life on lies. Desiree returns home, dark-skinned daughter in tow.

Bennett explores how race, identity, and family intersect across generations. Stella's daughter grows up white, never knowing. Desiree's daughter faces racism Stella escaped. When their paths cross, the collision is inevitable.

The writing is sharp and thoughtful. Bennett doesn't judge Stella harshly, she shows how racism makes passing tempting, how lies compound, how families fracture. The book asks: What do we sacrifice for safety? What do we lose when we hide?

This book stayed with me for months. Bennett's examination of identity, belonging, and the cost of secrets is profound.

• Best for: Readers interested in race, identity, family secrets, and multi-generational stories
• Vibes: Racial passing, twins, identity, Louisiana, multi-generational, family secrets, thought-provoking
• Length: 343 pages—emotionally complex, brilliant

2021 – Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Four famous siblings throw an epic party in 1983 Malibu, and everything falls apart.

Taylor Jenkins Reid sets this over 24 hours. Nina Riva and her siblings, surfer brothers Jay and Hud, and model Kit, throw their annual end-of-summer party. Everyone in Malibu comes. But this year, family tensions, buried secrets, and a wildfire converge.

Reid alternates between the party timeline and flashbacks showing how their father, a famous singer, abandoned them. Their mother raised four kids alone, then died young. Nina sacrificed everything to keep the family together. Now resentment and secrets threaten to explode.

The 1980s Malibu setting, surf culture, celebrity excess, beach glamour, is intoxicating. But underneath, it's about family, legacy, and breaking free from parents' damage.

Reid structures this like a thriller. The party gets wilder, tensions escalate, and you can't stop reading. The ending is cathartic and perfect.

• Best for: Readers who love family sagas, California settings, and stories spanning one dramatic day
• Vibes: 1980s Malibu, celebrity culture, sibling bonds, family drama, party chaos, surf culture
• Length: 368 pages—bingeable, satisfying

2022 – Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A retired tennis legend returns at 37 for one last shot at breaking the record—and facing her demons.

Taylor Jenkins Reid writes about Carrie Soto, nicknamed "The Battle Axe" for her ruthless playing style. She retired as the greatest female tennis player ever—20 Grand Slam titles. But six years later, someone breaks her record. Carrie can't stand it. She comes out of retirement for one last championship run.

Carrie isn't likable in traditional ways. She's prickly, obsessive, and unapologetic. Her relationship with her father/coach is complicated—beautiful and suffocating simultaneously. Reid makes you root for this difficult woman anyway.

The tennis scenes are gripping even if you don't follow the sport. But it's really about ambition, aging, and the cost of greatness. Can you be both the best and happy? Should you have to choose?

I loved that Reid didn't soften Carrie. She's fierce and flawed, and that's what makes her real.

• Best for: Sports fans, readers who love ambitious female characters, and comeback stories
• Vibes: Professional tennis, 1990s, comeback story, father-daughter bond, ambition, fierce protagonist
• Length: 386 pages—powerful, inspiring

2023 – Weyward by Emilia Hart

Three women across four centuries are connected by witchcraft, survival, and a mysterious family legacy.

Emilia Hart weaves together three timelines. Altha in 1619, accused of witchcraft. Violet in 1942, trapped in her father's decaying mansion. Kate in 2019, escaping an abusive relationship. All share the Weyward name and strange powers—they can communicate with nature, sense danger, survive impossible things.

Hart's writing is immersive and atmospheric. Each woman's story is distinct but connected by blood and magic. The witchcraft isn't flashy—it's subtle, rooted in women's connection to the natural world, knowledge passed down through generations.

The book examines how women survive male violence across centuries. The systems change—witch trials, patriarchal control, domestic abuse—but women's resilience remains constant. The Weyward women endure.

I loved how Hart made the magic feel real and earned. This isn't fantasy—it's historical fiction with a mystical thread running through it.

• Best for: Readers who love multi-generational stories, witchcraft, and feminist historical fiction
• Vibes: Three timelines, witchcraft, female empowerment, nature magic, survival, abuse survivors, atmospheric
• Length: 383 pages—haunting, empowering

2024 – The Women by Kristin Hannah

A young nurse serves in Vietnam and returns home to a country that wants to forget she existed.

Kristin Hannah follows Frances "Frankie" McGrath, a sheltered California girl who enlists as an Army nurse in 1966. She arrives in Vietnam unprepared for the blood, the death, the impossible choices. She saves lives, loses friends, falls in love, and watches the war destroy everyone it touches.

When Frankie returns home, America doesn't want to hear about women who served. She faces rejection, PTSD, and a country pretending women weren't in Vietnam. Hannah doesn't sugarcoat the trauma—Frankie spirals into addiction, homelessness, and isolation before slowly rebuilding.

What makes this powerful is how Hannah centers women in a war story where they've been erased. Female nurses made up a significant part of the medical corps, but history forgot them. Hannah gives them their story back.

This book made me cry, made me angry, and made me grateful. Hannah's best work yet—and that's saying something.

• Best for: Readers who love war stories, women's history, and emotional family sagas
• Vibes: Vietnam War, female nurses, PTSD, homecoming struggles, resilience, forgotten heroes, Kristin Hannah emotional depth
• Length: 473 pages—devastating, essential

2025 – Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan, an aerospace engineer in 1960s NASA, sacrifices everything to put men on the moon—while raising a daughter alone.

Taylor Jenkins Reid fictionalizes the real women computers and engineers who powered the Space Race. Joan is brilliant, ambitious, and single—a combination that makes her an outcast in 1960s America. She works obsessively on the moon landing while her daughter grows up feeling abandoned.

Reid alternates between Joan's career in the 1960s and her estranged daughter's perspective in present day, finally understanding her mother's choices. It's about ambition versus motherhood, the cost of being a woman in a man's field, and generational trauma.

The NASA setting is meticulously researched. Reid captures the urgency, the sexism, the groundbreaking work. But the emotional core is the mother-daughter relationship—how Joan's genius came at a price her daughter paid.

Reid keeps topping herself. This book proves she can write any era, any character, and make you feel everything.

• Best for: Readers who love space history, mother-daughter relationships, and women in STEM stories
• Vibes: 1960s NASA, Space Race, mother-daughter conflict, women in STEM, ambition, dual timeline, emotional
• Length: 400 pages—Reid's trademark storytelling magic

• Strong Female Protagonists: Nearly every book centers a woman—often multiple women—fighting for agency in worlds that deny it.

• Multiple Timelines: Readers love stories that weave past and present together, showing how history echoes through generations.

• War & Survival: WWII appears repeatedly (The Nightingale, All The Light We Cannot See), but also Vietnam (The Women), slavery (The Underground Railroad), and domestic violence (The Great Alone).

• Taylor Jenkins Reid & Kristin Hannah Dominance: Reid appears 4 times (2019, 2021, 2022, 2025). Hannah appears 3 times (2015, 2018, 2024). Readers trust these authors to deliver emotional, character-driven stories.

• Based on True Events: Many winners draw from real history—Tennessee Children's Home scandal (Before We Were Yours), female NASA engineers (Atmosphere), Vietnam War nurses (The Women).

• Complicated Women: These aren't perfect heroines. They're Carrie Soto's ruthlessness, Joan's maternal failures, Stella's racial passing. Complex women win awards.

• If you want to cry: The Nightingale, All The Light We Cannot See, The Women
• If you love sister relationships: The Nightingale, The Vanishing Half, Malibu Rising
• If you prefer unique formats: Daisy Jones & The Six (interview style), Life After Life (multiple timelines)
• If you're short on time: The Underground Railroad (306 pages), The Paris Wife (320 pages)
• If you love multi-generational sagas: The Vanishing Half, Weyward, Before We Were Yours
• If you want historical accuracy: The Women, Atmosphere, Before We Were Yours (all based on true events)
• If you love difficult protagonists: Carrie Soto Is Back, The Underground Railroad
• If you prefer happy(ish) endings: Malibu Rising, Weyward, Carrie Soto Is Back
• If you're a music fan: Daisy Jones & The Six (1970s rock)
• If you love wilderness settings: The Great Alone (Alaska), The Light Between Oceans (remote island)

More Historical Fiction Lists

📚 [100 Best Indian Books] - Including historical fiction from Indian authors

📚 [18 Best Books by Indian Authors Below 200 Pages] - Quick historical reads

📚 [The Palace of Illusions Review] - Historical mythology retelling

📚 [Best Books with Sister Bonds] - More like The Nightingale and The Vanishing Half

What's your favorite Goodreads winner? Let me know in the comments below!