A Very Long Engagement

Birdsong

Anything by Leon Uris:

Battle Cry
The Angry Hills
Exodus
Mila 18
Armageddon
Topaz
Trinity
QB VII
The Haj
Mitla Pass
A God in Ruins
O’Hara’s Choice

Half of a Yellow Sun was good...it's a war story and long, so a little challenging of a read in that sense, but interesting and illuminating in terms of topic/locale.

Sharon Kay Penman. All of them.

The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard.

Soon to be a movie on Netflix.

Anonymous wrote:This Tender Land

Ooh, agreed. That was a good one.

Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson

This Tender Land

Barkskins by Annie Proulx is incredible

The Tree of Life trilogy by Chava Rosenfarb. Chronicles 12 characters as they move into the Łódź ghetto in Poland. It’s fiction but barely; the author herself lived through the ghetto and concentration camps. This one is life changing for real: https://www.thriftbooks.com/series/the-tree-of-life-a-trilogy-of-life-in-the-lodz-ghetto/64961/

The "Flashman" series by George MacDonald Fraser and anything by Sharon Kay Penman.

Also love Dorothy Dunnett. Lymond is my favorite character ever. The Chronicles of Arundel by Kenneth Roberts is also terrific. takes place in maine around the revolutionary war.

I’m the last PP, adding a few more because I’m ashamed to realize that I always tend to think of WWI and WWII books but there are other countries in the world:

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende

The Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey, which starts with The Widows of Malabar Hill

Some of these have been named already, but for “readable” historical fiction (more mass-market than highbrow), I’ve enjoyed: Kate Quinn, Paula McLain, Susan Meissner, Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls is rough but a good book, Lost Roses not as great but an easier topic), Fiona Davis (NYC stories), Beatrice Williams (slightly more chick-lit-y), plus Ken Follett’s historical novels and Joseph Kanon’s slightly depressed spy novels.

Two that were “good, not perfect” but memorable because they are WWII novels from the German side: The Woman in the Castle (Jessica Shattuck) and The German Midwife (Mandy Robotham).

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein is amazing. Set in WWII, super well written and researched.

Madison Smartt Bell's Haiti Trilogy

Lonesome Dove

Second (or) third the recommendations for the Wolf Hall trilogy.

And I really liked Philip Meyer's Texas novel The Son. It's been a decade since I read it and I remember many scenes and lines.