The 10 Best Historical Fiction Books to Gift for Mother’s Day

Nearly everyone knows Jane Austen—but what about her sister, Cassandra? In Miss Austen, Gill Hornby brilliantly reimagines the lost letters between Jane and Cassandra, the letters that initially helped us form a substantial understanding of Jane’s life. 

In this book, it is England, 1840, two decades after Jane’s passing. Cassandra returns to Kintbury in a desperate search for Jane’s letters in a dusty corner of their family friends’ vicarage. Tracking down the letters at last, Cassandra must decide whether she’d like to share the secrets of the letters with the world, or if she’d rather see the most intimate details of her life and sister’s legacy go up in flames. 

A beautiful and atmospheric love story set during the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1887, To Capture What We Cannot Keep is an exploration of class, a woman’s place in the world, and what we’re really willing to do for love. 

Caitriona Wallace and Émile Nouguier first meet in a hot air balloon floating high above Paris, where their love feels like it has infinite possibilities. But on the ground, that’s hardly true. Cait is a widow whose financial woes led her to become a chaperone of two wealthy charges, while Émile is expected to take on both his family’s business and a suitable wife. The subject of mass controversy and a symbol of the future, the rising of the Eiffel Tower largely represents the struggle these two will face when deciding what their love is really worth. 

A historical novel meets fairytale retelling, Bitter Greens is the enchanting tale of Rapunzel. Louis XIV has banished French novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force from Versailles after a string of frivolous love affairs. Sœur Seraphina, an old nun at the convent, comforts her by telling her the story of a young girl whose parents sold her 100 years ago for a handful of bitter greens.

Margherita’s father is threatened with having both his hands severed for stealing parsley from the walled garden of Selena Leonelli, unless he and his wife offer up their Margherita to them. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of artist Tiziano, who is at the center of Venice’s renaissance world, which is how she has the power to lock Margherita away in a tower. 

Margherita, locked in said tower, sings in the hopes that someone will find and rescue her. And one day, a young man does. 

Monsoon Summer is based on true accounts of European midwives in India after the second World War. In Oxfordshire, 1947, Kit Smallwood is exhausted. She's tired of harboring a painful secret, and even more tired of nursing WWII soldiers. So she flees to Wickam Farm, where her friend is sending midwives to the Moonstone Home in South India. 

It’s then that she meets Anto, an Indian doctor finishing up at Oxford, and the two quickly fall in love. But Kit’s light-skinned Anglo-Indian mother doesn’t approve of their union, forcing the two to elope and set off for Anto’s home in South India. Kit plans to run the maternity hospital she’s been supporting once she gets there, but Anto’s traditional family disapproves of her as well, and newly-independent India is dangerous for the English. Their relationship begins to unravel, and Kit finds herself in a dangerous situation…

For fans of the power and prophecies of Ancient Greece, Clytemnestra is the story of the notoriously villainous yet legendary queen. Queens are either hated or forgotten, and infamous whether they choose a path of acceptance of vengeance. For these reasons, Clytemnestra already knows which avenue to take. 

The ways of her tyrant husband differ from the ways of her father the king, and she is forced to stand by helplessly as she watches him sacrifice her child to the gods and wage foreign wars. She bides her time, plotting slowly until she can get what she wants; she knows that when power isn’t given to you, you must take it for yourself. 

Known for works of this kind, Jonathan Santlofer, the author of The Last Mona Lisa returns with another thrilling art heist: The Last Van Gogh. There have long been rumors about a final self-portrait completed by Van Gogh before his death, but curators and art historians alike have never been able to find it, and have considered it lost forever. 

But then Luke Perrone, artist himself and great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, and Alexis Verde, the daughter of another notorious art thief, think they have found it. But it leads to a dangerous journey into the bowels of the underground art world. The painting disappears again only days later, and they are reunited with INTERPOL agent John Washington Smith in their deadly search that not only bears the secrets of Van Gogh’s last days, but connects them with something truly evil within the dark web and the underground art world.

Another exploration of women’s place in the world, coupled with the true meaning of justice and a look at Britain’s first female crime syndicate, Queens of London navigates the criminal underbelly of post-WWI London. It’s 1925, and “Diamond Annie” is elected Queen of the Forty Elephants, and committed to rocketing the group to heights they’ve never seen before. Demanding absolute loyalty from her “family,” she’s able to keep the ladies in line. But in doing so, she’s put a target on her back from one of Britain’s first female police women. 

Officer Lillian Wyles is not just one of the first female detectives—she’s also one of the best on the Scotland Yard force. But she has to prove it, if she wants to get out of the constant doom of “women’s work.” When she hears about Diamond Annie’s huge heist in the works to fund her new dynasty, she knows this is exactly what she needs. 

Troublesome Creek, Kentucky 1936. Cussy Carter, the last surviving female of the Blue People ancestry, becomes a librarian for the historical Pack Horse Library Project. She’s on a mission to deliver books and other reading materials to the impoverished inhabitants of Eastern Kentucky, and takes a dangerous route across slippery creek beds and up steep mountains on mule-back to get there. 

Along her journey, she confronts those who are not only suspicious of her blue skin, but also of the government’s new book program. She befriends Kentuckians meager and complex alike, and is fiercely determined to see her journey through and deliver joy, comfort, and instill literacy and a bookly retreat to faraway lands. 

In a fierce and stunning sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek comes The Book Woman’s Daughter, about Honey Lovett, the daughter of Cussy Carter, blue-skinned, Troublesome Creek packhorse librarian. Honey and her family have been hiding from the law all her life, but when her parents are sent to prison, she knows it’s up to her to continue her mother’s route. 

She journeys through remote Appalachia, delivering books along the treacherous route. She wants to prove she doesn’t need anyone telling her how to survive, but the route is more dangerous than she thought, and some folks aren’t too keen on letting a woman take her rightful place in the world. If she wants to provide reading material to the people who really need it, she’ll have to fight—and in doing so, she’ll learn just how important that role is to play.

Navigating the blazing political climate that existed between the World Wars, The Mitford Affair is a representation of all the ways sensible people can be persuaded into radical action through seemingly innocent propaganda. 

Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters ruled the political, literary, and social scenes of the English world. For this reason, they’ve faced scandal plenty of times before, but when Diana divorces her husband to marry a fascist leader and Unity follows suit, inciting rumors that she’s become Hitler’s own mistress, the family doesn’t know what to do.

Nancy is the only one who kept in touch with the two after their betrayal, so it’s up to her to act when her sisters become spies for the Nazi party. The Mitford Affair follows Nancy’s efforts to end the war, but she’ll have to choose: will she stay loyal to her family, or loyal to her country?