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Historical Fiction Stars: 2005

Lists of historical fiction titles receiving starred reviews.

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless otherwise noted.

Historical fiction is loosely defined on this page - a book set 25 years ago may qualify for inclusion.

Categories on this page include general (period setting), romance, and also worthy of note (time slip, alternate history, generational sagas, etc.)

• Three Day Road
  Author: Boyden, Joseph
  Publisher: Viking $ 23.95 ISBN: 0670034312 Date: 2005
  PW LJ
  In part inspired by the legend of Frances Pegamahgabow, the great Indian sniper of World War I, Three Day Road is an impeccably researched and beautifully written story that offers a searing reminder about the cost of war.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 5.18.05
• March
  Author: Brooks, Geraldine
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670033359 Date: 2005
  PW
  From the author of the international bestseller Year of Wonders comes a powerful love story set against the catastrophe of the Civil War. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, and adds adult resonance to portray the moral complexity of war and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens | Civil War Stars
  Updated 12.27.04
• The Last Kingdom
  Author: Cornwell, Bernard
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25.95 ISBN: 0060530510 Date: 2005
  LJ
  In this epic novel, bestselling author Cornwell follows King Alfred the Great and his desperate quest to keep England from falling into the hands of the Danish conquerors.
  Updated 12.27.04
• Scourge of God
  Author: Dietrich, William
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 006073499x Date: 2005
  LJ
  From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and naturalist comes a thrilling novel of the clashing of civilizations, as Attila the Hun struggles to overthrow the Roman Empire.
  Updated 2.16.05
• The Pride of Carthage: A Novel of Hanibal's War
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 26.95 ISBN: 0385506031 Date: 2005
  PW LJ Booklist
  Featuring a vast cast of characters and nationalities, twists of fate, and tales of inspired leadership, this epic work of literary fiction chronicles the superb military leader of Carthage, Hannibal Barca, and his struggle against the mighty Roman Republic.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | African American Stars | Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 1.18.05
• The Moon in Our Hands
  Author: Dyja, Thomas
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 25 ISBN: 0786715057 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  From the author of Play for a Kingdom comes a masterful story inspired by the early life of Walter White, a blonde, blue-eyed, and very light-skinned African-American, who, in 1918, was recruited by the NAACP to investigate a brutal lynching in a small Tennessee town.
  Updated 2.7.05
• One Sunday Morning
  Author: Ephron, Amy
  Publisher: Morrow $ 21.95 ISBN: 0060585528 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist
  This mesmerizing tale of wealth, society, and scandal set in Jazz Age New York and Paris in the 1920s is from the celebrated author of A Cup of Tea.
  Updated 3.10.05
• The Wild Girl: The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932
  Author: Fergus, Jim
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 23.95 ISBN: 1401300545 Date: 2005
  PW Booklist
  From the award-winning author of One Thousand White Women comes a novel in the tradition of Little Big Man, tracing one man's search for adventures and the wild Apache girl who invites him into her world.
  Suggested Reading: Western Stars | Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 4.22.05
• Metropolis
  Author: Gaffney, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400061504 Date: 2005
  Booklist LJ
  A brilliant novel of epic proportions, Metropolis tells the story of a young man's struggle to find love and create a life in late 19th-century New York.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 1.23.05
• Baker Tower
  Author: Haigh, Jennifer
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060509414 Date: 2005
  Kirkus Booklist
  The author of Mrs. Kimble returns with an emotionally rich and evocative exploration of community, love, and family set in a western Pennsylvania coal town in the years following World War II.
  Updated 11.2.04
• The Painted Kiss
  Author: Hickey, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743492609 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  In the tradition of The Girl with the Pearl Earring and The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, a beautiful, atmospheric, and sensual debut re-imagines the tempestuous relationship between painter Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floege, the youngest daughter of a bourgeois businessman.
  Updated 5.20.05
• 7,000 Clams
  Author: Irby, Lee
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385511892 Date: 2005
  LJ
  Unlucky bootlegger Frank Hearn is looking for the big score, but he'll have to contend with hustlers, mobsters, Babe Ruth, and a certain dangerous blonde to do so. In his fiction debut, Irby takes readers on a wild ride through the Roaring '20s, complete with colorful characters, sizzling style, and bathtub gin.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 2.16.05
• Empire Rising
  Author: Kelly, Thomas
  Publisher: FSG $ 25 ISBN: 0374147817 Date: 2005
  PW LJ
  Making 1930s New York the setting for a rich and unforgettable story, Kelly's extraordinary third book is a novel of love and work, of intrigue and jealousy among the people who built the "eighth wonder of the world"--the Empire State Building.
  Updated 1.23.05
• Twilight
  Author: Mosby, Katherine
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066212715 Date: 2005
  LJ Booklist
  This is the unforgettable story of one woman's sexual and political awakening in the years preceding World War II. Lavinia Gibbs avoids a stifling marriage, enraging her socially prominent parents, and sails off to Europe to rebuild and discover her life.
  Updated 4.7.05
• The Devil's Wind
  Author: Rayner, Richard
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0066212928 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  A story of mobsters, murder, and the birth of Las Vegas is set against the backdrop of the McCarthy hearings and the testing of the A-Bomb in the Nevada desert.
  Updated 10.25.04
• The Retreat
  Author: Rimbaud, Patrick
  Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 0871138778 Date: 2005
  LJ Kirkus
  A gripping historical novel focused on Napoleon's dramatic invasion of Russia, The Retreat is a stirring follow-up to The Battle, winner of France's Goncourt Prize.
  Updated 11.22.04
• A Thread of Grace
  Author: Russell, Mary Doria
  Publisher: Random $ 25.95 ISBN: 0375501843 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW
  Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author of The Sparrow and Children of God.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 11.29.04
• Beautiful Inez
  Author: Schneider, Bart
  Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 1400054427 Date: 2005
  LJ Booklist
  Beautiful Inez is rich with music, children, a beguiling affair, Bohemian romance, and eccentric characters in the streets, coffee houses, mental hospitals, and symphony halls of San Francisco in the early sixties.
  Updated 1.18.05
• Misfortune
  Author: Stace, Wesley
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316830348 Date: 2005
  PW
  This unforgettable debut is a rich, outrageous Dickensian novel in the comic tradition of The Crimson Petal and the White about a boy raised as a girl in the richest home in 19th-century England.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 2.1.05
• Angel of Forgetfulness
  Author: Stern, Steve
  Publisher: Viking $ 24.95 ISBN: 0670033871 Date: 2005
  Booklist
  This time-defying odyssey from the 1960s to the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the 20th century features a detour through heaven on the wings of a derelict angel.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction
  Updated 2.7.05
• The Illuminator
  Author: Vantrease, Brenda
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312331916 Date: 2005
  PW LJ
  Fourteenth-century England was a time of plague, political unrest, and the earliest stirrings of the Reformation. Richly detailed and irresistibly compelling, this first novel is a glorious work of love, art, religion, and treachery at this extraordinary turning point in history.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 3.10.05
• Sudden Rain
  Author: Wolff, Maritta
  Publisher: Scribner $ 26 ISBN: 0743254821 Date: 2005
  Kirkus PW
  The long-lost final manuscript from the late novelist is a riveting, resonant story that captures the emotional rhythms of suburban L.A. in the late 60s and early 70s.
  Updated 1.29.05
• Canaan's Tongue
  Author: Wray, John
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400040868 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  In a crumbling estate on the banks of the Mississippi, eight survivors of the nortorious Island 37 Gang wait for the war, or the Pinkerton Detective Agency, to claim them. Their leader, a bizarre charismatic known only as "The Redeemer," has disappeared without a trace, and they are wanted by both the Union and the Confederacy.
  Suggested Reading: Civil War Stars
  Updated 4.19.05
• Lucky Strike
  Author: Zafris, Nancy
  Publisher: Unbridled $ 23.95 ISBN: 1932961046 Date: 2005
  Booklist LJ
  America has always been the place for seekers to reinvent themselves. The canyon country of Utah in the 1950s is just such a territory, where thousands of self-styled prospectors, encouraged by government pamphlets and naove promises, have caught uranium fever and descended upon the desert landscape, hoping to make their fortunes. Among them, a young widow and her two children embark on just such an adventure--for more complicated and heartrending personal reasons. Along the way they join a throng of colorful, unforgettable characters and form the most unexpected bonds. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 3.21.05

LINKS:

American Historical Fiction Book List
Historical Fiction for Children & Adults
Historical Fiction Bibliography
Historical Mysteries
Soon's Historical Fiction Site
Uchronia: Alternate History
Yahoo - Historical Fiction