Popular North American Historical Fiction Books
Find historical fiction books written by authors from North America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (124)
61.
Small Great Things : A Novel by Jodi Picoult EN
Country: North America / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • With richly layered characters and a gripping moral dilemma that will lead readers to question everything they know about privilege, power, and race, Small Great Things is the stunning new page-turner from Jodi Picoult. SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE “[Picoult] offers a thought-provoking examination of racism in America today, both overt and subtle. Her many readers will find much to discuss in the pages of this topical, moving book.”—Booklist (starred review) Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years’ e... continue
62.
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue EN
Country: North America / 
Mexico
Mexico
Description:
Selected as a Guardian best book of 2016 A funny and mind-bending novel about the clash of empires and ideas in the sixteenth century, told over the course of one dazzling tennis match A brutal tennis match in Rome. Two formidable opponents: the wild Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo. Galileo, Saint Matthew and Mary Magdalene heckle from the sidelines. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII execute Anne Boleyn, and her executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ... continue
63.
Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel EN
Country: North America / Mexico
Mexico
Description:
As the millions of fans of Like Water for Chocolate know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife. The hero of this novel is Júbilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to “hear” people’s true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful d... continue
64.
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid EN
Country: North America / 
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda
Description:
After growing up without a mother, Xuela Claudette Richardson again finds herself imagining what the woman might have been like and how her own life might have turned out different had her mother not died.
65.
The Berry Pickers : A Novel by Amanda Peters EN
Country: North America / 
Canada
Canada
Description:
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years "A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness." —People, A Best New Book July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-... continue
66.
The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight agai... continue
67.
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood EN
Country: North America / Canada
Canada
Description:
The bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative, beginning with the mysterious death of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945. Decades later, Laura’s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric family’s history. Intertwined with Iris’s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind kil... continue
68.
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
The author of When the Emperor Was Divine presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early 20th century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage and the prospect of wartime internment.
69.
The Chinese Groove : A Novel by Kathryn Ma EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An Amazon Editors' Pick People, A Best Book of the Year For readers of Less and The Wangs Vs. The World, a buoyant, good-hearted, and sharply written novel about a blithely optimistic immigrant with big dreams, dire prospects, and a fractured extended family in need of his help—even if they don't know it yet Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province and living in the shadow of his widowed father’s grief, dreams... continue
70.
The Color of My Words by Lynn Joseph EN
Country: North America / 
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Description:
Sometimes you have no control over what will happen next, as I discovered the year I was twelve years old. . . Ana Rosa is a blossoming young writer growing up in a poor seaside village in the Dominican Republic. At twelve, she finds herself faced with turning points that will make up who she is--watching her brother's search for a future, learning to dance and to love, and finding out what it means to be a part of a community. But in a country where words are feared, Ana Rosa must struggle to find her own voice and the means for it to be heard. Gradually she learns that her words have the pow... continue