14 Great Books for the Historical Fiction and Nonfiction Lover in Your Life!

Whether it's for a birthday, Christmas, or any other special occasion, historical fiction and nonfiction lovers always enjoy the gift of a good read! Here are some historical fiction novels and nonfiction books worth checking out and giving as gifts!

Courage of the Heart​: An American Odyssey 1915 to 1923

      This book is a true historical narrative of World War I based on the letters found in the house of my husband's grandmother after her death. This is an intimate account of two families and four brothers from Western Illinois, each facing the Great War in uniquely different ways. It is the extraordinary love story of Haidee Wilson and Maurice Chatterton, written in their own words, spanning the years from 1915 until 1923.  This is an odyssey of courage, hardship, war, death, illness, and finally, survival and a love that endured. This is an American Odyssey.

Learn More

Madam of My Heart: A Novel of Love, Loss and Redemption

Baltimore, 1849. During a scandalous crisis, the young Irish Brianna Baird flees her home at Fells Point. With little cash and only a seamstress's trade, she braves the hypnotic streets of New Orleans. The tantalizing Madam DeSalle lures her to her brothel, then sells her to the dashing but questionable gambler, Edward Spina, who falls in love with her. In a tawdry alliance with these two profiteers, Brianna embarks on a journey through the French Quarter's debauched and glittering Voodoo world.

Facing the horrors of slavery, she triumphs by gaining freedom papers for her maid Emma's enslaved husband and son. Brianna and Edward escape with them to San Francisco. There she becomes one of the most sought after madams in the gold rush parlor house trade. But will her fame and pluck be enough to save Edward from the Vigilante noose? This is the first book in the American Madams series.

Learn More

Skipper

This is a coming of age story about a boy growing up in Central Florida in the 1950's. The boy seeks to know the truth about God and religion, sexual awakenings, love, friendship, hate and betrayal.

His boring and uninteresting life is transported into a magical life of excitement and adventure through explorations of rural ranch life, fishing in remote lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. A Scout Master provides the opportunity of a life time for these wonderful new experiences, but is there too big of a price to pay? Only the boy can answer this question as he seeks the truth.

Learn More

Flight to Ohio: From Slavery to Passing to Freedom

“Flight to Ohio” begins in 1836, as 21-year-old Tom and his mother Nellie escape slavery on a Virginia plantation. They soon discover that Tom, the bastard son of the white master, passes as white when he is not seen with his mother. Tom must make a choice as to how to live. The stakes are raised when he courts and marries 18-year-old Sarah Long, a young white woman from a respected local farm family.

What is lost when identity is concealed? What price is paid? Tom’s emotional story unfolds against the backdrop of the Cincinnati race riots of 1836 and 1841 and the oncoming Civil War. In a place and time beset with racism, hate, jealousy and violence, the novel’s characters forge deep evolving loves, friendships, and loyalties as they move towards freedom, their ultimate goal.

This is the author’s imagined story of her own maternal ancestry.

Learn More

Shades of Africa

This is a story about a white girl, Shirley Schreiber, and her family. Growing up in South Africa and Rhodesia during the early years of racial discrimination including the apartheid years: 1944– to 1972. Shirley grows up during the years of racism and apartheid and the black power push for communism; when both sides are right, both are wrong. The betrayal by blacks and whites, each with a fierce passion for this cruel, unforgiving land where to trust could mean death.

Learn More

Legend of Coco Palms Resort

Never confuse Hawaiian spirits for Aloha spirit.

On the lush tropical Hawaiian island of Kauai sits the iconic dilapidated Coco Palms Resort, once a paradise getaway for the rich and famous. On September 11, 1992 Hurricane Iniki ripped through Kauai, leaving the resort nothing more than a hollowed shell.

Centuries before Iniki struck, the land belonged to Kauai's royal family. The lush coconut grove along the Wailua River was home to Queen Deborah, the last reigning monarch, whose remains have never been found. Rumor has it that she walks the halls of the resort.

After more than two decades, corporate New York lawyer, Abby Parker has been hired to acquire the property for a wealthy land developer. Abby soon discovers that the Heritage and Cultural Association is not the biggest obstacle to stand in her way. Within hours of arriving on the island, Abby finds herself on a gurney, in the back of an ambulance. Abby may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Learn More

Portrait in Time & Vale of Years


Portrait in Time and Vale of Years center on a dead body and mysterious naked woman found amidst the height of French art. Susanne Bruante, assistant gallery director at Paris' Musee d'Orsay, has developed a controversial theory about the provenance of some famous 19th century nudes. She's also having an affair with the museum's executive director to further her career, and hiding this fact from police makes her a prime murder suspect. However, the truth surrounding the man's death goes deeper than murder and involves love, art, and time travel. Susanne discovers this and inserts herself into history, setting up a plot to inherit the wealth of a famous painter before returning to her own time.

The Seed Apple

Holocaust survivor Mendel Traig meets the Binyans, Jewish Indians living in the California desert who claim to be descended from King Solomon’s sailors. Is the fantastic tale of the family’s ancient journey from the disintegrating Mayan culture of the Yucatan to this northern “promised land” true or a myth?

The Cold War is raging. Mendel falls for Sara Cavanaugh, the engineer responsible for a controversial tower under construction on a sacred site. If completed, the tower will communicate globally with the American nuclear submarine fleet. The Binyan patriarch and his brilliant son are in a generational conflict over the tower and the son’s future.

Spiced with magical realism and mysticism, The Seed Apple (a follow up to Greene’s Lost and Found) is a mysterious, funny, moving novel by a critically acclaimed author.

Learn More

Pearl MD by Marie Bartlett

"Pearl MD" is a fictional account of a female physician in 1800s North Carolina, inspired by real medical journals of the time. Rebuilding her life after a medical mistake that could have taken the life of a former patient who died in childbirth, Pearl starts her new practice far out in the country. She finds a friend in her African-American female assistant and encounters romance from a Chinese immigrant and from the town sheriff, who finds he must arrest her when her past catches up to her. Most of this book is actually about medicine and daily life in the time period, it's not a soap opera.

Learn More

Stray Son

Richard Slota's Stray Son tells the story of a haunted Vietnam vet in the year 2000, reduced to working for a Santa Barbara mortuary, picking up dead bodies.  One day he picks up a live one—his elderly father’s young ghost, a WWII Marine who starts following him around town. Then son receives a phone call that his old father just died. At that moment the young Marine knocks on the son’s trailer door.

The grieving, confused son can no longer keep this apparition from his wife and kids—and opens the door. The Marine finally declares why he is there: to straighten out his stray son—and bum a ride to see his dying mother in a 1942 Sioux City, Iowa hospital. The son needs to take his family to Sioux City in the year 2000 to attend his father’s funeral. So the young father and the old son take their battles back to World War II on a trip across a wartime America towards death and an elusive reconciliation.

Learn More

The Village of Bones

A perilous journey, a stunning prophecy, a dangerous love that could destroy humankind: In 4386 B.C., a young priestess named Sabalah conceives a magical child with a mysterious stranger named Arash. Sabalah names the child Marrah. This child will save the Goddess-worshiping people of Europe from marauding nomad invaders called Beastmen, but only if her mother can keep her alive long enough to grow up. Warned by the Goddess in a vision of the coming invasion, Sabalah flees west with Arash to save her baby daughter, only to discover that she is running into the arms of her worst enemies. In the dark forests of northern Europe, other human-like species left over from the Ice Age still exist.

Learn More

The Illusion of Memory

This literary historical fiction novel is a story of two sisters, children of Holocaust survivor parents, who bond after tragedy and uncover secrets about their family. It offers exploration of how historical trauma affects families over multiple generations and a story from the heart about the experience of living one's childhood and young womanhood always in the shadow of the unspeakable.

Learn More

Expect Deception

Just when US WAVE Livvy Delacourt thinks she and her team of psychic Nazi hunters are ready for whatever The Reich can throw at them, Hitler adds to the mix a spy who also happens to be a wizard. Now dark magic is being used to attack US facilities, and Livvy must match wits with the evil wizard, whose objective is to destroy Operation Delphi and all her team. If she fails to ramp up her psychic powers, she may perish―and perhaps cause the US to lose the war with Germany while she’s at it.

An emotional journey through paranormal realms, Expect Deception is a fast-paced, suspenseful tale of what happens when US Navy psychics pit themselves against their Nazi counterparts.

Learn More