Historic Fiction

[Ea]

I think from Australia it might be difficult to find a good deal.

[ardeegee]

I ran across a new book today based on the life of Abraham Lincoln that looks interesting.

I see that it has 100% rebate now, too!

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by StanByk

I managed to get it for $14 from Amazon.com

This WAS at Amazon... another of the e-books I looked at was over $35! For a novel?

[MickeyC]

I highly recommend the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser; very accurate and entertaining historical fiction set in the Victorian era.

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by cassidym

I highly recommend the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser; very accurate and entertaining historical fiction set in the Victorian era.

These are quite expensive on Amazon... $11.99 for every ebook of his available to me...

Do you have another source for this series?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by lene1949

I was going to buy this book until I saw the price: $21.10... ouch..

Considering the size of the book, and the number of hours it's going to take you to read it, the price does not seem unreasonable.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by cassidym

I highly recommend the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser; very accurate and entertaining historical fiction set in the Victorian era.

But not, so far as I know, available as ebooks. Otherwise I'd buy them all. George MacDonald Fraser has published other books as well, most of them based on his service in WW2, and they also are very readable.

Regards, Alex

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

But not, so far as I know, available as ebooks. Otherwise I'd buy them all. George MacDonald Fraser has published other books as well, most of them based on his service in WW2, and they also are very readable.

Regards, Alex

Yes, BBC Radio 7 recently did a reading of "Quartered Safe Out Here" - an account of his wartime experiences in Burma - which was excellent.

[neilmarr]

The Flashmen series is superb. I've read all the books several times. Last time around, I got them in batches of four at a bargain £9.99 a batch. I too wish they were available in ebook. I'd happily read them all again during my upcoming hospital stay. Happy reading. Neil

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by StanByk

Hi,
can you please recommend historic fiction books to me?
Books I have read and which I liked a lot are for instance "The Pope Joan" and "The name of the rose".
Thank you
Robert

I'm not sure whether you're interested in mysteries with historical settings (although Name of the Rose is one, of course), but John Maddox Roberts' excellent SPQR series has become available in ebook. I read the first 2 in paperback years ago, but never encountered the rest until now. Fictionwise has a couple of the later volumes at inflated prices, but B&N has those and more for US $9.99 (Ereader format, but thanks to DarkReverser that's not a problem )

Another excellent historical mystery I read recently is Suzanne Alleyn's The Cavalier of the Apocalypse. It's set just before the French Revolution and is actually a prequel to a series that is only available currently in p-book, though, so you might not want to get hooked.

[lila55]

"Cathedral of the Sea" by Ildefonso Falcones
"Queen Margot" by Alexandre Dumas
"Quo Vadis" by Henryk Sienkiewicz
(the last two are available here at mobileread)

[cmdahler]

One of the most outstanding historical fiction books of all time is Tolstoy's War and Peace. The novel that is consistently chosen by scholars around the world as the best ever written, and is in fact the first modern novel ever written, is Cervantes' Don Quixote. (If you can't read Spanish, try Edith Grossman's translation if you don't mind paying for it.)

If you want a more modern author writing about historical times, I would echo Follett's Pillars of the Earth. Don't waste your time with his sequel, World Without End; it's not nearly in the same league - more of a "let's milk this franchise for all it's worth" sort of follow-up.

Another excellent (and very long) read is The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. It's an outstanding detailed view into political, social, economic, and scientific developments of the late 1600s, set mostly in Europe. It's also written in a quite humorous style. 3 volumes (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), each book around 800 to 1000 pages in the original hardback, so it'll definitely take you a while. Well worth it, though.

[HorridRedDog]

This is not so much a recommendation for an ebook on historical fiction. In fact these would be terrible on the readers that most of use.

But if anyone has much of an interest in the "history" around the time of the story that you want to read, let me recommend the Historical Atlases from Penguin.

I have some that appear to no longer be available. "The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History" still is though and is very good for gaining a feeling of the times.

"The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Rome" is another good one for anyone interested in ancient Rome.

[Shayne Parkinson]

Ellis Peters "Cadfael" series, about a monk who's a medieval sleuth, is delightful, and a set of books that I often return to. She also wrote historical fiction under her real name, Edith Pargeter.

The Gwynnedd Quartet is about Llywelyn the Last, while the Heaven Tree trilogy is about the building of a great church in the 13th century. They're beautifully written and carefully researched, but are rather more serious (and sometimes heartbreaking) than the Cadfael books.

I don't know if they're available as e-books, though.

And if you're interested in books set in Victorian New Zealand... check my sig

[cmdahler]

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

Ellis Peters "Cadfael" series, about a monk who's a medieval sleuth, is delightful, and a set of books that I often return to. She also wrote historical fiction under her real name, Edith Pargeter.

And speaking of sleuthing monks, Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is a wonderful book set in a medieval monastery in Italy.