The 17 Best Historical Fiction Books of 2022 Will Transport You to Another World

There is a lot to say about this book, which follows a woman born in 1920 who has an eventful life in South America, but the big headline for me is that the character lives through two different pandemics. Honestly, it's the cathartic read you're probably looking for right now. The English version of the book is linked here, but the original is in Spanish.

When a portrait model loses her mother during the Spanish Flu, she suddenly needs to find a way to make some money. So she takes a job as a secretary for Helen Frick, the daughter of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Fifty years later, in that same mansion, a different model starts to investigate a famous murder that took place in the house.

Any book that has a tagline reading, "A forgotten war. An unforgettable romance," gets an immediate yes from me. During the controversial annexation of Texas, a Mexican woman loses her home and her husband. Meanwhile, an Irish man decides to help the Mexican army fight against the U.S., and their lives become intertwined.

In this dual-timeline story that takes place in, you guessed it, Barcelona, a mother and daughter both push against their family's expectations of them. It has espionage, family secrets, and reunions of long lost lovers. What more could you ask for?

Okay, this is "historical" if you count the '70s as historical, and yes, we do. If you liked Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & The Six, this book is for you. Faun, a college drop-out, grabs her camera and moves to L.A. after her mom's death. She reconnects with her childhood best friend, who is conveniently dating a rock star. It sounds like an amazing life pivot, but things get more complicated the longer Faun stays there.

Another Hollywood story! Maria Lagana moves to Los Angeles to outrun her family's past in Italy, and she finds herself working at Mercury Pictures, a movie studio. On the brink of WWII, she's confronted with a man from her father's past, and things get dicey.

Maddie Sykes, an aspiring seamstress, moves to North Carolina to work with her aunt. She ends up being employed by the wealthy women of the town, but she learns that health problems have been following all of her clients, and she figures out the cause. Will she report what she knows, or keep it to herself?

Two women arrive at Ellis Island with different dreams: One is hoping to live in the United States, and the other dreams of being a translator for immigrants. But the corruption on the island proves to be more than either of them anticipated.

This book follows three generations of a Chinese family, and starts with the matriarch, Melin, fleeing China in 1938. Her son grows up and has to grapple with his own childhood while parenting his daughter, Lily. How much should he actually tell her about his past so she can know who she is?

Sylvie de Rosiers, a privileged woman living in Haiti, has to flee the island when a revolution starts to tear it apart. When she arrives in Paris, she becomes fascinated with that country's own revolution, and its leader Maximilien Robespierre. She has to decide which side of history she really wants to be on in this gripping book.

Theatre kids, unite! This story, set in 1920s England, is about a young girl who enlists her friends and starts a theatre from the bones of a deceased, beached whale. But with war on the horizon, her life and performance skills take on a new meaning.

This book is also set in England during the '20s but with a very different night life, since it's about the flapper scene in London. There's also a little bit of matchmaking, and I know you love historical matchmaking.

The fictional story of the very real Black woman Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's librarian and an important, powerful patron of the arts. Ever been to the Morgan Library in New York City? She did that! Belle's father was the first Black graduate of Harvard and the dean of Howard University's law school. But nobody in the New York City upper crust society knew that, because in order to navigate the racism of the 1900s, she passed as white and told people her heritage was Portuguese instead of African American. Why are there not, like, a billion books and movies about this woman? (I bet we can all probably guess why... grateful for this one, though!)

This is a historical fiction take on Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in which Hawthorne is an actual character. It's about a woman who meets Hawthorne and inspires Hester Prim—but is being a muse all it's cracked up to be? Why do we romanticize this relationship? Can't women do more than inspire? Feminist rant aside, this is an early 19th-century story that also gets into the nostalgia of the time.

Another reimagining, this is a new take on The Island of Doctor Moreau. Carlotta, the titular daughter, grows up rich in 19th-century Mexico—though her father is a mad scientist. There's some supernatural science fiction mystery going on... and also a little romance?

The 1920s really are a popular setting for historical functions this year, huh? But this book is different. It's a novel with a novel within a novel with multiple eras of American history at play. You won't know what, or who, to... well, trust.

Luz Lopez, an Indigenous Chicano young girl who reads tea leaves as a historical side hustle, dreams of the past while trying to make a future for herself in 1930s Denver. It's a Western with a fresh perspective and multigenerational stories of the entire fictional Lopez family.