Step into the past this fall with our collection of the latest historical fiction new release books. Turn the page and watch history comes alive against a backdrop of golden autumn leaves and transportive settings. For our Time Traveler Reader Type, autumn is the perfect season to journey across centuries, explore sweeping historical dramas and experience classical romance.
Browse our list of historical fiction new release books, featuring vivid details, rich historical backdrops and unforgettable drama. Packed with masterful new titles from acclaimed authors like Alice Hoffman, Kate Morton, Philippa Gregory and Ken Follett, your ticket to the past awaits.
Historical Fiction New Releases September 2026
Agrippa: A Novel of Ancient Rome's Descent Into Dictatorship
by Robert Harris
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of Conclave and Dictator, a gripping tale of ancient Rome's descent into dictatorship
He was born feet first, a dangerous way to enter the world. His mother did not survive, and the nickname, Agrippa--mother killer--stuck. But the schoolyard taunting only served to harden his resolve and hone his predilection for aggression. In time, the name lost its sting and became instead a mark of his invincibility. It came to shape his destiny.
Agrippa was a mere commoner, a plebeian, his father a humble Stoic, but he earned the respect and fear of his peers. He defended a bullied young boy, Octavius, who turned out to be the nephew of Caesar himself, a chance encounter that would change the trajectory of his life. He eventually joined the ranks of the legionnaires and marched against their enemies.
As gripping and full of intrigue as his bestselling novel Conclave, Agrippa is Robert Harris's monumental return to the world of ancient Rome on the precipice of dictatorship, a novel for our times.
The Barman of the Ritz
by Philippe Collin
AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - A BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A celebrated bartender at the Ritz Hotel during the Nazi occupation of Paris harbors a dangerous secret in this "magnificent" (ELLE), "brilliant" (Le Parisien) international bestseller based on a true story.
"The Barman of the Ritz brilliantly captures the tense, morally murky atmosphere of Nazi-occupied France. Richly researched and utterly absorbing, this World War II novel pulls readers inside Paris's legendary Ritz Hotel--where every cocktail, every conversation, and every choice could change a life forever." -- Anne Berest, author of The Postcard
Paris, 1940. The Nazis have descended on Paris and the Occupation has begun. Businesses across the city have shuttered, but the legendary Ritz Hotel remains open, its dazzling lights still burning bright on the Place Vendôme. When it becomes the favorite watering hole of the occupying forces, its barman, Frank Meier, is forced to adapt to a new clientele. But Frank has a secret: he is Jewish.
Tensions rise as the war progresses, but Frank refuses to leave his post behind the bar. Unbeknownst to the Nazi officers he serves night after night, Frank forms precarious alliances with unlikely accomplices in order to save other Jewish families in the city and keep his loved ones alive.
Inspired by real events, with the highest of stakes and a brilliant protagonist, The Barman of the Ritz is a heady cocktail of history and fiction set in one of Paris's most glamorous places, diving deep into the impossible choices of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.
Dodge City
by Patrick DeWitt
From bestselling author Patrick deWitt comes Dodge City, a rollicking novel about a young man on an amphetamine-fueled cross-country road trip, fleeing the draft for the safe haven of Canada.
It's 1967 in Los Angeles and Lee Clarke has received his draft notice, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War. A straitlaced, apolitical twenty-three-year-old from Concrete, Washington, Lee is studying at UCLA until a fistfight leads to his expulsion--and his removal from the deferment list. The draft notice forces him to make the first political decision of his life, and though he's happy in California and loves his girlfriend, he will leave the country and head for the border.
He signs up at a drive-away car-delivery service, chancing into a showroom-new Jaguar bound for the East Coast. Bringing only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines, he makes his stimulated progress against the width of the country, pining for the life he's left behind and wondering what his decision will mean for his future.
But he is not just saying goodbye to the country of his birth. In four different towns strung out along the northern United States, Lee visits each member of his immediate family: his father, a World War II veteran in a state of degradation; his mother, engaged in a buoyantly manic and never-ending performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken, misanthropic brother, Harry; and finally his twin sister, Grace, a brash, young nurse-in-training mired in romantic drama at a Manhattan psychiatric hospital.
An arresting portrait of a country in flux and a family in disarray, Dodge City represents a signal achievement in an already illustrious body of work by the "twenty-first-century Mark Twain" (Slate). Witty, moving, and delightfully off-kilter, Patrick deWitt's sixth novel is a brilliant and raucous exploration of family, country, division, and war, from an elegant humorist who never shies from the stranger aspects of human behavior.
The Library of Leaving
by Emily Dunlay
From the author of Teddy, a dazzling historical novel about an American librarian in 1920s Switzerland who must face the truth of decisions she made to survive during the First World War.
In the wake of the Great War, American Helen Fox lives a solitary life in Switzerland as a librarian, cataloguing books left as bequests by diplomats and other expatriates. Bookish and buttoned up, Helen is shocked when she receives a package that hints at her far more colorful past: it's a draft chapter of a novel written by a man she knew intimately during the war--a soldier she nursed at a camp in the Alps for wounded Allied troops. Though he claims his book is fiction, Helen is afraid of what it might reveal about who she used to be, really, and whose side she might have been on. ...
Bursting with literary references and testament to the power of reading, this lush and atmospheric tale of love, grief, and betrayal interweaves Helen's own recollections of her life--including her affair with an exiled Austrian baron--with pages from her ex-lover's supposedly fictional book and other dispatches. The Library of Leaving is both a story of a wartime romance and a meditation on how books read or written tell--and sometimes distort--the truth of a life.
Our Noble Selves
by Kate Atkinson
A thrilling tale of post-World War II London, where the peace proves as tricky to navigate as the past, from the #1 international bestselling author of Life After Life.
When crime correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn returns to Britain from Singapore in 1945, he takes a quiet job with the Festival of Britain, a government-funded endeavor aimed at celebrating the nation's creativity, grit, and ingenuity. There, he joins a team of misfits and eccentrics as they help to ready the Festival for launch.
When a Frenchwoman goes missing, Flynn becomes the central suspect in her disappearance--and possible murder. He was the last person to see her alive, yet he has no memory of the evening they spent together. As evidence against him mounts, Flynn begins to wonder if he might actually be to blame. To make matters worse, he is surrounded by people who have their own secret agenda.
There may be a carnival atmosphere in London as the country attempts to throw off the drab privations of war, yet beneath the frivolity there is also a worthy attempt to hold up a mirror to both its history and its future. With her unique voice and her skill at conjuring the past, Kate Atkinson turns her light on a nation reconstructing its image and the lengths to which some might go to manipulate the outcome. Witty, brilliantly plotted, and with an unforgettable cast of characters, Our Noble Selves paints a vivid portrait of a former empire struggling with its identity in the aftermath of war.
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
by Ariel Lawhon
A sweeping historical adventure inspired by the life of Grace O'Malley, the legendary Irish folk heroine who risked everything to defend her people. Venture onto the high seas with the thrilling latest from the New York Times bestselling author of The Frozen River and I Was Anastasia.
Grace O'Malley was born to be a sea captain. But despite her natural skill on the water, Grace learns early that her dreams of a life at the helm are not compatible with the expectations of her noble family. As the only daughter of a powerful chieftain, her role is to secure a strong alliance and bear children. But when she's sent to foster with a nearby clan, Grace falls for a clever and open-minded second son--a man she cannot have.
Married off against her will to a brutal warrior, Grace performs her duty, all the while gathering followers loyal to her, and consolidating her husband's power, only to be ousted from his lands. But this betrayal offers Grace the opportunity to return to sea, finally leading clan O'Malley's mighty fleet. Just as she finds true independence, Queen Elizabeth's incursions into Ireland grow bolder and Grace must fight to defend her land, her ships, and the people she loves most against the cruel and power-hungry English deputies, who will stop at nothing to check her influence.
Keenly observed and fiercely written, Ariel Lawhon's new action-packed novel channels the untamed beauty and harsh realities of sixteenth-century Ireland, as seen through the eyes of an unforgettable heroine who rightly became “the Pirate Queen of Ireland.”
Soldiers & Sailors
by Terrence Holt
Pursued by a past he cannot bring himself to remember, Hal returns to his decaying Midwestern birthplace, where he takes a job as staff physician at a decrepit veteran's home. There, Hal finds himself the unwilling audience of his patients' horrific stories, and descends with them into a Dantesque vision of the hell of war. Fleeing one hell for another, Hal searches the ruins of his ancestral home for clues to his own family's descent into murder and madness. Between these two worlds, Hal finds a guide in Nell, the wryly attentive receptionist--who harbors her own secrets about both worlds.
The ancient veterans compel Hal to hear what they did and what they suffered, remembering a blood-spattered village in France, or the infernal jungles of New Guinea, the terrors of the Murmansk run or the rail yards of Dachau. Their anguished recollections illuminate this novel like star shells over a darkened battlefield. As the veterans' war stories grow stranger and more terrible, they lead Hal to a terrifying discovery: about his patients, his family, and his collapsing world.
In Hal's struggle to rebuild his world on the ruins of his father's war, Terrence Holt has created a gripping saga, one ringing with the echoes of America's bloodstained history, and the dire possibilities of our collective future. An epic celebration of the storyteller's craft, Soldiers & Sailors offers a literary testament to the heroism of those whose sacrifice must never be forgotten.
Taxi Dancer
by Marivi Soliven
"Welcome to the electrifying underworld of California's Depression-era taxi dance halls, where a dance could cost you a dime, a chance at romance, or a bullet in your back."--Rick Bonus, Professor and Chair at the Dept. of American Ethnic Studies in the Univ. of Washington
Based on a true story, Taxi Dancer is a gripping historical novel by Marivi Soliven that illuminates the hidden world of Depression-era Filipino taxi dance halls, weaving a forbidden interracial romance with a high-stakes murder mystery to explore race, desire, survival, and the Filipino American experience in 1930s California.
"If we can't marry white girls, we can at least dance with them." In response to Depression-era California laws that criminalized interracial marriage, Filipinos established taxi dance halls where they could mingle with American women.
When Filipino farmworker Eli and American taxi dancer Lucinda fall in love, they hope to move to Washington State where they can legally wed. Their plans are derailed when Eli is arrested for the shooting death of a dance hall owner.
As Lucinda fights to exonerate Eli, she uncovers a murder conspiracy orchestrated by Mamie Savage, a rival dance hall owner and Sal, her Filipino bartender. The capital punishment trial brings to light abhorrent secrets concealed by the conspirators, the victim, and Lucinda herself. Inspired by true events in San Diego's Stingaree district.
World News from Waverley High
by Linda Kass
A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history--through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.
1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion.
When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests--while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper's editor.
As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena's own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace--and to hope for a better world.
Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest.
For more historical fiction book recommendations, check out our Time Traveler picks for Summer 2026. You may also enjoy our book recommendations for Bookworms or Leading Ladies.