Historical Fiction

Kanthapura is a 1938 novel by Indian author Raja Rao, who has also written an autobiographical-style novel, The Serpent and the Rope (1960). Set during the early days of the Indian struggle for independence, the novel chronicles the impact of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi on a small south Indian village named Kanthapura. This is Raja Rao’s most well-known and acclaimed book and primarily serves as a critique of the traditional Indian caste system. The... Read Kanthapura Summary

Kim is a novel by the prolific author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who was the first English-language recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel was originally released in a serialized version in 1900-1901, after which it was published in book form. It offers a wide-ranging view of the cultural and religious diversity of British India in the late-19th century, as perceived through the experience of an Indian-enculturated Irish boy named Kim. Along... Read Kim Summary

The 1979 novel Kindred was written by Octavia E. Butler, a Black author from California who wrote science fiction that challenged white hegemony. The novel tells the story of Edana “Dana” Franklin, a young Black woman in 1976 whose connection to a young white boy named Rufus Weylin allows her to time travel to 1800s Maryland. As she jumps between 1976 and the 1800s, she learns how she and Rufus are connected, and she must survive... Read Kindred Summary

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Lady Audley’s Secret was published in 1862 and caused a stir among Victorian readers with its depiction of murder, madness, extortion, and bigamy. The novel centers on a young woman, Lucy Graham, a governess working in the village of Audley. Everyone in the village is charmed by her, including Sir Michael Audley, who was instantly smitten with her youth, beauty, and sweet demeanor. Sir Michael is a wealthy, 56-year-old widower who did not want Lucy to... Read Lady Audley's Secret Summary

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a Modernist novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It was written between 1926 and 1928, while Lawrence was living in Italy, and first published privately in 1928. Since it was considered scandalous and obscene, the novel was not widely available in America or the United Kingdom until the 1960s. The novel was controversial because of its explicit sexual content, as well as its depiction of an adulterous affair between... Read Lady Chatterley's Lover Summary

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The narrative follows the exploits of Lady Susan, a beautiful and charming widow whose husband has recently died. Lady Susan is an excellent conversationalist who manipulates men into falling in love with her; they forget her socially unacceptable behavior and incorrigible flirtations after merely speaking with her. At the outset of the novella, Lady Susan has sold off her late husband’s family estate instead of giving it to his younger brother, Charles Vernon, as is... Read Lady Susan Summary

Published in 2016 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, LaRose is a work of fiction written by author Louise Erdrich, an enrolled member of the Ojibwe people. The novel takes place on the land in and around an Ojibwe North Dakota reservation, the same physical setting as Erdrich’s previous award-winning novel The Round House. However, LaRose’s characters and time period differ from her previous book. LaRose takes place primarily during the years... Read LaRose Summary

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Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands is Susan Carol McCarthy’s debut novel, published in 2002. The novel received the Chautauqua South Fiction Prize, and it tells the story of a twelve-year-old girl named Reesa McMahon who lives in Mayflower, Florida. Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands is considered both a Bildungsroman as well as a work of historical fiction thanks to the presence of historical figures important to the American civil... Read Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands Summary

Leaving Atlanta (2002) is Tayari Jones’s debut work of fiction. Leaving Atlanta received the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s award for Debut Fiction, and Atlanta Magazine named it “Novel of the Year.” It also earned rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and from indigenous American writer, Leslie Marmon Silko. Jones, an Atlanta native, went on to publish three more novels, culminating in her best-known and most praised work, An American Marriage (2018). For the latter, Jones won... Read Leaving Atlanta Summary

Leo Africanus, a title also sometimes translated into English as Leo the African, is a work of historical fiction by the Lebanese-French journalist Amin Maalouf. It was first published in French as Léon, l’Africain in 1986, and the English translation by Peter Sluglett was published in 1992. The novel’s titular protagonist, Joannes Leo Africanus, whose birth name was al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, was a real early-16th-century figure. Mainly, he was known for writing a... Read Leo Africanus Summary

The book begins with a prologue that describes a tightrope walker crossing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It is set in 1974, long before the towers were destroyed on 9/11.  In the first chapter, the scene shifts to Dublin, Ireland. There, two brothers, John Andrew Corrigan, called Corrigan, and Ciaran, live with their mother. Their father abandoned the family years ago. After their mother’s death, Corrigan begins studying for the priesthood. He eventually drops... Read Let the Great World Spin Summary

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Life in the Iron Mills is a novella written by Rebecca Harding Davis. It was first published anonymously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1861 and was later reprinted as a part of a story collection by The Feminist Press in 1985. At the time of its first publication, audiences assumed the unnamed author was male. This collection is called Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories and contains notes and a short biography of... Read Life In The Iron Mills Summary

Like Water for Chocolate is the debut novel of Laura Esquivel, published in Mexico in 1989 and then translated into English by Carol and Thomas Christensen. Esquivel has sold over four million copies of the novel worldwide. She is a novelist and active politician serving in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. She collaborated with her husband at the time to adapt the novel into a film in 1992, which was then nominated for a Golden... Read Like Water for Chocolate Summary

Lilac Girls is a historical fiction novel by Martha Hall Kelly. Published in 2016, Kelly’s debut novel is inspired by the true story of New York City activist and socialite Caroline Ferriday. Kelly was also inspired by the true story of the Ravensbrück Rabbits, a group of Polish women who were victims of torturous medical experiments during the Second World War. The novel explores the themes of hope, sacrifice, and forgiveness in the face of... Read Lilac Girls Summary

The novel Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, published by Random House in 2017, offers a portrait of an American legend in mourning, surrounded by a poignant but funny cast of 166 characters. It is Saunders’s debut novel, though he has been a notable author of short story collections for decades. The novel won the prestigious Man Booker Prize and was a New York Times best seller.Set in 1862, Lincoln in the Bardo is... Read Lincoln in the Bardo Summary

Little Bee, a 2010 novel by Chris Cleave, follows a teenage Nigerian refugee as her life intertwines with Sarah Summers, Andrew O’Rourke, and Charlie O’Rourke. Cleave imagines a singular scene on a beach in Nigeria that unites Little Bee to the O’Rourke-Summers family. As both Little Bee and Sarah slowly tell and retell their stories of that event and those before and after it, their voices slowly unite. Bridging across countries and blending into a... Read Little Bee Summary