Looking for historical fiction type books for my husband. He just recently got into reading and has really enjoyed old western style books. I mainly read fantasy or science fiction and he can’t get into those. So looking for suggestions of books that men like! Thanks
by giannafairchilds
7 Comments
I recommend Michelle Beattie’s 5 book Frontier Montana series which documents the beginning of the fictional town of Marietta, MT around 1880. By the way, there are 200+ books set in current day Marietta. All from Tule Publishing.
Blood on the River, Karen Hesse. It’s about the Jamestown Colony of 1609
Lonesome Dove
Several of James A. Michener’s books set in the west.
Hillary Mantel’s Cromwell triology is spectacular. The first two books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies both won the Booker Prize. It’s also delightful and shockingly fast paced for a beautifully formed, extraordinarily researched piece. It’s the kind of series where you get to the last 300 pages and think “I wish this was longer”
Is there a particular genre or time that interests you?
the saxon stories by Bernard cornwell, old uhtred retells is lifes tale, how the Danes invaded and how the saxons would defend their land.
“I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, and this is the tale of a blood feud. It is a tale of how I will take from my enemy what the law says is mine. And it is the tale of a woman and of her father, a king. He was my king and all that I have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live, and the swords of my men, all came from Alfred, my king, who hated me.“
“It was an unsettling thought, that somehow we were sliding back into the smoky dark and that never again would man make something so perfect as this small building.”
The warlord chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, an old monk tells his life story while chronicling Arthur’s life and his part in it during the saxon invasions
“These are the tales of the land we call Lloegyr, which means the Lost Lands, the country that was once ours but which our enemies now call England. These are the tales of Arthur, the Warlord, the King that Never Was, the Enemy of God and, may the living Christ and Bishop Sansum forgive me, the best man I ever knew. How I have wept for Arthur”
“But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you’ll just weep yourself to death.”
Shōgun by James clavell, English pilot John blackthorn. is thrust into a power struggle between the current regents, spain, the Catholic Church, and Portuguese jesuits. In 1600s japan.
“Perhaps that is why we love life so much, Anjin-san. You see, we have to. Death is part of our air and sea and earth. You should know, Anjin-san, in this Land of Tears, death is our heritage”
Sharpe novels also by Bernard cornwell are good too
“And suddenly, after weeks of thinking about desertion, Sharpe realized that what he had just said was true. He did want to go back to the army, and that knowledge surprised him. The army had bored Richard Sharpe, then done its best to break his spirits. It had even flogged him, but now, standing on Seringapatam’s battlements, he missed the army.
For at heart, as Richard Sharpe had just discovered for himself, he was a soldier.”