10 Best Historical Mystery Books with a Focus on Historical Context!
Are you a passionate reader with an appetite for intricate plots, mysterious twists and turns, all set against the backdrop of a time long past? Look no further! Unraveling mysteries buried deep within the chambers of history is like digging up concealed treasures - both thrilling and satisfying. Trust me; few things are as captivating as historical mysteries that successfully blend factual events with fictional narratives. Our list of "10 Best Historical Mystery Books With a Focus on Historical Context" is exactly what you need to quench that thirst. These chosen novels don't just employ history as a mere backdrop; instead, they allow history to play an essential character in the plot itself. Whether it's a clever whodunit set in the Victorian era or a nail-biting thriller during World War II, these books access the past viscerally and weave it into their mysterious narratives. Prepare yourself to be transported back in time as you navigate through twisty plotlines, all while gaining a fascinating understanding of different historical periods. So, buckle up and get ready for a thrilling rollercoaster ride that promises adventure, mystery, intrigue, and a healthy dose of history!
『』
Author | |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | |
Release Date | |
Source | Google Books |
『Half of a Yellow Sun』
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
Author | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | National Geographic Books |
Release Date | Sep 04, 2007 |
Source | Google Books |
『My Name Is Red』
** ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK ** Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award 'Wonderful' The Spectator 'Magnificent' Observer 'Sumptuous' New Yorker 'Unforgettable' Guardian My Name is Red is an unforgettable murder mystery, set amid the splendour of sixteenth century Istanbul, from the Nobel prizewinning author In the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day - in the European manner. At a time of violent fundamentalism, however, this is a dangerous proposition. Even the illustrious circle of artists are not allowed to know for whom they are working. But when one of the miniaturists is murdered, their Master has to seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror? With the Sultan demanding an answer within three days, perhaps the clue lies somewhere in the half-finished pictures . . . Orhan Pamuk is one of the world's leading contemporary novelists and in My Name is Red, he fashioned an unforgettable tale of suspense, and an artful meditation on love and deception.
Author | Orhan Pamuk |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | Faber & Faber |
Release Date | Aug 05, 2011 |
Source | Google Books |
『』
Author | |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | |
Release Date | |
Source | Google Books |
『All the Light We Cannot See』
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" (Los Angeles Times).
Author | Anthony Doerr |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Release Date | Apr 04, 2017 |
Source | Google Books |
『The Underground Railroad』
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North. In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.
Author | Colson Whitehead |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | Orbit Books |
Release Date | Jan 01, 2016 |
Source | Google Books |
『Ragtime』
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
Author | E.L. Doctorow |
---|---|
Price | $12.99 |
Publisher | Random House |
Release Date | Nov 17, 2010 |
Source | Google Books |
『Joseph and His Brothers』
This remarkable new translation of the Nobel Prize-winner’s great masterpiece is a major literary event. Thomas Mann regarded his monumental retelling of the biblical story of Joseph as his magnum opus. He conceived of the four parts–The Stories of Jacob, Young Joseph, Joseph in Egypt, and Joseph the Provider–as a unified narrative, a “mythological novel” of Joseph’s fall into slavery and his rise to be lord over Egypt. Deploying lavish, persuasive detail, Mann conjures for us the world of patriarchs and pharaohs, the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, and the universal force of human love in all its beauty, desperation, absurdity, and pain. The result is a brilliant amalgam of humor, emotion, psychological insight, and epic grandeur. Now the award-winning translator John E. Woods gives us a definitive new English version of Joseph and His Brothers that is worthy of Mann’s achievement, revealing the novel’s exuberant polyphony of ancient and modern voices, a rich music that is by turns elegant, coarse, and sublime.
Author | Thomas Mann |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | Everyman's Library |
Release Date | May 10, 2005 |
Source | Google Books |
『A Lesson Before Dying』
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. "An instant classic." —Chicago Tribune A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), from the critically acclaimed author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. "A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer." —Boston Globe "Enormously moving.... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." —Los Angeles Times “A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Author | Ernest J. Gaines |
---|---|
Price | $1.99 |
Publisher | Vintage |
Release Date | Jan 20, 2004 |
Source | Google Books |
『Wolf Hall』
In this book, "the opulant, brutal world of the Tudors comes to glittering, bloody life. It is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue, and, finally, most powerful of all Henry VIII's courtiers."--Page 4 of cover.
Author | Hilary Mantel |
---|---|
Price | unknown |
Publisher | HarperCollins UK |
Release Date | Jan 01, 2010 |
Source | Google Books |
So, fellow history and mystery enthusiasts, there you have it! Our painstakingly curated list of the top ten historical mystery books that brilliantly merge historical facts with addictive suspense. These gripping tales, woven with accurate historical details, allow us to travel back in time, unveiling not only how meticulously a crime can be planned and executed, but also how profoundly it can impact society. These novels are not just about solving puzzles, they are hearty servings of history—with a side of intrigue to spice things up! Think of them like two-for-the-price-of-one edutainment packages. So get ready to dive into these riveting narratives; whether you're cozying up on a lazy Sunday afternoon, or need a companion for your daily commutes, these masterpieces promise to keep you hooked right till the end. Happy Reading! Let the mystery-solving begin!
The articles on this site are solely intended to create opportunities for encountering new books, and we do not guarantee the accuracy of the information. Therefore, we kindly ask that you thoroughly research the product information and details of each work on your own before making a purchase. We have no connection to the services provided by each e-commerce site, so please use them at your own responsibility.