Historical Fiction audiobooks

Boy

By: Nicole Galland

Narrated by: Ell Potter

Length: 11 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

From critically acclaimed author Nicole Galland comes a vibrant and thought-provoking historical tale of love, political intrigue, and gender-swapping set in the theatre world of Elizabethan London.Alexander “Sander” Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in the Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s... Read more

Varina

By: Charles Frazier

Narrated by: Molly Parker

Length: 12 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

In his powerful fourth novel, Charles Frazier returns to the time and place of Cold Mountain, vividly bringing to life the chaos and devastation of the Civil War.With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a Mississippi landowner. He... Read more

The Death of Jane Lawrence

By: Caitlin Starling

Narrated by: Mandy Weston

Length: 13 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Best Books of 2021 · NPR
ALA/The Reading List Best Horror 2021 Pick
Longlisted for the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in a Novel, 2021

From the Bram Stoker-nominated author of The Luminous Dead comes a gothic fantasy horror—The Death of Jane Lawrence.

"Narrator Mandy Weston's cool narration is the perfect match to this tale, making the... Read more

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

By: Paterson Joseph

Narrated by: Paterson Joseph

Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author, who also plays the lead role of Sancho in his play, Sancho: An Act of Remembrance.

"To be able to speak these intimate words into a listener’s ears is this writer-performer’s dream. I have always loved the spoken word, as it strikes me as the purest form of performance. In public storytelling terms, it is... Read more

The Whalebone Theatre: A Read with Jenna Pick

By: Joanna Quinn

Narrated by: Olivia Vinall

Length: 18 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • A transporting, irresistible debut novel that takes its heroine, Cristabel Seagrave, from a theatre made of whalebones to covert operations during World War II—a story of love, family, bravery, lost innocence, and self-transformation.

“Absolute aces...Quinn’s imagination... Read more

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

By: Chris Cleave

Narrated by: Luke Thompson

Length: 12 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

The instant New York Times bestseller from Chris Cleave—the unforgettable novel about three lives entangled during World War II, told “with dazzling prose, sharp English wit, and compassion…a powerful portrait of war’s effects on those who fight and those left behind” (People, Book of the Week).

London, 1939. The day war is declared, Mary North... Read more

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

By: Alison Goodman

Narrated by: Kristin Atherton

Length: 15 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

A Washington Post Best Mystery Novel of 2023

A high society amateur detective at the heart of Regency London uses her wits and invisibility as an ‘old maid’ to protect other women in a new and fiercely feminist historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman.

Lady Augusta Colebrook, “Gus,” is determinedly... Read more

The Librarian of Crooked Lane

By: C.J. Archer

Narrated by: Marian Hussey

Length: 8 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

A librarian with a mysterious past, a war hero with a secret, and the heist of a magic painting. THE LIBRARIAN OF CROOKED LANE is an intriguing new fantasy from C.J. Archer, the USA Today bestselling author of the Glass and Steele series.Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused... Read more

Tsarina

By: Ellen Alpsten

Narrated by: Anna Krippa

Length: 18 hours 33 minutes

Abridged: No

"Makes Game of Thrones look like a nursery rhyme." —Daisy Goodwin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fortune Hunter

“[Alpsten] recounts this remarkable woman’s colourful life and times." —Count Nikolai Tolstoy, historian and author

Before there was Catherine the Great, there was Catherine Alexeyevna: the first woman to rule Russia in her... Read more

The Christie Affair

By: Nina de Gramont

Narrated by: Lucy Scott

Length: 10 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

A Reese's Book Club Pick

Nina de Gramont's The Christie Affair is a stunning new novel that reimagines the unexplained eleven-day disappearance of Agatha Christie that captivated the world.

Every story has its secrets.
Every mystery has its motives.

“A long time ago, in another country, I nearly killed a woman. It’s a particular feeling, the urge to... Read more

Daphne du Maurier: The BBC Radio Collection

By: Daphne du Maurier

Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove, Cathryn Harrison, Adam Go...

Length: 21 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

A comprehensive collection of dramatisations of Daphne du Maurier’s works

'Containing performances from well-known actors from past and present, Daphne du Maurier: The BBC Radio Collection is a rich feast for all fans of the writer's work.' - Entertainment Focus

Daphne du Maurier was one of the 20th century’s most popular writers. Extraordinarily... Read more

One Step Forward

By: Marcie Flinchum Atkins

Narrated by: Chanté McCormick

Length: 4 hours 4 minutes

Abridged: No

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection!An Audiofile Earphones Award Winner!One Step Forward is a compelling debut YA historical fiction novel in verse about Matilda Young—the youngest American suffragist imprisoned for picketing the White House to demand women’s right to vote.Raised in a politically divided family, Matilda wondered if... Read more

Dragon Teeth

By: Michael Crichton

Narrated by: Scott Brick & Sherri Crichton

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

Michael Crichton, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Jurassic Park, returns to the world of paleontology in this recently discovered novel—a thrilling adventure set in the Wild West during the golden age of fossil hunting.The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns... Read more

A Piece of the World

By: Christina Baker Kline

Narrated by: Polly Stone

Length: 8 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the smash bestseller Orphan Train, a stunning and atmospheric novel of friendship, passion, and art, inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s mysterious and iconic painting Christina’s World. ""Later he told me that he’d been afraid to show me the painting. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me:... Read more

The Glutton

By: A.K. Blakemore

Narrated by: Graham Halstead

Length: 11 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

A New York Times EDITORS’ CHOICE | Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize | MOST ANTICIPATED by The Guardian • Paste Magazine • LitHub • The Millions • Library Journal

From the prizewinning author of The Manningtree Witches, a subversive historical novel set during the French Revolution, inspired by a young peasant boy turned showman, said to... Read more

The Gilded Years

By: Karin Tanabe

Narrated by: Janina Edwards

Length: 11 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

Passing meets The House of Mirth in this “utterly captivating” (Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House) historical novel based on the true story of Anita Hemmings, the first black student to attend Vassar, who successfully passed as white—until she let herself grow too attached to the wrong person.

Since... Read more

Mary Christmas

By: Mary-Anne O'Connor

Narrated by: Ellie Perry

Length: 5 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

At the most magical time of the year, will Mary choose independence or love?

It's 1909 and Mary Richards has worked hard to gain an education and become a teacher in her close-knit, picturesque village in the Cotswolds, but not everyone approves of her modern ways.

When her sister Emily becomes engaged to David Christmas, it seems fate will... Read more

The Book of Madness and Cures

By: Regina O'Melveny

Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 10 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Dr. Gabriella Mondini, a strong-willed, young Venetian woman, has followed her father in the path of medicine. She possesses a singleminded passion for the art of physick, even though, in 1590, the male-dominated establishment is reluctant to accept a woman doctor. So when her father disappears on a mysterious journey, Gabriella's own status in... Read more

A Witch in Time

By: Constance Sayers

Narrated by: Courtney Patterson, Claire Christie, Brittany W...

Length: 15 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

A witch is cursed to relive a doomed love affair through many lifetimes, as both troubled muse and frustrated artist, in this haunting debut novel.

Helen Lambert has lived several lives-a young piano virtuoso in 1890s Paris, an actress in 1930's Hollywood, a rock star in 1970s Los Angeles -- only she doesn't know it. Until she meets a strange man... Read more

Little

By: Edward Carey

Narrated by: Jayne Entwistle

Length: 14 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

"An amazing achievement. . . A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I... Read more

The Director

By: Daniel Kehlmann

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

From “one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today” (Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), a visionary tale inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to be forced to return to his homeland and create propaganda films for the German Reich.

An artist’s life, a... Read more

The Teacher of Warsaw

By: Mario Escobar

Narrated by: Zach Hoffman

Length: 8 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

"I want everyone I know to read this book." --Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The Things We Cannot SayFor fans of The Warsaw Orphan and The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The start of WWII changed everything in Poland irrevocably--except for one man's capacity to love.September 1, 1939: Sixty-year-old Janusz Korczak and the students... Read more

Atomic Anna

By: Rachel Barenbaum

Narrated by: Traci Odom, Natalie Naudus, Emily Lawrence & Za...

Length: 15 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

“Atomic Anna is a dazzling work of ingenuity and imagination.”―Téa Obreht,National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Inland

From the author of A Bend in the Stars, an epic adventure as three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their... Read more

The Clergyman's Wife

By: Molly Greeley

Narrated by: Susie Riddell

Length: 6 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

For everyone who loved Pride and Prejudice—and legions of historical fiction lovers—an inspired debut novel set in Austen’s world.
Charlotte Collins, nee Lucas, is the respectable wife of Hunsford’s vicar, and sees to her duties by rote: keeping house, caring for their adorable daughter, visiting parishioners, and patiently tolerating the... Read more