Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a certified instant historical fiction classic in our eyes. One of its greatest strengths is how it hones in on the power of inter-familial love and the empty crater that grief can leave behind, along with how we fill it once we begin our road to recovery. For lovers of Hamnet, we have compiled a list of your perfect next-reads.

Little by Edward Carey

Little Marie was born just a tiny bit, well, tiny, and a tiny bit strange-looking. She was raised in Switzerland until her parents died, then apprenticed out to an even stranger wax sculptor and whisked off to France. While there, the duo meet a widow and her son and journey to the next logical conclusion: create an exhibition for wax heads inside a rehabilitated, abandoned monkey house. After the smashing success, Marie is called to Versailles as an art tutor to a princess. In the grand and ongoing escalation of Marie’s life, she even saves Marie Antoinette’s life. What cannot be ignored though, even from inside the gilded walls of Versailles, is the roar of revolution.

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The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

In 1550’s Florence, the life of the third daughter of the grand duke is not one without luxury. Lucrezia is free to pursue her life of art without worry or responsibility up until the moment her elder sister dies the night before her wedding to the infamous ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. When she is encouraged (read: forced) to step up in her sister’s place at the altar, Lucrezia is introduced to an all new court full of strangers who may or may not be entirely enthralled at the new regent. Her new husband, Alfonso, is far more mysterious than any artworks she had studied in her past life. While Lucrezia is sitting for the portrait that will cement her legacy, she must contend with the new responsibility that has been thrust upon her overnight.

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Henry Henry by Allen Bratton

The son of the Duke of Lancaster, Hal, has a perfect rhythm to his life that has no reason to be disrupted. His family is full of infighting, his mother is still dead, and his father is following in the legacy of the Duchy by bouncing between romance and death scandals. In this modern retelling of the Henriad, Hal spends his time running from his legacy, his life, and even love. Hal must decide if he will be the one to end the cycle of abuse for good, or if he will fall in line with the legacy of Lancaster.

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Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons

Before Juliet, there was Rosaline. When Romeo’s attention settled on her first, she was more than happy to accept a suitor and escape the nunnery she was originally destined for. However, Romeo is not all the romance and beauty he seems to be on the outside, and Rosaline calls off their engagement before it can progress further. Onto the next, it seems, when he shifts his focus to the ever-famous, ever-thirteen-year-old Juliet. Rosaline is desperate to save her cousin from what is becoming an increasingly morbid fate, but time is ticking before she is shunted off to the nunnery.

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Love and Fury by Samantha Silva

This is a story for daughters. Parthenia Blenkinsop is an accomplished midwife who has lost count of the babies she has safely and successfully delivered. She isn’t prepared for Mary Wollstonecraft nor her birth. Throughout the eleven days of chaos, though, Wollstonecraft shares her life story with the midwife, of the trials of prejudice, her fight for independence from marriage, and how she’d risked everything to ensure a more equal world for women. The mother of Mary Shelley urges for her own story to be carried forward into the future generations of young women, even as the risk rises of hers ending here, in childbirth.

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All Our Yesterdays by Joel H. Morris

Like many noblewomen, Lady Macbeth did not begin her story as Lady Macbeth. She was originally married off as a young girl to the Mormaer of Moray, a perfectly sadistic king for a war-thirsty kingdom. She does all she can to protect the fates of herself and her son with her famously sharp mind up until her first husband’s demise. As she falls for Thane Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s son wonders about the dark circumstances following them, and what superstitions may be more than old wive’s tales.

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James by Percival Everett

A new take on the classic tale. Jim knows that his world will end once he catches wind of the plan to sell him and separate him from his wife and daughter forever, so he runs away until he can hatch a plan to return for them. Huck has faked his own death to escape his abusive father and is now on his own. The pair come together to embark on the historic journey down the Mississippi River in entirely new ways.

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The Fraud by Zadie Smith

There is much to be said on the merits of telling the right story, and the dangers of telling the wrong one. Mrs. Eliza Touchet has been living with her cousin by marriage for thirty years, and has seen what failure as an author looks like firsthand. Andrew Bogle grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation in Jamaica, and knows about the brutalities of the world, of how the rich punish and deceive the poor. When he is brought to London as a witness on trial, he knows the power of his story. The Tichborne trial captivates all across England, including Mrs. Touchet. As a lower-class butcher stakes a claim in land and title, the outcome of the trial and the stories told will ripple throughout the world.

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Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

Everyone knows William Shakespeare and his meteoric rise to fame, but what of the falling star in his little brother, Richard? Barely making it by in the shadow of his older brother, Richard is forced to smile pretty and cut purse pockets just to survive as a starving actor, and cannot help but feel jealousy encroach upon him. When a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls on the lesser brother and he must rough through the darkest parts of London to clear his name. With not only his name at risk but also fortune, career, and the gallows, Richard must put on the performance of a lifetime.

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By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

Time is a circle. In the modern era, Melina Green is writing a play inspired by the life of her ancestor, Emilia Bassano. The world of theatre, however, is a true men’s club that Melina feels too disadvantaged to try and force her entry to again. Her best friend takes the decision away from her when she submits the play to a theatre festival under a male pen name. In Elizabethan England, Emilia is a young girl with a sharp wit and an even sharper passion for storytelling. Emilia knows the power of the playwright, but also knows of the powerlessness of her own voice. Determined to get her work into the world, she pays a young actor named William Shakespeare to publish the plays under his own name.

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