2026 is right around the corner, and it’s looking to be a great year for historical fiction fans. We’re excited to anticipate new novels from both debut authors as well as household names. From our bookshelf to yours, here are the most anticipated historical fiction novels of 2026.
Fire Sword and Sea by Vanessa Riley (1/13)
Caribbean, 1675. Jacquotte Delahaye, a tavern owner’s daughter, chooses the helm over a husband. Disguised as “Jacques” on Haitian docks, she earns a crew, bonds with Bahati and Dirkje—women sailing as men—and falls for Lizzôa d’Erville, a courtesan dealing in secrets. For two decades she raids, outwits governors and amasses a fortune—until fellow pirates turn to the slave trade. Then Jacquotte sets a fiercer course: liberation. Vanessa Riley’s lush, big-hearted epic celebrates audacity, sisterhood, queer desire and a woman who makes the ocean answer to her.
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The Bookbinder’s Secret by A.D. Bell (1/13)
Oxford, 1901. Lily Delaney longs for more than her father’s failing shop and an endless apprenticeship in a man’s trade. When a scorched volume arrives on her bench, she uncovers a confession stitched beneath its spine—whispers of forbidden love, vanished wealth and a killing long buried. Following the trail of hidden pages, Lily moves from eccentric London booksellers to predatory private libraries and dusty society ledgers. Others hunt the books, too. As danger closes in, she must choose: protect herself—or free the truth.
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The Sea Child by Linda Wilgus (1/20)
In 1803 England, newly widowed Isabel returns to the Cornish village where she once washed ashore, rumored to be sea-born. When smugglers carry their wounded captain to her door, she saves Jack—and feels a pull as fierce as the tide. As a hang-happy Revenue officer stalks the coves, Isabel is swept into moonlit runs, brittle salon dinners and a quest for her origins that reaches Brittany’s cliffs. To protect the man she loves and claim herself, a sea child must turn the tide.
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When We Were Brilliant by Lynn Cullen (1/20)
Norma Jeane trails documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room with a proposition: photograph the persona she built. It’s the 1950s, and Eve wants serious subjects while Marilyn wants to be seen for her truth. Their pact forges a charged collaboration—two women shaping image and fate in a world built to box them in. As Marilyn’s star tilts toward dizzying heights, Eve’s lens sharpens, and friendship complicates ambition. Cullen delivers a glamorous yet clear-eyed portrait of craft, power and the private costs of becoming unforgettable.
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Burn Down Master’s House by Clay Cane (1/27)
On Magnolia Row in Virginia, Luke and Henri—enslaved, brilliant, unbroken—forge a bond that sparks quiet uprisings across the South. Their courage shapes observant Josephine, who turns silence into power, and emboldens Charity Butler to fight for her family inside a rigged world. Opposing them is Nathaniel, a Black enslaver whose brittle rule mirrors the cruelty he serves. Cane delivers a sweeping, intimate reckoning about history lit from within for readers who crave grit, grace and hard-won hope.
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With Love from Harlem by ReShonda Tate (1/27)
Harlem, 1943: at twenty-three, Hazel Scott blazes—concert-hall phenom, silver-screen glamour, fearless civil rights voice. Then Adam Clayton Powell Jr. storms in, a magnetic preacher-politician and very much married. Their spark ignites a bond that surges from backroom jazz sets to the halls of Congress, where power and passion collide. As fame mounts and vows are made, private battles of ego and sacrifice threaten the music that made her. Tate crafts a lush, high-stakes romance about art, ambition and selfhood.
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Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson (2/10)
In postwar Germany, Ethel Gathers—an officer’s determined wife—finds an orphanage of mixed-race children and vows to change their fate. Years earlier, idealistic volunteer Ozzie Phillips falls for a local woman, a love that echoes far beyond them. In 1965 Maryland, scholarship student Sophia Clark uncovers a secret that reshapes her past and draws her into Ethel’s quiet crusade. Johnson braids three lives into a radiant novel about identity, belonging and the brave ways women mother, choose and save one another.
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The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (2/17)
Alix Watson has always trusted stories more than people. Broke, book-obsessed and hiding in Boston Public Library’s vaulted hush, she slips through a secret door and into the Astral Library, a refuge where readers step inside the novels they love. Under the tutelage of a razor-wry Librarian—and with help from a charming costume-shop owner—Alix races through Austen salons, Holmesian alleys and Gatsby’s glitter to outwit a hunter targeting their sanctuary. If the Library falls, whose story ends: the Librarian’s, Alix’s or everyone’s?
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White River Crossing by Ian McGuire (2/24)
Sub-Arctic, 1766: a ragged trader arrives at a Hudson Bay outpost with a nugget of gold and a promise. Chief factor Magnus Norton mounts a secret expedition north, guided by an Indigenous family and shadowed by ambition. Among the crew are his ruthless deputy, John Shaw, and the factory sloop’s thoughtful first mate, Thomas Hearn. As winter closes and buried trespasses spark reckoning, loyalties split along lines of power and culture. Bleakly beautiful and tense, this is a tale of greed, survival and hard-won conscience.
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Where the False Gods Dwell by Denny S. Bryce (2/24)
In 1935 Chicago, three women board Katherine Dunham’s research voyage bound for Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, each chasing a different salvation. Othella, a sharp-witted grifter on the run; Vivian Jean, a privileged wife and aspiring anthropologist hungry for credibility; and Zinzi, a fiery union organizer fighting for her island’s future. In Accompong’s Maroon stronghold, forbidden love, buried secrets and breathtaking dance traditions test their loyalties. When Hurricane Jérémie bears down, survival demands an unlikely sisterhood—and the courage to decide who they’ll be when the storm passes.
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Cleopatra by Saara El-Arifi (2/24)
In this unique POV style, Cleopatra speaks at last. Not the seductress history reduced her to, but a strategist, mother and sovereign anointed by gods and sharpened by survival. From the palace at Alexandria to the battle lines of empire, she claims her choices—political, romantic, maternal—with fierce clarity. Lovers become alliances. Children become legacy. Power demands a price and she pays it on her terms. Saara El-Arifi delivers a sensual, propulsive epic in Cleopatra’s own voice: not how she died, but how she lived and refused to be forgotten.
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The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann (3/24)
Hours after the axe falls, Anne Boleyn wakes in a rough coffin, tucks her linen-wrapped head back on, and slips into London’s alleys with one aim: stop Henry VIII before he crowns Jane Seymour and imperils Elizabeth’s future. Disguised as a commoner and aided by a sharp-tongued prostitute who becomes confidante—and maybe more—Anne discovers the grit of the world she once ruled. Part Tudor thriller, part Arthurian quest, this audacious debut turns a punished “mouthy” woman into the architect of her own legend.
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The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (5/5)
Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Eleven-year-old Meg, branded “unadoptable” at The Orphan, refuses to lose her spark under a tyrant’s gaze. Unmarried, mouthy Birdie Calhoun returns to rescue a family fraying under her sister’s brittle society marriage and a missing banker husband. When Birdie crosses paths with Charlie, a woman with nothing left to lose, they rally a band of “disreputables” for one audacious heist of freedom. Sharp, funny and full of grit, Stockett’s comeback celebrates dangerous hope and unapologetic female agency.
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A Harlem Wedding by Tiffany Warren (5/12)
Harlem’s reigning debutante, Yolande Du Bois, has everything but the choice that matters. Tutored by her father, civil-rights titan W.E.B. Du Bois, she waltzes through Fisk and Delta Sigma Theta toward a spectacular 1928 wedding to poet Countee Cullen—three thousand guests, sixteen bridesmaids, even Langston Hughes in the lineup. Yet Yolande’s heart beats for jazzman Jimmie Lunceford. When the confetti settles, glamour curdles into dilemma. From uptown speakeasies to Paris nights, Warren charts one woman’s bid to trade pedigree for truth, applause for an authentic love.
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The Crownless Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (May 2026)
In this sweeping conclusion to Chadwick’s series, a royal rebel becomes the quiet force behind the throne—fierce, vulnerable, unforgettable. In 1360 England, widowed Jeanette of Kent swallows her grief and steels herself for battle once more. When her longtime confidant, Prince Edward, offers marriage, she accepts to safeguard her children and lands—and finds unexpected tenderness in a union forged from duty. But love at the edge of power is perilous. Court rivalries sharpen, heirs are demanded, and the higher Jeanette rises, the more treacherous the drop.
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COVER TBD
Liberty Street by Heather Marshall (6/16)
In 1961, ambitious editorial assistant Emily Radcliffe follows a letter from Mercer Women’s Prison into a career-making undercover assignment—only to learn escape is harder than access. In 1996: Detective Rachel Mackenzie is handed unidentified remains and a trail that winds back to Mercer and to secrets she’s hidden from herself. Inspired by true events, Heather Marshall’s propulsive novel braids journalism, justice and the unseen cages women endure—mental, legal, familial—into a gripping mystery about speaking out, staying alive and what freedom costs.
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The Story Keeper by Kelly Rimmer (7/21)
After a ruinous year, Fiona Winslow retreats to Wurimbirra, the faded family estate she’s determined to resurrect. In its shuttered rooms she finds a peculiar novel, The Midnight Estate, tucked in her late uncle’s library, and its plot of star-crossed love, a vanished heir and a betrayal sealed in plaster begins to mirror her own. As Fiona strips back damp wallpaper and old lies, the boundary between story and truth thins. In braided timelines, Rimmer crafts a moody, modern gothic about inheritance, chosen courage and the cost of finally knowing.
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COVER TBD
The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon (9/8)
Born to salt and wind, Grace O’Malley refuses the shoreline life set for a chieftain’s daughter. A disastrous marriage, a widowed return and a fleet of her own forge the legend: mother, lover, captain, raider. From storm-swept coves to English blockades, she cuts bargains and blows past borders to shield her kin and clan. Lawhon renders sixteenth-century Ireland in lush detail and bare-knuckle grit—a sweeping, pulse-swift tale of audacity and devotion about the woman who met empire on open water and did not bow.
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