Book Blurb: A Homeric American Novel An American Slave in Barbary: The Odyssey of Winston Prescott Jones is the story of a first-generation American student whose commercial ship is captured in the summer of 1801 by Muslim pirates. He spends the next sixteen years as a captive in Algiers. He rises to become a confidant to the Dey of Algiers, who is desperate to know what made the American shopkeepers and farmers believe they could defeat the British war machine, and how they

Book Blurb: A gangster. A dreamer. One city up for grabs. In The Fight for Miami , award-winning author Joseph Kovler delivers a pulse-pounding historical thriller set in the glitter and grit of 1920s-30s Miami Beach - where the American Dream goes to war with the American Underworld. Al Capone, fresh from Chicago's bloody empire, sees Miami as his next conquest. Carl Fisher, the visionary who built the city from sand and swamp, will risk everything to keep it a "sundown town

Book Blurb: Hoarded in the depth of memories of the past decades, this has been a work long overdue. Written as an antithesis to all first-hand and second-hand propaganda written by both Chinese and foreign writers for China in the good part of 20th century in a fictional form, this collection, through different times and lands, gives insights into how human docile nature and characteristics are manipulated and brought about cultural and social corrosion over the century. The

Book Blurb: “In The Right Time: Back to the 80s , Lena Gibson deftly blends women’s fiction, romance, and magical realism to craft a can’t-miss story of love and identity.” –Travis Tougaw, author of the Marcotte/Collins Investigative Thrillers Thirty-year-old Andie is struggling. Despite a fresh start—escaping an abusive ex and making a new home—her old life reaches out to reclaim her. In desperation, she makes a wish and slips back in time. The 80s are safer and have a reput

Book Blurb: Edith Higgenbothum is a 1950s housewife and mother in the “atomic town” of Richland, Washington. Edith’s husband, Herbert, is an engineer at Hanford, a secretive federal atomic weapons facility just north of town. Edith’s world, which is enshrouded in the myths, prejudices, and delusions of 1950s America, is thrown into turmoil and fear when her son Herbie powers up his father’s uranium prospecting Geiger counter. The device emits an ear-shattering barrage of clic

Book Blurb: Violence. Politics. Magic. What could possibly go wrong? Yonder and Far are back with new mysteries, adventures and misadventures in 1800 Boston. Banished to Earth, our two heroes from the land of the Fae are still trying to get home. As they navigate the baffling human society, their quest is full of intrigue and danger. So, of course they bring their fortune-teller friend, Mary, into it. Along with Far’s armed band of Irishmen, the trio faces a new enemy – backe

Book Blurb: Honorable mention in the 2025 Readers' Favorite book awards. THE LAST PATIENT is a sweeping historical novel that captures one family’s struggle for love, survival, and identity under the grip of Communism in Romania. Spanning fifty years of political upheaval, this saga explores how ordinary lives are shaped—and sometimes shattered—by extraordinary times. Kostea and Clara meet and fall in love shortly before World War II. As they get married, build careers, and

Book Blurb: Venice, 1710, Poinsettia Girl is based on the story of Agata de la Pieta, an orphan musician of the Ospedale de la Pieta. Ten-year-old Agata's world is shaken at the sudden death of her mother. Left only with her egregious father, a working musician in Venice, her ailing grandmother sends her to the well-known orphanage, hidden from everything she's ever known. Agata auditions for the conservatory style music school where music is both salvation and spectacle. Hid

Book Blurb: “Could you kill a Nazi, Miss Lake? Or, in the moment of killing, would you remember his mother’s grief—and let yourself be killed instead?” It is the most extraordinary of job interviews, for the most extraordinary of jobs. In the final year of WWII, Sibyl, an English nurse, volunteers to help free Alsace—the beloved province of her childhood—from Nazi control. Her mission: to train and lead a band of resistance fighters, men commanded by Jacques, once her closest

Book Blurb: FROM STAR SHOWBOAT SINGER TO PIRATE PREY ON THE WICKED RIVER! Showboat singer Stella Parrot’s star rises in the Antebellum South with every sold-out performance along the lower Mississippi River. When a river pirate viciously assaults her, new friends Toby Freeman and John Dee Franklin foil the attack. However, the pirate’s family is bent on revenge. Stella, Toby, and John Dee escape their riverboat with able assistance from young cub pilot Sam Clemens, only to be

Book Blurb: She crossed oceans disguised as a boy. History forgot her-but now her story demands to be told. In 1766, Jeanne Baret, a brilliant herbalist from rural France, defied every expectation of her time. Disguised as a boy to escape the restrictions placed on women. She joins a global expedition led by explorer Louis de Bougainville and her mentor, the botanist Philibert Commerson. Aboard L'Étoile, Jeanne faces grueling sea voyages, the constant threat of discovery, and

Book Blurb: In this powerful conclusion to the Pocket Full of Seeds Trilogy, Caritas brings this epic and emotional journey full circle—following the critically acclaimed books, Libertas and Firmitas, praised as “historical fiction at a stellar level.” — 1846 — Horace and Fredericka have escaped slavery and endured the punishing journey of the Oregon Trail, but their fight for freedom is far from over. The West offers no refuge, only new threats amidst the turmoil of the Whit

Note from Dee Marley, the CEO of The Historical Fiction Company: Once again, now in our fifth year of the contest, I'd like to personally thank everyone who entered and who supported us along the way, as well as a special thanks to all of our fabulous reviewers, who are the backbone of this contest. All the authors who entered this year, you deserve huge commendations for making this year's decision very difficult, as the quality of the writing and the books submitted was jus

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GOLD MEDAL FINALISTS FOR THE 2025 HFC BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS! PLEASE NOTE: SOME CATEGORIES SHOW TIED WINNERS GRAND PRIZE & RUNNER-UP WINNERS WILL BE CHOSEN FROM THIS LIST and ANNOUNCED AT 12:00 MIDNIGHT EST on DECEMBER 31st 2025 - NEW YEAR'S EVE!! All finalists will be allowed to use the displayed category badge for announcements and will be notified via email. 2026 Awards & Editorial Review requests are now open - please visit www.thehistoricalfiction

Book Blurb: Fame. Fortune. Pitfalls. It is 1978, and a music scene is brewing in Los Angeles. Singer Gunnar Erickson and guitarist Shep Townsend leave Grand Island, Nebraska hoping to make it big as rock stars. Before long, they help form the talented and popular band Authentic Cadence and are managed by the biggest names in the business. As they begin to realize their dreams, however, Gunnar and Shep learn that that fame has its downsides. Between the constant touring and gr

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SEMI-FINALISTS FOR THE 2025 HFC BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS! LISTED IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER FINALISTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED BEFORE 12:00 NOON EST on DECEMBER 31st 2025!! All semi-finalists will be allowed use of the above badge for announcements and will be notified via email. HUGO SEMI-FINALIST - GENERAL HISTORICAL One Ordinary Man Steve Vesce Downyoshun Art Young The Reluctant Pioneer Julie McDonald Zander Sarita Natalie Musgra

Book Blurb: Coming soon Book Buy Link: Coming soon Editorial Review: Rating: 4.6 William Haddad’s "Trojan Odyssey" is a sweeping re-imagining that pulls the legendary Trojan prince, Hector, from the dust of the "Iliad" and hurls him into a sprawling, existential voyage through the concatenated afterlives of the ancient world. This does not feel like a myth retold, but a myth extended, a fictionalized exploration of the hero’s shade forced to navigate the brutal and often cont

Book Blurb: In 1949, Will Parlor glimpses a woman across a crowded Chicago street and is carried back to the summer that changed him forever. In 1917, at seventeen, he took a job as a worker on an Illinois farm. There, he’s drawn into the Dutch-American Helgeveld family, especially daughters Vlinder and Corrie. Will also befriends Moses and Isaiah Butler, African American brothers up from Alabama, seeking freedom and opportunity in an America still rumbling after the Civil Wa

Book Blurb: In January of 1939 when Barbara Greene, a beautiful and successful young British actress, met Joe Kennedy Jr., son of the American Ambassador, she could not have expected that their relationship would lead to her emigrating to America and piloting a plane around the eastern states to publicize Bundles for Britain, let alone her hasty decision to marry an American. Nor could her brother, Kent, have foreseen his bitter retreat from Dunkirk when he left England in Ja

Book Blurb: A simple promise to his friend’s wife… An overwhelming urge to keep his younger brother from danger… An inkling that this War Between the States would not be the brief affair that most expected… James Lockett thought that he understood what he was getting into. He could not have been more wrong. From bushwhackers in Missouri to the tardy realization that there was an enemy wearing his own uniform, James Lockett encounters far more than expected. But nothing could