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Read Across the 20th Century with These New Novels
Looking to read about the Roaring Twenties, the Spanish flu pandemic, World War II, or the grunge era? These new historical fiction books will take you on a tour of the past century, with plenty of page-turning drama! To help you find a setting that suits your reading mood, we broke down these books by the dominant decade they are set in, from 1900 to the 1990s.
Here you'll find newer historical fiction (all published since 2018), from housewives fighting vampires in the 1990s and a Booker Prize–winning debut about a hardscrabble Scottish childhood in the 1980s to a rock 'n' roll tale set in the 1970s and back through the decades!
Scroll over the book covers to learn more about each novel, and be sure to add the books that pique your interest to your Want to Read shelf!
1990s
1980s
1970s
1960s
1950s
1940s
1930s
1920s
1910s
1900s
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It's your turn! Let us know which are your favorite books set during the 20th century in the comments below.
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Comments Showing 1-26 of 26 (26 new)
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I am surprised Ellen Marie Wisemans novel set during Spanish pandemic isnt featured on here...
The best books in this collection were “This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger, “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens and “Summer of 69’” by Elin Hilderbrand.
Great post! Eager to read more books from this list.
"A guide to slaying Vampires" is one i can not wait to read, so i can test that knowledge on the Vampires that plague my life constantly. (Yeah, they all work in hospitals and come at you in the middle of the night - taking so much blood from you! Lol
Great suggestions, thanks. Is there a list for previous centuries?
"New" novels? Hardly. But that's okay it's a good list.
This was such a great list of books! I added so many to my "want to read" list!
The 1940s has so many possibilities. Two I would add are "Manhattan Beach" and "All the Light We Cannot See".
What a fun concept. Might do my own little challenge one day. Reading a book sett in different decades, taking a lot inspiration from this list
I've read Amberlough
this month, and it's a perfectly crazy and somewhat dark embodiment of the Weimer Republic in a fantasy-imagined world before war breaks out. A revolution takes place in the next book, and shows the dark sides of war. It's a very interesting fictional take on this time period.
So glad to see Utopia Avenue on this list! The way Mitchell captured 1966/67 London was magical. His descriptions of the band's fictional songs made them come to life. I don't know how he did it, but it was like emotionally feeling them as you read. Brilliant.
Such a great list of books!! I've added so many to my "want to read" list.
This section, while helpful and interesting, shouldn’t be the landing page for Goodreads. What you’re now calling the ‘Community page’ should be what we see first, because that’s what we are, a community of readers. (In my opinion, thanks.)
I'm recommending A Fierce Radiance, by Lauren Belfer, a novel set in the 1940's. It is an engaging novel and the protagonist is a female photojournalist, but what really made this novel stand out for me is that it tells, in a fictionalized way, about the development (not the discovery) of antibiotics and the race by the US government and industry to scale up production in time to save the lives of American soldiers during WWII.
In 2019 I discovered Canadian author Genevieve Graham, and I so far have read three of her great books: Tides of Honour, Come from Away and one of her latest, The Forgotten Home Child. Ms Graham focuses on little known Canadian events and writes compelling historical fiction around them, like for example the Halifax fire (Tides) and the British Home Children (Forgotten). Check them out!
Some great books here, but I'm confused as to why they're called "new" when some of them came out in 2018.
Interesting list of what some would classify as "historical fiction".. Thanks for the title suggestions.
Suggesting Deafening by Frances Itani https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... inspired by the experiences of her deaf grandmother. The is the story of a little girl growing up on the shores of the Bay of Quinte in southern Ontario in the early years of the 20th century, who is struck deaf by scarlet fever at the age of five.
Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Djinni series is a triumph in early 1900s historical fiction! The two books span the first few decades of the century in New York, and includes a fabulous selection of perspectives diverse in age, culture, and experience.
Great list of reading material! I also loved the input of others. Thank you all for helping me add to my want to read wish list! I just finished The Exiles by Kline. It's about women and the penal colonies of Australia. Pretty good!
Interesting distribution of authors: 84% female, 16% male.
I absolutely loved What The Wind Knows. It’s a beautiful and unique story with an unexpected, heart touching ending that left me full of emotions. The book summary doesn’t do it justice. Stringy recommend. Glad to see it on the list.
Excellent list! I've read more than a few of the books on the list. I really enjoyed Crawdads, A Long Petal of the Sea, The Henna Artist, The Stationary Shop, The Vanishing Half, Daisy Jones, and Opal & Nev (which I thought was similar but better). Finally, The book woman of Troublesome Creek was my favorite and one few others seem to have heard of which is the same thing I can say about the "blue people" depicted in the book.
It's a big book and very much literary fiction, there's a lot of back and forth between timelines and perspectives, but if you like that sort of story I definitely recommend it. (Though I'm only a third of the way through, so take the rec with a pinch of salt.)