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Historical Novels: Twentieth Century North AmericaThe United States and CanadaSometimes it seems as though time speeded up as the twentieth century began. In just the first half of the century, there were two World Wars, the turn-of-the-century Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression, each a distinctive period offering ample subject matter for historical novelists. See the separate pages for historical novels (and a few classics by authors of that time) about World War I and World War II. Novels set during the second half of the twentieth century are almost all by authors who were alive during that time, and are therefore outside the scope of this website. Jump to: Turn of the Century to Before WWI Turn of the Century to Before World War I (1900-1917)Gil Adamson, The Outlander, about a nineteen-year-old woman who has killed her husband and flees across Idaho and Montana to escape her two brothers-in-law who are bent on revenge. More info from Powell's Books Beryl Bainbridge, Every Man for Himself (1996), about the sinking of the Titanic from the perspective of an American passenger who was a nephew of the shipping line's owner Kevin Baker, Dreamland, about New York City and Coney Island around 1910. More info Andrea Barrett, The Air We Breathe, about wealthy patients in a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1916. More info Lauren Belfer, City of Light, about the headmistress of a girls' school in 1901 Buffalo, New York, as Niagara Falls is harnessed to produce electrical power. More info Alan Cheuse, The Bohemians, about the early twentieth century American journalist and Communist John Reed and his wife Louise Bryant. Thomas B. Costain, Son of a Hundred Kings, about a young boy sent to Canada around the turn of the twentieth century to join his father, who finds upon arriving that his father is dead. E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime, about a wealthy New England family whose lives are changed when Harry Houdini crashes his car into a telephone pole by their house in 1906. More info Ivan Doig, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, a literary novel about Scottish emigrants in Montana during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More info Jack Finney, From Time to Time, about a man who travels back in time to the early twentieth century to try to prevent World War I. More info Janice Holt Giles, The Plum Thicket, about a child in rural Arkansas in the summer of 1913. More info Alex Haley, Mama Flora’s Family, a family saga about three generations of a black family from 1912 to the 1980s, by the author of Roots. More info Brian Hall, Fall of Frost, a literary novel about the tormented life of poet Robert Frost, who began publishing his work during the early 1900s. Kathryn Harrison, The Seal Wife , about a meteorologist in 1915 Alaska and his relationship with a strangely silent woman. More info Nancy Horan, Loving Frank, a literary novel about a woman who has an affair with the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright after he designs a home for her and her husband. Review Wayne Johnston, The Navigator of New York, about arch-rivals Cook and Peary and their race to reach the North Pole first. More info Rosalind Laker, What the Heart Keeps, about an English orphan sent to Canada in 1903 as a servant girl. Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees, a darkly comic saga of a dysfunctional family centering on four sisters from Nova Scotia during the first half of the twentieth century. More info David Mamet, The Old Religion, about the Jewish community in Atlanta, George, in 1915. More info Mary Fremont Schoenecker, Finding Fiona, romantic suspense about a young New England teacher who finds herself traveling a hundred years back in time to the beginning of the twentieth century. More info Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a classic coming-of-age novel about a girl in an impoverished family in Brooklyn, New York, during the early twentieth century; published in 1943, so technically not an historical novel. More info Susan Vreeland, The Forest Lover (2004), about the early twentieth century Canadian artist Emily Carr and her determination to paint the totem poles of British Columbia Gene Wilder, The Woman Who Wouldn't (2008), a love story about a Cleveland concert violinist sent to a health resort in Germany where he meets a beautiful and reserved woman who seems impervious to his efforts at flirting
Mysteries: Turn of the Century to Before World War IAnthony Flacco, The Last Nightingale, a thriller about a twelve-year-old boy who loses his family during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the detective who is stalking the serial killer who murdered them; #1 in the Randall Blackburn series. More info Anthony Flacco, The Hidden Man, a thriller about a detective and his adopted son who must find the killer who is stalking the mesmerist at the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair; #2 in the Randall Blackburn series. More info Allan Levine, The Blood Libel, a Winnipeg brothel minder investigates a Polish girl's murder in 1911 Canada. Allan Levine, Sins of the Suffragette, a Winnipeg detective investigates the murder of a women's rights activist in 1914 Canada. Allan Levine, The Bolshevik's Revenge, a Winnipeg detective investigates the death of a wealthy capitalist as a strike shuts down the city in 1919 Canada.
Between the World Wars: 1918-1941
Howard Bahr, Pelican Road, about railroad engineers in 1923 and during an impending collision in 1940; forthcoming in May 2008 Russell Banks, The Reserve, set in upstate New York during the Great Depression Alan Cheuse, The Light Possessed, about a fictional New Mexico artist modeled after Georgia O'Keeffe E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate, about a fifteen-year-old boy hired as an errand boy by a mobster in the Bronx during the Depression Ivan Doig, English Creek, a coming-of-age novel about a boy in rural Montana during the 1930s Ivan Doig, Bucking the Sun, a literary novel about the building of the Fort Peck dam in 1938 Tony Earley, Jim the Boy, a coming-of-age novel about a ten-year-old boy in a small North Carolina town in 1934; the sequel, The Blue Star is set during World War II Louise Erdrich, The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, about German immigrants in North Dakota during the years after World War I Robert L. Fenton, Three Wise Men, about Jewish gangsters in the Prohibition years of the 1920s Sharon Ewell Foster, Passing by Samaria, about a young black woman who moves to Chicago in 1919; Christian message Denise Giardina, Storming Heaven, about the West Virginia Mine Wars and the coal miners' struggle for a union during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More info Denise Giardina, The Unquiet Earth, about coal mining in West Virginia from the 1930s to the 1990s. More info Glen David Gold, Carter Beats the Devil, about a stage magician in 1920s San Francisco who finds himself in hot water when President Warren Harding dies under mysterious circumstances after volunteering for the magician's show Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants, about Depression-era circus performers Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else, about an unlikely friendship between the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker during the 1940s Hillary Jordan, Mudbound, about a city woman who marries for the first time at age 31 in 1939, and then reluctantly moves to a farm in the Mississippi Delta with her husband J.D. Landis, The Valley, about the flooding of a Massachusetts valley in 1938 after the building of the Quabbin Dam Adam Mansbach, The End of the Jews, a novel about several generations of an artistic Jewish family, from the 1930s to the present. More info Mary Alice Monroe, Time Is a River, about a contemporary woman recovering from breast cancer who discovers the 1920s journal of her fly-fisher grandmother in North Carolina and reopens an old scandal; forthcoming in July. More info Gary E. Parker, Highland Hopes, about a family in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina during the early twentieth century, #1 in the Blue Ridge Legacy series; Christian message Don Robertson, The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, about a nine-year-old Cleveland boy who sets out to visit a friend, towing his sister along in a red wagon, on the day in 1944 when a disastrous gas explosion is about to occur; originally published in 1965. More info Mary Doria Russell, Dreamers of the Day (2008), about an Ohio schoolteacher whose trip to the Middle East coincides with the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where she meets Lawrence of Arabia, an old friend of her sister. More info Mary Lee Settle, The Scapegoat, about miners in 1912 West Virginia; #4 in the Beulah Quintet (#5, The Killing Ground, is set in the 1980s) Alice Walker, The Color Purple, about a young black woman in an abusive relationship during the early twentieth century; won a 1983 Pulitzer Prize
Mysteries: Between the World Wars: 1918-1941Rhys Bowen, Murphy's Law, about an Irish woman who immigrates to New York and becomes a suspect when a man she quarrels with aboard ship is murdered on Ellis Island; #1 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, Death of Riley, about an Irish immigrant in New York whose new work assisting a private investigator suddenly becomes more challenging when the investigator is murdered; #2 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, For the Love of Mike, about an Irish immigrant in New York whose work as a private investigator is hampered because she is a woman; #3 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, In Like Flynn, about a female private investigator whose latest assignment, a case of kidnapping, takes her to the Hudson River Valley; #4 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, Oh Danny Boy, about a female private investigator hunting for a serial killer of prostitutes; #5 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, In Dublin's Fair City, about a female private investigator whose trip back to Ireland lands her in the middle of a murder case; #6 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Rhys Bowen, Tell Me, Pretty Maiden, about a female private investigator who takes on a wrongly suspended police captain as an associate; #7 in the Molly Murphy mystery series. More info Michael Kilian, The Weeping Woman, a man-about-town dabbles in solving mysteries in the U.S. during the 1920s; #1 in the Jazz Age series Michael Kilian, The Uninvited Countess, a man-about-town detective investigates the murder of a foreign countess; #2 in the Jazz Age series Michael Kilian, A Sinful Safari, a gallery owner who is also a detective goes on safari and investigates a murder; #3 in the Jazz Age series Bev Marshall, Walking Through Shadows, a literary murder mystery set in 1941 Mississippi Linda L. Richards, Death Was the Other Woman, an old-fashioned hard-boiled mystery set in 1930s Los Angeles, with a twist: the private eye's secretary is the real sleuth. More info
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