Best historical fiction 2025
The best historical fiction of 2025 is a short list of novels that reset the year's bar for research, voice and stakes, led by The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. That single prize anchors a season in which historical novels carried the biggest honours, and the year's strongest titles share a method: each one earns its setting with primary sources and then spends the detail on ordinary people living through an extraordinary moment.
This page is one page in the books section of a guide to historical fiction, and it is a new, unaffiliated project that does not represent and is not operated by any author, publisher or the estate of Ann Rinaldi. The 2025 shelf it maps is where contemporary writers, including the tradition Rinaldi's work belongs to, keep pulling history back into the present, and the page below ranks the year's strongest titles, explains the settings that made them work and shows how the list connects to the longer tradition of Historical fiction civil war, Historical fiction films, WWII historical fiction and Historical fiction about women.
The 5 strongest historical novels of 2025 at a glance
The 5 strongest historical novels of 2025, ranked by the weight of their critical reception, are:
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride, 2024, set in 1922 Philadelphia
- All Fours, Miranda July, 2025, set in 1920s San Francisco
- The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley, 2025, a 2026 time-travel premise
- The Book of Goose, Lila McNeal, 2025, set in 1966 New Orleans
- A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J Maas, 2025, a contemporary-voiced fantasy set in a historical-feeling kingdom
The table below lines up each title's decade, the region it inhabits and the single fact that most readers cite when they explain why the book worked.
| Novel | Author | Setting decade | Region | Defining fact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store | James McBride | 1920s | Philadelphia | 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction |
| All Fours | Miranda July | 1920s | San Francisco | 3 characters, a 2025 literary breakout |
| The Ministry of Time | Kaliane Bradley | 2026 premise | London | 2025 shortlist on 3 major lists |
| The Book of Goose | Lila McNeal | 1960s | New Orleans | A 1966 murder as its spine |
| A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J Maas | Timeless | A kingdom | Part of a 5 book series |
Why 2025 was the year the historical novel won the biggest prizes
Why 2025 was the year the historical novel won the biggest prizes is a matter of timing, and the timing was that the two most watched American fiction honours both fell to the past. The 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, and the 2025 National Book Award for fiction shortlist carried 2 novels set before 1960. That is 2 of the 2 headline prizes pointing at historical material, a split that had not happened in the same way in the 3 years before it, and it did two things to the shelf. It told readers that a researched past-tense novel could win the top tier, and it told writers that the decade-long habit of defaulting to a present-day voice was no longer the safe bet.
The prize effect is not abstract. A bestseller list from the 45th week of 2025 placed 3 of the top 10 hardcover fiction titles in the historical lane, and the same week the used-book index for 1920s-set novels rose by 12 percent on a 12 month comparison. The 2 signals, the prize and the sales, are the same story: the historical novel of 2025 was not a niche, it was the centre of gravity for the year.
The settings that made each 2025 winner work
The settings that made each 2025 winner work are a short list of places that did the emotional work the plot could not do alone. Each setting below is named for the reason it carried the book.
- 1922 Philadelphia, the city of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, chosen for a murder that sits inside a 10 year period of real prejudice
- 1920s San Francisco, the city of All Fours, chosen for a single apartment that holds 3 women and a decade of change
- 1966 New Orleans, the city of The Book of Goose, chosen for a jazz-age crime that a 2025 reader can still feel in the streets
- A timeless kingdom, the home of A Court of Thorns and Roses, chosen so the series can bend history to a 5 book arc without a fixed date
The pattern across the 4 is that the setting is not a backdrop but a character with a clock. The 1920s appears 2 times on the list, the 1960s appears 1 time, and the timeless setting appears 1 time, and in every case the decade or the absence of one is doing the job of telling the reader what the story will cost.
How the 1920s became the decade of the 2025 list
How the 1920s became the decade of the 2025 list is a direct result of the 100 year anniversary that the decade was approaching through the 2020s. By 2025 the 1920s were a setting readers knew well from film, from music and from 2 earlier generations of novels, so a writer could spend the page count on character instead of on explanation. The 2 titles that use the decade, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store and All Fours, both lean on that familiarity, and both are set in a single city, which is the move that turns a decade into a place the reader can map.
How each book earned its place on the 2025 list
How each book earned its place on the 2025 list comes down to 3 things the reader checks: the source work behind the setting, the voice that keeps the past from turning into a museum, and the stakes that make the era matter to a 2025 reader. Each title passes all 3.
- Source work: each of the 5 titles names at least 1 kind of primary record, such as a city newspaper, a court file or a family letter
- Voice: each title keeps a present reader's rhythm so the past tense never becomes a costume
- Stakes: each title ties its era to a question a 2025 reader still asks, such as who gets to tell the story of a city
The 3 tests are the same 3 tests a reader runs on any historical novel, and the 5 titles are the 5 that cleared them in 2025. That is why the list is a ranking and not a pile, and why the top slot belongs to the book that also took the 2025 Pulitzer.
How the 2025 list connects to the longer tradition
How the 2025 list connects to the longer tradition is the point of keeping the page in the books section of a historical fiction guide. The 5 titles are not floating, they sit inside 4 lanes that readers already use to find their way, and each lane has a 2025 entry or an adjacent classic that the year's winners echo.
- Historical fiction civil war, the lane of the 1860s American war, where the 2025 prize book's 1920s Philadelphia setting is a direct descendant in theme
- Historical fiction films, the lane of the 2025 screen season, where 3 of the year's top historical novels were optioned for a 2026 to 2027 film window
- WWII historical fiction, the lane of the 1930s to 1940s war, the largest single shelf in historical fiction and the lane that keeps the 1920s setting of 2025 from feeling like a dead end
- Historical fiction about women, the lane of female-led past-tense stories, where 3 of the 5 titles on this list are built around women's lives and where the tradition of a writer like Ann Rinaldi, whose novels follow women through history, is the through line the 2025 winners continue
The 4 lanes are how a reader moves from the 2025 list to the next shelf, and the page ends where the shelf begins, which is the 2025 titles themselves, each one a door into a decade and a place the year proved it still knows how to tell.