Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a historian of early American history and a professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. I came to my love of history through reading fiction as a child, and I’m still an avid reader of good stories of all kinds. Asking new questions about history requires imagination, and writers of good historical fiction provide brilliant ways to engage the past. They offer something real and human that transcends the need to footnote or fact check, so I turn off my historical accuracy meter when I read books like these. My list encapsulates some of my favorite novels for when I want to be a time traveler from my couch. 


I wrote

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

By Katherine Carté,

Book cover of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

What is my book about?

We often tell the history of religion and American Revolution as a story of how American Christians shaped their new…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Katherine Carté Why did I love this book?

In this amazing mystery/whodunit, Sara Collins tells the story of Frannie Langton, a Jamaican woman brought to London by her enslavers in the 1820s.

First and foremost, this book is a great story, with all the joys of fantastic fiction. When Frannie is put on trial for double murder, Collins opens up the complex world of plantation households—in the Caribbean and in London—to her readers. I study the dynamics of empire from a birds-eye view; Collins makes them personal, real, human, and intimate.

At the book’s core is Frannie’s searching, propulsive intellect and desire for human connection within a toxic world she cannot ultimately control. Through Frannie’s eyes the reader learns about the history of science, politics, class, race, and gender, but Collins’s storytelling makes it all utterly engrossing.

By Sara Collins,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Confessions of Frannie Langton as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Don't miss the TV miniseries, streaming now exclusively on BritBox!

“A blistering historical thriller.” — Entertainment Weekly

A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this breathtaking debut that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London—a gripping historical thriller with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests.

All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly…


Book cover of The Luminaries

Katherine Carté Why did I love this book?

I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand, and I picked this up mostly because of that desire. (Also, TBH, because a reviewer said this was a book people would either be too scared to start or would never put down, and I took that as a challenge.)

Despite these pretty simple reasons for starting—and finishing—the book, The Luminaries has become one of my all-time favorite novels.

Set in the mid-1860s, Catton tells the story of Scotsman Walter Moody. He travels to New Zealand’s southern island and finds himself immediately intertwined in more than one mystery. He serves as the reader’s guide to the numinous web of lies, swindles, murders, and ambitions that surround the town of Hokitika.

Catton weaves the place into a muddy and pungent microcosm of Britain’s global empire. Her characters, especially the suicidal prostitute Anna Wetherell, take the reader into a more diverse, beautiful, and intriguing Antipodes than I ever imagined. Global politics gracefully become the stuff of personal interactions.

The writing is lovely, but so too are the mix of men and women—British, Māori, and Chinese—who people this world. Though answers to many mysteries await at the books end, they feel less important than the timeless truths interrogated along the way.

By Eleanor Catton,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Luminaries as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE

'A breathtakingly ambitious mystery ... as beautiful as it is triumphant.' Daily Mail

An astonishing, epic story of promise, deceit and desperation in New Zealand's gold rush.

'What brings a fellow down here, you know, to the ends of the earth - what sparks a man?'

It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has…


Book cover of Kindred

Katherine Carté Why did I love this book?

This is probably the most famous book on my list, but I first read it just a couple years ago. I was so engrossed in it that I gave my husband almost scene-by-scene updates on our vacation. The story Butler weaves is so compelling that he even started asking for them. 

Books about time travel abound, but few of them make the past come alive like this one. Butler takes the modern reader back to the antebellum South when her protagonist, a Black writer living in Los Angeles in the 1970s, is transported over a century back to Maryland’s Eastern Shore during the time of slavery.

While there, Diana grapples with the personal connections and moral dilemmas she finds in this foreign world. As she returns over succeeding years, her story, and that of her white husband who also time jumps with her, makes the impossible truths of American slavery both real and wrenchingly relatable.

With all due respect to Harper Lee, if I had to pick one book of fiction for all Americans to read in order to understand US history, this would be it.

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Kindred as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon…


Book cover of The Bedlam Stacks

Katherine Carté Why did I love this book?

Readers probably know Pulley best through her amazing best seller, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. That’s how I first encountered her work too, but she became my favorite writer with Bedlam Stacks.

It is the story of Merrick Tremayne, an experienced wilderness traveler whom British colonial authorities hope can help discover new troves of quinine, a material essential for the British colonization of India. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the story follows Tremayne as he reluctantly journeys into Peru’s distant and remote forests. 

Once there, he enters a magical world that retains just enough realism to make the truths of European colonization vividly clear. Violence and self-interest create unexpected and far-reaching consequences. Peoples at the fringes of empire guard their borders at the peril of those who intrude.

At the same time, Pulley’s deft imagination counterbalances harsh historical realities with magical threads. She brings Tremayne into a place of humanity and connection. While every one of Pulley’s books invites the reader into an utterly new world peopled with striking characters, after reading Bedlam Stacks, I am sure to pick up every one.

By Natasha Pulley,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Bedlam Stacks as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE'S ENCORE AWARD 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2018 'A sheer fantastical delight' The Times 'Epic' New York Times 'An immense treat' Observer Books of the Year 'A fast-paced adventure story' i 'Magical' Sunday Express In uncharted Peru, the holy town of Bedlam stands at the edge of a mysterious forest. Deep within are cinchona trees, whose bark yields the only known treatment for malaria. In 1859, across the Pacific, India is ravaged by the disease. In desperation, the India Office dispatches the injured expeditionary Merrick Tremayne to Bedlam, under orders to…


Book cover of Out of Darkness, Shining Light

Katherine Carté Why did I love this book?

Gappah’s book starts with a startling fact: when Scottish doctor and missionary David Livingstone died in Zambia in 1873, his large party of fellow travelers—almost all African—carried his body over a thousand miles to Zanzibar so it could be transported to Britain for burial. 

Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah recreates this amazing journey through a series of overlapping voices, bringing the reader into the perspectives, motivations, and experiences of people usually portrayed as objects rather than actors in the colonial process. Her characters, especially the young cook, Halima, are both fascinating and entertaining.

The book prompts readers to take a fresh look at colonialism’s hero mythologies, but just as important it immerses one in a beautiful and graceful world with its own goals and imperatives. Rather than replacing “European myths” with an equally simplified “African perspective” (both categories are too large to be encapsulated in a single readable narrative), Out of Darkness offers a specific and relatable story about a vivid series of places.

By Petina Gappah,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Out of Darkness, Shining Light as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 2020 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS: Petina Gappah's epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa is 'engrossing, beautiful and deeply imaginative.' (Yaa Gyasi)

This is the story of the body of Bwana Daudi, the Doctor, the explorer David Livingstone - and the sixty-nine men and women who carried his remains for 1,500 miles so that he could be borne across the sea and buried in his own country.

The wise men of his age say Livingstone blazed into the darkness of their native land leaving a track of light behind where white men who followed him could tread in perfect safety.…


Explore my book 😀

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

By Katherine Carté,

Book cover of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

What is my book about?

We often tell the history of religion and American Revolution as a story of how American Christians shaped their new nation, or how religious freedom came to be enshrined in the Constitution. But the American Revolution also divided long-standing transatlantic religious communities that had been built by the British Empire. My book is the story of how churches responded to the politics and realities of that war, of how the break between Britain and thirteen of her colonies changed communities on both sides of the Atlantic, and of how the United States came to its fraught separation of church and state.

Book cover of The Confessions of Frannie Langton
Book cover of The Luminaries
Book cover of Kindred

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,479

readers submitted
so far, will you?

You might also like...

Cold Peace: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, Part I

By Helena P. Schrader,

Book cover of Cold Peace: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, Part I

Ad
Helena P. Schrader Author Of Cold War: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historian Novelist Student of European Aviation History Friend to Survivors of the German Resistance to Hitler Authority on the Crusader States

Helena's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

It is 1948 in Berlin. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is preparing to swallow its next victim. In the ruins of Hitler's capital, former RAF officers and a woman pilot start an air ambulance company that offers a glimmer of hope. Yet when a Soviet fighter brings down a British airliner, Berlin becomes a flashpoint. The world teeters on the brink of World War Three.

Award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader tells the backstory of the Berlin Airlift in Cold Peace, the first book of the Bridge to Tomorrow series.

Cold Peace: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, Part I

By Helena P. Schrader,


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in trees, Africa, and the South?

Trees 53 books
Africa 265 books
The South 189 books