60 books like The Scottish Prisoner

This book takes the lives of very ordinary Canadians and throws them into the maelstrom of war. I love that it carefully sets up a world few know about—Toronto in the 1930s—and shows the ambiguity of the times, how anti-Semitism was at home as well as across the water in Europe.

I so enjoyed the Romeo and Juliet love affair at the novel's heart, and I was moved by the trials love is subjected to—as well as shocked by excellent descriptions of war's brutality.

I often admire writers, and it is very rare for me to be outright jealous of one. But I was with this astonishing book. It was intimately epic in the complete sense. We focus on a wonderful cast of characters who lived in a small village in southern Turkey in the early 20th century for many years.

You fall in love with them, and they make you laugh out loud. Then, you are heartbroken as their world is destroyed by ceaseless war. Brutal, romantic, hilarious, and completely tragic, this novel pulls you apart. I felt I knew them all well and was bereft when I finished the book. I missed these flawed, funny, sad people. I still do!

Of course, the characters in this book are the stuff of legend: King Arthur, Guinevere, and the narrator of this tale, Lancelot.

But I think what is great about Mr. Kristian's approach is that he makes them all completely and recognizably human, with all the frailties and failings of ordinary people who are forced, by world events, to rise to the extraordinary.

Men who will be myths are, at heart, only men. A beautifully realized setting, a credible and incredible world for one of the great stories to play out against.

I had to go back to a classic from childhood, the first book I remember crying while reading. I didn't know reading could do that! Set against the backdrop of 1066 and the Norman Invasion of England, this takes an ordinary young man who stumbles into a war and chooses to fight for his country and his king. His realization that there are bigger things than himself and causes worth dying for moved me utterly.

This book shaped me as a writer. The idea of sacrifice and redemption is just so well done. 

The Seven Year’s War was much more than a few famous names and a few celebrated battles. For any who want to get into the nitty-gritty of ordinary soldiers’ lives during the Seven Years’ War—on the British side—I recommend this book. It examines the experiences of the 'redcoats' between 1755 and 1763. Brumwell wrote it for a more academic readership than Paths of Glory, but it is still very readable. It explores the British Army's distinctive society and has lots to say about the ordinary soldiers who are usually written about with vague generalities. In this study, one reads about their experiences in combat, their occasional captivity among the Indigenous peoples, the women associated with the British Army, and the fate of veteran soldiers.

Some readers want to see history as well as read it. Thankfully, there are many books about the Seven Years’ War that offer loads of illustrations, both from the era and produced more recently by illustrators. René Chartrand is the author of many such books, one of which is this one about the forts of New France. The author and illustrator present in-depth information about such French forts as Chambly, St. Frédéric (Crown Point), Carillon (Ticonderoga), Duquesne (Pittsburgh, PA), Ouiatenon (Quebec) and Vincennes (IN). As with all of Chartrand’s books, this one enriches our understanding of the Seven Years’ War, in this case by looking more carefully at the French side.

So, making this list has rather reminded me that there is a major dearth of queer books in historical romance. Especially of the happy variety—and it’s not a true romance if it doesn’t have an HEA.

I could easily have included The Song of Achilles or Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café or Patience and Sarah, but they wouldn’t have fit the Regency/Victorian time period I was aiming for and they also either have very hidden/obscured queerness (e.g. Fried Green Tomatoes) or no HEA (Song of Achilles, obvs).

I’m going with Lord John even though he’s Georgian era because 1) he has a happy and fulfilling life despite his One True Love ultimately being unrequited, 2) he has some great love affairs and adventures, and 3) best of all this is a series. And a series is almost as good as an HEA!

If… show more.

Diana Gabaldon is a powerhouse in the historical fiction genre. Her Outlander series is one of my absolute favorites. In between the release of books in the main series, I content myself with stories about Lord John, an important but secondary Outlander character. This book includes three stories about Lord John.

The Seven Years’ War is obscure in the American historical imagination: if it’s remembered at all, it’s as a hazy, unimportant flintlocks-and-tomahawks event.

In this gripping, masterful narrative, Fred Anderson leaves his reader with no doubt of just how momentous this conflict was. He examines imperial, colonial, and indigenous actors to explain how the French were expelled from North America and how the war’s aftermath was a catalyst for both Native and colonial resistance to British rule.

Arguably the first world war, it could also be called the war that made America. 

A stone-cold classic in war writing, I studied this short novel at university and loved it. Crane never actually went to war and yet his depiction of men fighting in the American Civil War felt so real, that it gave me the confidence to write historical fiction, knowing I’d never experienced these things but my research and imagination could be brought to bear and hopefully transport the reader in the same way Crane did. It also began a lifelong obsession for me with the American Civil War. When I first started writing historical novels I knew I wanted to write about other combat arenas than the two C20th world wars, choosing the Boer War and The Seven Years’ War respectively.