Rather than identify a genre, I have chosen to focus on the theme of stories that are so powerful they make you feel like you’re in the story with the characters and/or give an insight into how the people within the setting really felt. For me, that is the true challenge of historical fiction – to see inside the heads of historical figures and get a genuine sense of what life was like for both the famous and the common. Here are my five selections of historical novels which are great stories and open a window into the relevant times, inspiring my own desire to open that window for others.
This is a novel that divides. It was a work that took Mailer many years to complete and the book that he (apparently) regarded as his masterpiece. It is certainly an incredible piece of work – the product of a powerful imagination in recreating an authentic feel for ancient Egypt with details ranging from cosmology via warfare to street scenes.
Some readers find the strong focus on the sensuality of the Egyptians a bit much. Mailer’s Egyptian world is very sexualised and who’s to say he’s wrong? If you’re not turned off by that kind of thing you’ll be rewarded with one of the most richly detailed and “real” feeling historical novels ever written.
Norman Mailer’s dazzlingly rich, deeply evocative novel of ancient Egypt breathes life into the figures of a lost era: the eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Rameses and his wife, Queen Nefertiti; Menenhetet, their creature, lover, and victim; and the gods and mortals that surround them in intimate and telepathic communion. Mailer’s reincarnated protagonist is carried through the exquisite gardens of the royal harem, along the majestic flow of the Nile, and into the terrifying clash of battle. An extraordinary work of inventiveness, Ancient Evenings lives on in the mind long after the last page has been turned.
Back in New York, while struggling to be a screenwriter, I was spiritually questing. My friends and I read “books that change lives”. New age books, self-help, mystical, spiritual. We meditated with crystals. We dabbled in tofu. And our lives did change. Some moved to Santa Fe. Some took up Reiki. I found my way to LA to write for TV and film. Throughout my time there, I was working on my own story to tell, like the ones I had loved in New York. That story eventually morphed into The Man Who Came and Went. For me and my friends at least, these books really did change lives.
This is a work of fiction written by Jane Roberts, famous as the writer of the Seth books. Through the novel form, Roberts gets across a plausible way to look at life, the fluid nature of time and some possible meaning and purpose to be found in reincarnation. It’s also pretty entertaining. Yay novels! There are three books in the Oversoul series. This, the second, is my favorite.
The ageless, timeless entity Oversoul Seven must deal with the problems of an unusual assortment of mortals that includes a young man reluctant to be a father, a student contemplating suicide, and a woman unhappy with her reincarnation
My passion for metaphysics was ignited by an odd sequence of events that followed my husband’s death in 2001. He had been profoundly affected by progressive multiple sclerosis. Yet, beginning the night after his death and for the twenty-two years since, he has reached out to me time and again. I take great comfort in knowing that he's still somewhere, and very much his former vibrant, funny, loving self. Even though my life has moved on, and I met the woman who would later become my wife, my late husband remains very much a part of my life and spiritual education. As to who I am—only time will tell.
By the time I read Courageous Souls, I had, through a combination of reading and metaphysical experiences, developed a deep belief in the survival and reincarnation of souls.
So, encountering the ten personal stories contained within the book did not introduce me to anything new. What it did, however, was dive deeper into questions that have plagued philosophers and theologians.
Why do some people stumble through life, and others float blithely above universal chaos? How do we square the concept of a loving Creator with all the evils which escaped Pandora’s Box, and haunt humanity? Is it possible that we truly choose personal adversities to be part of our lifetime? And if so, why?
This book further expanded my growing understanding of the spiritual soul choices that guide all incarnations.
Would you like to understand the deeper spiritual meaning of physical illness, parenting handicapped children, drug addiction, alcoholism, the death of a loved one, accidents, deafness, and blindness?
Your Soul’s Plan (which was originally published under the title Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth?) explores the premise that we are all eternal souls who plan our lives, including our greatest challenges, before we are born for the purpose of spiritual growth. Through compelling profiles of people who knowingly planned the experiences mentioned above, Your Soul’s Plan shows that suffering is not purposeless, but rather imbued with…
I’ve always been interested in how people change, and how trauma and difficulties hasten change. After all, if we have to grow and gain new skills to stay alive, we find a way. Originally, personal transformation was a priority because I was terribly unhappy, scared, and had shielded myself from direct contact with the world around me in an effort to stay “safe.” Don’t do this. It doesn’t work. So I asked myself, as an author, how would murders, deception, and sanity-threatening events affect a depressed therapist? Murder For Liar is the product of exploring this.
Carroll is simply a great writer—more on the literature end of the book spectrum.
Nonetheless, this book gripped me as if it were a best-selling thriller. Sleeping in Flame confounded my expectations at every turn, and at times it seemed as though it couldn’t possibly end with any sort of resolution. But it does—in mind-expanding fashion.
I also try to take readers on the same sort of mysterious journey that Carroll’s protagonist hazards. Sometimes it’s challenging to imagine what would be a realistic reaction to a truly extraordinary event. Then I remember some of the stories I’ve heard in sessions as a psychotherapist.
Confused by his past, actor Walker Easterling falls in love with model Maris York, but his past lives threaten their safety and that of their unborn son
When I was a girl, my grandmother called me an ‘old soul’ and said she thought my fascination with the 19th century meant that I’d lived then in another life. Ever since, this notion that a person might have lived before has always fascinated me! I gravitate to books that bring the past and present together in all sorts of ways–through memory, ghosts, time travel…and reincarnation. Now my own books of suspense for kids and teens deal with many of those same themes. I always write books I would want to read myself!
Who doesn’t love a new take
on the Arthurian Legend of King Arthur? This fairly light-hearted story tells of King Arthur and his friends
reincarnated in modern times. Age-old legends, it seems, never die… and now present-day
teenagers Will and Elaine must fight the same battles for good to triumph over
evil. It’s a modern twist on a classic love
story, and a lot of fun.
Avalon High, Ellie's new school, is pretty much what she'd expected. There's Lance, the hunky footballer. Jennifer, the cute cheerleader. Marco, the troublemaker. And then there's Will - the most gorgeous guy Ellie's ever met. She can hardly believe he likes HER.
When Will says he thinks he's met Ellie before, things start getting a little weird. A feeling that grows as Ellie discovers the strange bonds that entwine Will, Lance, Jen, Marco - and herself.
As darkness turns to danger, can Ellie stop the horrific chain of events that is about to engulf them all . . .
I was in my teens when I discovered that if I focused on something hard enough I could manifest it. During my investigations into whether others had experienced this, I discovered the Adyar Bookstore in the Strand Arcade in Sydney, and that I had an insatiable thirst for all texts metaphysical, historical, and quantum theory. Turns out that many of the greatest thinkers in history believed that humans hold sway over many of the events and occurrence of their own lives, including Einstein, Plato, Tesla, Carl Sagan, and more. My books are the product of my exploration into the nature of personal reality, spirituality, and the meaning of life.
The Education of Oversoul Seven is the only fiction book on my list.
Most of my books deal with time travel, reincarnation, and karmic themes, and my understanding of simultaneous time came from this gorgeous little novel.
It also opened my eyes to the fact that we don’t necessarily always reincarnate into a future time.
This story tells of four characters, in four different historic periods, and the oversoul responsible for guiding them all. I have such a character in my new book also, whom I call the Inter-dweller.
When people ask for other books like mine, this is one I always recommend.
The Education of Oversoul Seven. Jane Roberts, channel of the Seth material, wrote the fictional Oversoul Seven series to further illuminate the ideas described in her nonfiction books. The Education of Oversoul Seven is a playful parable of time and space that opens up a whole new vision of life.
I come from a rather strange background: southern Italian and Eastern European Jewish. As a child, I heard both Italian (Neapolitan dialect) and Yiddish. I later learned that my maternal grandmother’s brother was the well-known Yiddish poet and playwright, Jacob Adler, creator of Yente (who wrote under the name B. Kovner to avoid confusion with the great actor by that name). I have been involved with what some call the “occult,” “paranormal,” or “supernatural” for many years, and these appear in much of my recent writing. Moreover, The Ibbur’s Taledraws on various elements drawn from the history of my mother’s family, including the fate of some during the Holocaust.
This study offers a thorough presentation of the traditional (and non-traditional) Jewish thoughts about various topics, including ghosts and apparitions, magic and superstition, and even reincarnation. However, the main thrust is the analysis of six (presumably) documented accounts of possession by spirits and subsequent exorcisms.
I have listed this work for two reasons. First, it underscores the significance of possession within a community not known for performing exorcisms. Then, more personally, I found the presentation challenging, intriguing, and perhaps even provocative. If such malevolent possession has been documented, why not a benevolent ibbur?
An astonishing book chronicling and dramatizing six documented reports of possession and exorcism in the Jewish experience. Also features a fascinating historical look at the traditional Jewish perspective on reincarnation, ghosts, apparitions, magic and superstition.
To be honest, and this will sound strange, but suspense is the air I breathe. I’m a pretty calm, boring human being, and the only thing that gets my heart pumping are films, TV, books, and video games in this genre. Suspense and thrillers are genres that make up ninety percent of the entertainment that I consume, and one hundred percent of the entertainment that I write.
I can only speak from my experience and, wow, this book hooked me right at the end of that first chapter, “but it’s happening faster.” Now to go into what that means, I will remain spoiler-free, but my jaw dropped. And the story only ramped up after that.
I love stories where the protagonist finds themselves in genuine peril, and Claire puts Harry August in a particular type of peril that truly had me terrified for his well-being in every chapter. The best type of suspense escalates in every chapter and it escalates here in this book in the best possible ways.
'ONE OF THE FICTION HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DECADE' Judy Finnigan, Richard and Judy Book Club
Featured in the Richard and Judy Book Club, the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and the Waterstones Book Club Winner of the John W. Campbell Award Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award
SOME STORIES CANNOT BE TOLD IN JUST ONE LIFETIME
No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before.
I’ve been reading paranormal series as a way to learn about these so I might write my own series.
This series is so vital, so real, so personable—I related to every character’s storyline enough that I stayed riveted, and even re-read the end of the final book twice! It was that good. When authors create a world, it’s so easy to see holes in it as a reader, and there simply isn’t one in these amazing books.
At the bottom line, it’s about saving the world (aren’t they all?) and I am very committed to making that happen. Reading about saving the world is helping to save it.
Ancient feuds. Demonic forces bent on destruction. Oh, and apparently vampires are real. Della didn’t sign up for any of this.
She didn’t sign up for violence and mayhem in the streets of the Big Easy. She didn’t sign up to be a magnet for an evil force intent on hunting down the reincarnated souls of its enemies.
She sure as hell didn’t sign up for rescue by a sinfully tempting vampire lord and his fashion-model-gorgeous friends. Especially since he seems convinced that she’s the living embodiment of his long lost human mate.
I’m one of those writers who’d identify themselves as readers first, and as an oft-bullied queer kid growing up in Singapore, I often found refuge and salvation in writers whose works were able to refashion and reimagine our lives, however intimately or grandly. I grew up devouring fantasy of all kinds; I went from Enid Blyton to Charmed, for instance, before discovering in my later adolescence the manifold possibilities of magical realism and the other expanses contained within the realm(s) of speculative fiction. Many of the books in this particular list were especially useful in crafting my second novel, Lovelier, Lonelier.
In my head, there’s a high I’m chasing, and it’s the high I got when I finally finished David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, the high of one synapse in my head connecting with one another in a bright feverish spark as I volley from one page to the next, one character to the next, one era to the next.
If I had to summarise what the book even is, I’d say it’s reincarnation and samsara in the hands of Mitchell’s trademark ventriloquism, arranged into this wonderfully nested set of Russian doll narratives. It sounds very smart and full of grand ideas about the nature of human suffering, and it is! But it is also deeply romantic and about the peculiar destiny that can tie one human soul to another all throughout eternity.
Six lives. One amazing adventure. The audio publication of one of the most highly acclaimed novels of 2004. 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great…
