Historical Fiction

[Incubus]

I'm looking for something similar to The Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers (D'Artganan Romances).

These are some of my all time favourite books but I don't know much about their genre.

I'm hoping someone can recommend something similar.

[Hitmouse]

For tongue in cheek HF suggest the Flashman novels by George McDonald Fraser. Plenty of swashbuckling and derring-do, but set against real historical events (actually a good history lesson) and very funny debunking of the more pompous British Empire Boys-own history stories.
GMF also wrote a book called Pyrates, which is a take-off of the 1920-30s swashbuckling adventures.

For a more literary romp the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien take some beating. Sort of Hornblower for grownups.

Others that spring to mind:
Perfume Patrick Suskind
The Scarlet Pimpernel Baroness Orczy
Most Walter Scott
Kim Rudyard Kipling
Les Miserables Victor Hugo
War & Peace Tolstoy
Most Charles Dickens
The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco

I could go on and on...

[SC1F1]

Perfume - The Story of a Murder by Patrick Sueskind is highly recommendable!
The movie breaks with the basic concept of the protagonist's character and tries to compensate its shallowness by implementing a dispensable and cheesy love story which does not match with the stubborn personality of Grenouille. In the movie Grenouille is portrayed as a wicked freak, but Grenouille is a person without any moral consciousness.

You may give the historical sci-fi horror shortstory The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann a try. Hoffmann focussed in his literature on the dark aspects of human nature.

[Hellequin]

The best historical fiction I've ever read is by Bernard Cornwell particularly his novel Agincourt simply amazing story

I'm actually looking for more authors like Cornwell if anybody has a few suggestions.

[LordAndrew]

Hellequin, you could try reading something from Conn Iggulden, i liked his work and they are somewhat similar in style to Bernard Cornwells.

[acton bell]

Have you ever tried any books by Frank G. Slaughter, F. Van Wyck Mason, or Frank Yerby? All three wrote swashbuckling historical fiction. I picked my copies up at used bookstores for .10 and .25, but you can probably find some in libraries.

Titles include:
Frank G. Slaugher -
The Deadly Lady of Madagascar - the novel of an exotic woman pirate who took the loot and man she wanted.
The Golden Ones - a novel of Elizabethan England featuring a treacherous Spanish beauty.
Buccaneer Surgeon - the title says it all

Frank Yerby -
The Golden Hawk - Kit Gerado vows to kill the powerful Spanish grandee who sired him...and conquer the fiery red-haired pirate woman who wanted him dead.
The Saracen Blade - 13th century tale with Italy and the Jerusalem as its setting
Goat Song - story of Ariston the Spartan

F. Van Wyck Mason -
Cutlass Empire - fictionalized biography of pirate Henry Morgan
Captain Nemesis - Naval officer turns to piracy after being framed (ala Count of Monte Cristo)

I see I've leaned heavily toward their pirate books, but they have done others. Basically they all write fast moving stories with dashing, larger than life heroes.

[acton bell]

Sabatini - Captain Blood and Scarmouche

Can't be missed if you enjoy Dumas.

[acton bell]

The Scottish Chiefs - Jane Porter - William Wallace and Scotland's fight for freedom.

El Borak and Other Desert Adventures - Robert E. Howard - these are not Conan fantasies.

Talbot Mundy - King of the Khyber Rifles and others.

Harold Lamb - his Cossack series and his Crusaders series.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The White Company

Louis L'amour - The Walking Drum & Fair Blows the Wind. I'm told the former isn't entirely historically accurate, but it's still a good historical with a likable hero.

Was Stevenson's Black Arrow mentioned? Good story

Happy reading!

[DurzoBlint]

Don Quixote might fit the bill.

[BreakLater]

Others that spring to mind:

The Scarlet Pimpernel Baroness Orczy


I could go on and on...

Gotta second The Scarlet Pimpernel. Read it in '08 and it's still as great as it was when I read it in my teens. Very action-packed, lots of fun surprises.

[rloomis]

Currently reading THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH - Ken Follett.....Loving this...great read!! I watched the first two eposides of this TV special thru Netflix this past month..and thought i would stop and read the book..then continue with the DVD's....so glad i tried this approach...While i'm reading i can actually put an actors face to the character and that character in the book has come more alive so to speak for me..Has anyone else tried this before???

[PeteMC]

I keep meaning to read that, I enjoyed the TV series a lot.

I'm getting into a lot of proper old stuff at the moment, currently reading a 50's translation of the Arabian Nights and a collection of plays by Euripides, and have Caesar's Conquest of Gaul on the to-read pile. I found a bundle of Penguin Classics in a second hand bookshop for next to nothing so I thought "why not".

[Fantasyeatergal]

If you can find translations of Mireille Calmel's novels, I'd highly recommend them! Great historical novels where the central characters are female. Some include a touch of fantasy, but really very light.

[Lagomorph_Rex]

If your looking for swashbucklers and the like then I really wouldn't recommend the Aubrey-Maturin books.. They contain trace elements of it.. but they are mostly more about the amusing escapades and love lives of the two characters.. Though I've not finished reading the whole series yet so it maybe gets more action oriented as it moves on.. but it really dosen't resemble the film much at all in that regard.. However, the series has to get points for having the line "Jack, You have Debauched my sloth!"...

C.S. Forrester can't really go wrong with him.. Rifleman Dodd was a great book and was likely the inspiration for the Richard Sharpe series from Bernard Cornwell.. Which is also slightly like a landlubber analog of the Horatio Hornblower books also from C.S. Forrester.. I've so far really enjoyed all of Bernard Cornwell's books about the British army. But I've been less enthused by his more distantly historical works.