It was Roth's genius to put a universal theme into a historical novel that retains all its power in our own not-so-post-imperial age.

ECONOMIST: Modern fiction

It is Hilary Mantel's second award for Bring Up The Bodies, a historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, which also won the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

BBC: Hilary Mantel wins 2012 Costa novel prize

In that novel, the eighties were not merely a discrete historical period and so the book was not a historical novel because the fictional material (love of money, excess of all kinds, fashionable drug abuse, political opportunism, the scythe of AIDS) so easily spilled beyond its temporal borders.

NEWYORKER: Sons and Lovers

Gen LaGreca is the author of the award-winning medical thriller, Noble Vision, and of the forthcoming historical novel, A Dream of Daring, which explores the great power struggle and clashing visions for the future in mid-19th century America.

FORBES: 150 Years After The Emancipation Proclamation, Are We Free?

As a decorative object, it is a testament to Lycett's ability to synthesize a novel form from a variety of historical and then-contemporary influences.

WSJ: Masterpiece: Gilded Abundance, Elegantly Restrained

Many readers have recommended Michael Shaara's Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Killer Angels" as a novel that superbly translates a historical event into fiction.

WSJ: Dear Book Lover: Fiction that Reads Like Nonfiction

These historic events form the background to this short, arresting historical novel, written almost as a prose poem, which recounts the Dome's construction from the viewpoint of one of the Caliph's advisers, who is of Jewish origin but has adopted the new Muslim creed.

ECONOMIST: New fiction from the Middle East

This historical adventure novel captures the sweep of human nature in a world that we'll never see again.

FORBES: Shanghaied

One of the reasons for this literary success is that Mantel seems to have written a very good modern novel, then changed all her fictional names to English historical figures of the fifteen-twenties and thirties.

NEWYORKER: Invitation to a Beheading