Best New Historical Fiction - June 2026
The Stargazer of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt
Publisher: Park Row
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Synopsis:
From award-winning author Julie Gerstenblatt, an epic tale of adventure on the high seas, a spunky stowaway, and a family confronting the past to secure their future.
Massachusetts, 1851
Winifred Starbuck wants only one to join her parents on their final merchant voyage—from Nantucket Island to bustling San Francisco, then across the glittering Pacific to the distant ports of China. Yet renowned trade captains Nell and Peter Starbuck have forbidden their daughter from coming aboard on the adventure of a lifetime. So Winnie does what any strong-willed eighteen-year-old would she stows away.
Once the ship sets sail, Winnie is plunged into turbulent waters, treachery, and the thrill of life on the high seas. As she drifts farther from shore, and closer to fabled Canton port, she uncovers a long-buried secret—one that reveals the truth behind her parents’ desperate fear. And as she continues to chart her own course, she’ll have to plumb the depths of her courage to take on a world far bigger—and more dangerous—than she ever imagined.
Why We Recommend It!
A sweeping and adventurous maritime tale, The Stargazer of Nantucket blends high-seas danger, family secrets, and coming-of-age courage into a richly atmospheric journey across the nineteenth-century world.
Our Sister’s Keeper by Jasmine Holmes
Publisher: Bindery Books
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Synopsis:
Mississippi, 1927. The groanings are coming.
No town is perfect, but East Cobb comes close. It’s a wealthy all-Black Free Town—untouched by white oppression—where ambitious Thea Elliot and her husband plan to make good on their big dreams. Little do they know that the idyllic town teems with ghoulish, walking nightmares . . . that only the women can see.
Marah knows the groanings well. She is one of the carriers—women with the ability to pull traumatic memories from men. Populated by men entirely freed of their pain, East Cobb has flourished, even as the remnants of their memories haunt the town’s women. When an unexpected death drives Marah to discover more about her own power, Thea’s and Marah’s worlds collide. The sisters must confront the rotten core at the heart of East Cobb’s prosperity and choose what—and who—will survive the reckoning.
A gripping blend of historical fiction and Southern gothic psychological horror, Our Sister’s Keeper is a fierce exploration of Black sisterhood, rage, and resistance.
Why We Recommend It!
A haunting and powerful fusion of historical fiction and Southern gothic horror, Our Sister’s Keeper explores Black sisterhood, generational trauma, and resistance in a chilling tale where buried pain refuses to stay hidden.
A Botanist's Guide to Tradition and Treachery by Kate Khavari
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Release Date: June 9, 2026
Synopsis:
Brilliant botanist Saffron Everleigh has set sail on her first research expedition, but it's disrupted by accusations of murder when one of her fellow scientists is murdered in this daring fifth installment.
Saffron Everleigh is newly engaged and full of optimism as she sets off on the adventure of a lifetime for any a research expedition. She sails to newly formed Turkey, with her fiancé, Alexander Ashton, and a bevy of fellow researchers under the watchful and reformed eye of Dr. Henry. With only two other women on board, Saffron soon finds she is right back in the same infuriatingly misogynistic environment that marked the earliest days of her career. Only this time, Saffron is determined to show everyone, including Alexander, that she can handle the trials of an expedition.
And trials she has in spades. Before the expedition team has even arrived, Saffron has managed to find an enemy in historian Joseph Clark, who frequently torments the assistant that Saffron has taken under her wing, Martin Neill. But when Martin unexpectedly dies, Saffron is targeted as the main suspect.
Falling ruins, venomous snakes, and mysteriously blocked passages are the least of Saffron’s worries. With unexpected help from a familiar face, Alexander and Saffron have to work fast to prove not only that Saffron is innocent, but that they both have nothing to do with a larger conspiracy at play among the expedition crew.
Why We Recommend It!
An intelligent and fast-paced historical mystery, A Botanist’s Guide to Tradition and Treachery combines academic intrigue, deadly conspiracies, and vivid expeditionary adventure in a delightfully suspenseful romp.
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: June 2, 2026
Synopsis:
A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?
Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
Why We Recommend It!
A lyrical and deeply evocative historical novel, Land weaves grief, memory, and survival into a spellbinding portrait of post-Famine Ireland and the enduring scars carried by both people and place.
Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See
Publisher: Scribner
Release Date: June 2, 2026
Synopsis:
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain – America – where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined.
Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance and ability to ‘eat bitterness,’ discover their voices, find freedom and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon.
Why We Recommend It!
Richly layered and emotionally resonant, Daughters of the Sun and Moon illuminates the struggles, resilience, and enduring bonds of Chinese women carving out lives amid violence and prejudice in nineteenth-century Los Angeles.
