Open Books 2024: Books set in the Middle Ages

The Open Books Reading Challenge is a year-long reading challenge for people interested in pushing the boundaries of their reading. For full details of the program, please check-out our page at: https://www.rplmn.org/books-more/discover-more/open-books-reading-challenge

This list is to help you find books that fit the 2024 category of "Books set in the Middle Ages."

Happy Reading!

Updated December 18, 2023
RPL Staff
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Flame in the mist
Ahdieh, Rene?e
Paper Book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wrath and the Dawn, comes a sweeping, action-packed YA adventure set against the backdrop of Feudal Japan where Mulan meets Throne of Glass.   "[A] fun feudal samurai drama. . .action...
Crispin : the cross of lead
Avi
Paper Book
Winner of the Newbery Medal, Crispin: The Cross of Lead is an action-packed mystery and adventure from master storyteller Avi. Sometimes I ran, sometimes all I could do was walk. All I knew was that if the steward overtook me, I'd not...
Canterbury tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Paper Book
Manuscript found in Accra
Coelho, Paulo.
Paper Book
The latest novel from the #1 internationally best-selling author of The Alchemist. There is nothing wrong with anxiety. Although we cannot control God's time, it is part of the human condition to want to receive the thing we are waiting for as quickly as...
1356
Cornwell, Bernard.
Paper Book
Go with God and Fight Like the Devil. A fascinating hero and the pursuit of a sword with mythical power - this is the remarkable new novel by Britain's master storyteller, which culminates at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. The Hundred Years War rages on and the bloodiest battles are yet...
The last kingdom : a novel
Cornwell, Bernard
Paper Book
The first installment of Bernard Cornwell's New York Times bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, "like Game of Thrones, but real" (The Observer, London)--the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit  Netflix series. This is the exciting--yet little...
Pope Joan : a novel
Cross, Donna Woolfolk.
Paper Book
There are few historical heroines as fascinating and controversial as Pope Joan, a woman whose hunger for knowledge and independent nature led her to pass as a man and ultimately to attain the high seat in Rome. Pope Joan is a spellbinding tale of a woman who gave up everything, even her very name,...
The seeing stone
Crossley-Holland, Kevin.
Paper Book
Medieval life meets Arthurian magic in a novel that transcends boundaries of time and age, appealing to children of 9+ and older readers alike. The winner of the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Smarties Prize bronze award in 2001, this timeless novel is stunningly reissued for a new...
The Beatryce prophecy
DiCamillo, Kate
Paper Book
A #1 New York Times bestseller From two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo and two-time Caldecott Medalist Sophie Blackall comes a fantastical meditation on fate, love, and the power of words to spell the world. We shall all, in the end, be led to...
The healer's apprentice
Dickerson, Melanie
Ebook
A realistic, fast-paced reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale full of royalty, romance, and danger. This masterful combination of love and heartbreak--combined with the novel's surprise ending--is everything fans of fantasy, historical, and medieval fiction yearn for. Rose has been...
Silence
End, Shsaku
Paper Book
Shusaku Endo's New York Times bestselling classic novel of enduring faith in dangerous times, now a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver. "Silence I regard as a masterpiece, a lucid and...
Pillars of the earth
Follett, Ken.
Paper Book
Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known. Everything readers...
The bride
Garwood, Julie.
Paper Book
From one of the world's most popular and successful romance writers comes this novel of searing love and destiny. Alec is everything Jamie's heart warns against. And though he fires her blood, she brazenly resists him, until one rapturous moment.
The Vatican princess : a novel of Lucrezia Borgia
Gortner, C. W.
Paper Book
For fans of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, bestselling author C. W. Gortner effortlessly weaves history and drama in this captivating novel about one of the world's most notorious families. Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy, and...
The king's curse
Gregory, Philippa.
Paper Book
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author behind the Starz original series The White Queen comes the story of lady-in-waiting Margaret Pole and her unique view of King Henry VIII's stratospheric rise to power in Tudor England. Regarded as yet another threat to the...
Lords of the bow
Iggulden, Conn.
Paper Book
The second in 'The Conqueror Series', this novel is an epic story of Genghis Khan continuing to dominate the scene as he matures from the young boy of 'Wolf of the Plains' to the great Conqueror.
The buried giant : a novel
Ishiguro, Kazuo
Paper Book
From the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day   The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl...
A hero born
Jin, Yong
Paper Book
"China. The year is 1200. The Song Empire has been defeated in the north by invading Jurchen forces. Pushed further south, the empire is in danger of collapse and the Chinese population is furious. Now it falls to lone patriots trained in the martial arts to save China. Guo Jing's father was one...
Powers and thrones : a new history of the Middle Ages
Jones, Dan
Paper Book
The instant Sunday Times bestseller A Times, New Statesman and Spectator Book of the Year 'Simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages there is' Sunday Times 'A great achievement, pulling together many strands...
The time traveller's guide to medieval England : a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century
Mortimer, Ian
Paper Book
Imagine you could get into a time machine and travel back to the 14th century. This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
  In the early eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote what many consider to be the world's first novel, more than three centuries before Chaucer. The Heian era (794--1185) is recognized as one of the very greatest periods in Japanese literature,...
The shadow throne
Nielsen, Jennifer A.
Paper Book
Jennifer A. Nielsen takes readers on an extraordinary journey with the False Prince in this third installment of the New York Times bestselling Ascendance Series.War has come to Carthya. It knocks at every door and window in the land. And when Jaron learns that King Vargan of Avenia has...
She who became the sun
Parker-Chan, Shelley
Paper Book
Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner Astounding Award Winner Lambda Literary Award Finalist Hugo Award Finalist Locus Award Finalist A Dragon Award Finalist Otherwise Award Finalist "Magnificent in every...
A morbid taste for bones : the first chronicle of Brother Cadfael of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury
Peters, Ellis
Paper Book
The "irresistible" and "compelling" first novel in the historical mystery series featuring a Welsh Benedictine monk in the twelfth century (The Washington Post). A Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in western England, Brother Cadfael spends much...
The lost queen : a novel
Pike, Signe
Paper Book
Compared to Outlander and The Mists of Avalon, this thrilling first novel of a debut trilogy reveals the untold story of Languoreth--a forgotten queen of sixth-century Scotland--twin sister of the man who inspired the legend of Merlin. I write because I...
Femina : a new history of the middle ages through the women written out of it
Ramirez, Janina
Paper Book
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER **LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE** 'Janina Ramirez is a born storyteller, and in Femina she is at the peak of her powers. This is bravura narrative history underpinned by passionate advocacy for the women...
Good masters! Sweet Ladies! : voices from a medieval village
Schlitz, Laura Amy.
Paper Book
Step back to an English village in 1255, where life plays out in dramatic vignettes illuminating twenty-two unforgettable characters. Winner of the Newbery Medal. Maidens, monks, and millers' sons -- in these pages, readers will meet them all. There's Hugo, the lord's nephew,...
The architect's apprentice
Shafak, Elif
Paper Book
There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together. Mosques, bridges, madrasas, caravanserais, alms houses, aqueducts . . . I think about Istanbul every day. People must be walking now across the courtyards of the mosques, not knowing,...
Dauntless
Sleiman, Dina L.
Ebook
Timothy Grey plans to earn a title by capturing Lady Merry and her band of orphan thieves. But will he carry out his mission when he meets their dauntless leader face-to-face?
The empress of salt and fortune
Vo, Nghi
Paper Book
Winner of the 2020 Crawford Award! Winner of the 2021 Hugo Award! A Hugo Award-Winning Series! A 2021 Locus Award Finalist A 2021 Ignyte Award Finalist A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist A Book Riot Best Debut Fantasy of All...
The scribe of Siena : a novel
Winawer, Melodie
Paper Book
"Like Outlander with an Italian accent." --Real Simple "A detailed historical novel, a multifaceted mystery, and a moving tale of improbable love." --Publishers Weekly, starred review A NEW YORK POST MUST-READ BOOK

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