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
Ebook
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
Newbery Medal winner The Cross of Lead is "a page-turner from beginning to end... full of adventure, mystery, and action" (School Library Journal). Sometimes I ran, sometimes all I could do was walk. All I knew was that if the steward...
The Canterbury tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Paper Book
"Whoever best acquits himself, and tellsThe most amusing and instructive tale,Shall have a dinner, paid for by us all..."In Chaucer's most ambitious poem, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), a group of pilgrims assembles in an inn just outside London and agree to entertain each other on the way to...
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 : a novel
Cornwell, Bernard
Paper Book
Bernard Cornwell, the "master of martial fiction" (Booklist), brings Thomas of Hookton from the popular Grail Quest series into a new adventure in 1356, a thrilling stand-alone novel. On September 19, 1356, a heavily outnumbered English army faced off against the French in the historic Battle of...
The last kingdom : a novel
Cornwell, Bernard.
Audiobook
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. In the middle years of the ninth century,...
Pope Joan : a novel
Cross, Donna Woolfolk.
Paper Book
"Pope Joan has all the elements one wants in a historical drama--love, sex, violence, duplicity, and long-buried secrets. Cross has written an engaging book."--Los Angeles Times Book Review In this international bestseller and basis for the 2009 movie of the...
The seeing stone
Crossley-Holland, Kevin.
Ebook
Arthurian legend comes to life in the first novel in this remarkable, award-winning sagaThirteen-year-old Arthur de Caldicot lives on a manor, desperately waiting for the moment he can become a knight. One day his father's friend Merlin gives him a shining black stone - a seeing stone - that shows...
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
#1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The "extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece" (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett's already phenomenal career--and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning<...
The Vatican princess : a novel of Lucrezia Borgia
Gortner, C. W.
Ebook
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...
Genghis : lords of the bow
Iggulden, Conn.
Audiobook
New York Times best-selling author Conn Iggulden's Genghis Khan novels are infused with action, adventure, and rich historical details further fleshing out the great warlord's world. Having risen from his tribal upbringing, Genghis now leads a horde of fellow countrymen on a mission of conquest...
The buried giant
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...
Powers and thrones : a new history of the Middle Ages
Jones, Dan
Paper Book
"Not only an engrossing read about the distant past, both informative and entertaining, but also a profoundly thought-provoking view of our not-really-so-'new' present . . . All medieval history is here, beautifully narrated."--Wall Street Journal "A lively history...
Before Columbus : the Americas of 1491
Mann, Charles C.
Paper Book
A companion book for young readers based on 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, the groundbreaking bestseller by Charles C. Mann.
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Ebook
The most famous work of Japanese literature and the world's first novel--written a thousand years ago and one of the enduring classics of world literature. Written centuries before the time of Shakespeare and even Chaucer, The Tale of Genji marks the birth of the novel-...
The shadow throne
Nielsen, Jennifer A.
Ebook
Jennifer A. Nielsen takes readers on an extraordinary journey with the False Prince in this final 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.
Ebook
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
Peters, Ellis
Paper Book
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
Audiobook
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 empress of salt and fortune
Vo, Nghi
Audiobook
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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