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.   The daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko has long...
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...
The Canterbury tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Paper Book
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range...
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.
Paper Book
The first installment of Bernard Cornwell's 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 television series. This is the exciting--yet little known--story...
Pope Joan : a novel
Cross, Donna Woolfolk.
Ebook
"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 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.
Paper Book
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. ...
Silence
Endō, Shūsaku
Paper Book
"Silence I regard as a masterpiece, a lucid and elegant drama." Irving Howe. -- The New York Times Review Of Books *** Susaku Endo is Japan's foremost novelist, and Silence is generally regarded to be his masterpiece. In a perfect fusion of treatment and theme, this powerful novel tells the...
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.
Ebook
An arranged marriage leads to passionate love in this classic Scottish historical romance from #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Garwood.   By edict of the king, the mighty Scottish laird Alec Kincaid must take an English bride. His choice is Jamie, youngest...
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...
Genghis : lords of the bow
Iggulden, Conn.
Paper Book
He was born Temujin, the son of a khan, raised in a clan of hunters migrating across the rugged steppe. Temujin' s young life was shaped by a series of brutal acts: the betrayal of his father by a neighboring tribe and the abandonment of his entire family, cruelly left to die on the harsh plain. But...
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...
The Middle Ages : a graphic guide
Janega, Eleanor
Paper Book
A unique, illustrated book that will change the way you see medieval history The Middle Ages: A Graphic History busts the myth of the 'Dark Ages', shedding light on the medieval period's present-day relevance in a unique illustrated style. ...
A hero born
Jin, Yong
Paper Book
The epic Chinese classic and phenomenon published in the US for the first time! Featured in iO9's 2019 Fall Preview. Set in ancient China, in a world where kung fu is magic, kingdoms vie for power and the battle to become the ultimate kung fu...
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.
Hood
Moke, Jenny Elder
Paper Book
Isabelle has only ever known a quiet life inside the walls of the convent, where she lives with her mother, Marien. But after she is arrested by soldiers for defending innocent villagers, Isabelle becomes the target of the Wolf, King John's ruthless right hand. Desperate to keep her daughter safe,...
The time traveler's guide to medieval England : a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century
Mortimer, Ian
Paper Book
The past is a foreign country. This is your guidebook. A time machine has just transported you back to the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord?...
The tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Paper Book
Murasaki Shikibu, born into the middle ranks of the aristocracy during the Heian period (794?1185 CE), wrote The Tale of Genji--widely considered the world's first novel--during the early years of the eleventh century. Expansive, compelling, and sophisticated in its representation of ethical...
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.
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
Ebook
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...
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 #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 CUNDIL HISTORY PRIZE A "Next Big Idea Book Club" Must Read? A groundbreaking reappraisal of medieval femininity, revealing why women have been written out of history and why it matters ...
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
From the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul, a colorful, magical tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire In her latest novel, Turkey's preeminent female writer spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, twelve...
Revelations
Sharratt, Mary
Paper Book
A fifteenth-century Eat, Pray, Love, Revelations illuminates the intersecting lives of two female mystics who changed history--Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. Bishop's Lynn, England, 1413. At the age of forty, Margery Kempe has nearly died giving birth...
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 tiger queens : the women of Genghis Khan
Thornton, Stephanie
Paper Book
In the late twelfth century, across the sweeping Mongolian grasslands, brilliant, charismatic Temujin ascends to power, declaring himself the Great, or Genghis, Khan. But it is the women who stand beside him who ensure his triumph.... After her mother foretells an ominous...
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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