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...
The Canterbury tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Paper Book
One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, in the original Middle English The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society. The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves,...
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.
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 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
By edict of the king, the mighty Scottish laird Alec Kincaid must take an English bride. His choice was Jamie, youngest daughter of Baron Jamison...a feisty, violet-eyed beauty. Alec ached to touch her, to tame her, to possess her...forever. But Jamie vowed never to surrender to this highland...
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
A #1 New York Times Bestselling AuthorThe final novel in the Cousins' War seriesRegarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII's claim to the throne, Margaret is buried in marriage to a steady and kind Tudor supporter -- Sir Richard Pole, governor of Wales. But her quiet life is...
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...
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 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...
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,...
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...
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...
Sword of the rightful king : a novel of King Arthur
Yolen, Jane.
Paper Book
The newly crowned King Arthur is unsure of himself; worse, the people are unsure of him. Too many people want the throne, and treachery is everywhere. Merlin must do something before the king is betrayed, or murdered, or--worst of all--gets married. So Merlin magically places a sword into a...

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