Tales in Time 

Our 2024 Reading Challenge invites you to read one book each month from, about, or set in a different historical period!

We'll be providing monthly lists of suggestions, as well as passports for readers who would like to visit all twelve eras with us and earn a chance to win a timely prize!

 

January - Classical Antiquity

February - The Medieval Period

March - The Renaissance

April - The Enlightenment

May - The Industrial Revolution

June - World War I

July - Between the Wars

August - World War II

September - The Cold War

January - Classical Antiquity - (~800 BC - 500 AD)

Works Written in Classical Antiquity

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
•  Metamorphosis by Ovid
• The complete Greek drama; all the extant tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander
•  Histories by Herodotus
•  The Works of Plato
•  The Illustrated Egyptian Book of the Dead

Works of Nonfiction About Classical Antiquity

• Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece by Leslie and Roy A. Adkins
• SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
• The Twelve Caesars: Tales in Power by Mary Beard
• Marathon: How One Battle Changed Western Civilization by Richard A Billows
• D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Paran D’Aulaires
• Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David
• Pompeii: The Day A City Died by Robert Etienne
• The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
• The Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen
• Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Metz
• Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

Works of Fiction Set in Classical Antiquity

• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
• Clytemnestra by Costanza Cansati
• Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie
• Asterix Omnibus by Rene Goscinny
• I, Claudius by Robert Graves
• Dictator by Robert Harris
• The Odyssey: A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds
• The Iliad: A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds
• Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
• The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
• House of Odysseus by Claire North
• Amber and Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz
• River God by Wilbur Smith
• House of Names by Colm Tóibín

 

February - Medieval Period- (500 AD - 1450 AD)

Works Written in the Medieval Period

• Beowulf trans. Seamus Heaney
• Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory
• The Song of Roland
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Canterbury Tales: A Modern Retelling by Peter Ackroyd
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trans. Richard Armitage
• The Lais of Marie de France

Works of Nonfiction About the Medieval Period

• How the Irish Saved Civilization by James Cahill
• The Year 1000 by Valerie Hansen
• The Anglo-Saxon World by Higham and Ryan
• Beatrice’s Last Smile: A New History of the Middle Ages  by Mark Gregory Pegg
• The Dark Queens by Shelly Puhak
• Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price
• The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England edited by Nigel Saul
• The Gilded Page: The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts by Mary Wellesley

Works of Fiction Set in the Medieval Period

• Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon
• Agincourt, The Grail Quest Series, The Last Kingdom Series, The Saxon Series, The Warlord Trilogy by Bernard Cornwell
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco
• The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey
• The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger
• The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters
• Kingsbridge series by Ken Follett
• The Justin De Quincy Series or The Henry II Series by Sharon K. Penman
• Matrix by Lauren Groff
• The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
• Bea Wolf  by Weinersmith and Boulet
• Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike

March - Renaissance Period

Works Written in the Renaissance

• The Divine Comedyby Dante Alighieri
• Don Quixoteby Miguel de Cervantes
• Praise of Follyby Erasmus
• The Princeby Niccolo Machiavelli
• Paradise Lostby John Milton
• Utopiaby Thomas More
• Hamlet,The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, or The Tempest by William Shakespeare

 

Works of Nonfiction About the Renaissance

• Bosworth,1485 by Michael Jones
• The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: A Tudor Tragedyby Leanda de Lisle
• Shakespeare’s Restless Worldby Neil MacGregor
• The Borgiasor The Tudors by G.J. Meyer
• The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan Englandby Ian Mortimer
• The Italian Renaissanceby J.H. Plumb
• The artist, the philosopher, and the warrioror The Medici: power, money, and ambition in the Italian Renaissance by Paul Strathern

 

Works of Fiction Set in the Renaissance

• Equal of the Sunby Anita Amirrrezvani
• A Knight in Shining Armorby Jude Devereaux
• The Game of Kingsby Dorothy Dunnett
• Marvelousby Molly Greeley
• The Other Boleyn Girland The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
• The Weight of Inkby Rachel Kadish
• The Night Shipby Jess Kidd
• Mirror, Mirrorby Gregory MacGuire
• Wolf Hallby Hilary Mantel
• Hamnet: a novel of the plagueby Maggie O’Farrell
• An Instance of the Fingerpostby Iain Pears
• The Tournamentby Matthew Reilly
• The Elephant’s Journeyby Jose Saramgo
• Lentby Jo Walton

 

April - Enlightenment Period

Works Written in the Enlightenment

• Lyrical Ballads by Coleridge and Wordsworth
• Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights)by Antoine Galland
• The Vicar of Wakefieldby Oliver Goldsmith
• The Federalist Papersby Alexander Hamilton
• The Declaration of Independenceby Thomas Jefferson
• The Complete Poetical Worksof Alexander Pope
• Gulliver’s Travelsby Jonathan Swift
• Candideby Voltaire

Works of Nonfiction About the Enlightenment

• Passionate Mindsby David Bodanis
• Who’s Black and why? A Hidden Chapter from the 18th Century Invention of Raceedited by  Henry L Gates, Jr. and Andrew S. Curran
• “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” : Thomas Jefferson and the empire of imaginationby Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf
• The Faith of the Founding Fathersby David L. Holmes
• Mozartby Paul Johnson
• Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: Britain and the American dream by Peter Moore
• Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nationby Cokie Roberts
• The ideas that made America: a brief historyby Jennifer Ratner Rosenhagen
• Galileo: The Genius Who Faced the Inquisitionby Philip Steele
• The idea of America: Reflections on the birth of the United Statesby Gordon S. Wood

Works of Fiction Set in the Enlightenment

• Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

• The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

• Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

• Shōgun: A Novel of Japanby James Clavell

• The Sharpe Novels by Bernard Cornwell

• A Tale of Two Citiesby Charles Dickens
  
  
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

• The Poldark Series by Winston Graham

• Roots by Alex Haley

• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent

• The Crucible by Arthur Miller

• Witch Child by Celia Rees

• Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

May - Industrial Revolution

Works Written in the Industrial Revolution period

· The Awakening by Kate Chopin

· The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

· The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

· David Copperfield  or Hard Times by Charles Dickens

· North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

· Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

· Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

· Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

· Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley

· The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson

· Dracula by Bram Stoker

· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

· The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Nonfiction Books about the Industrial Revolution

· Victoria the queen : an intimate biography of the woman who ruled an empire by Julia Baird

· Breaking open Japan by George Feifer

· The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson

· The unbound Prometheus by David S. Landes

· Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

· Edison by Edmund Morris

· Cotton : the fabric that made the modern world by Giorgio Riello

· The most powerful idea in the world  by William Rosen

· The statesman and the storyteller : John Hay, Mark Twain, and the rise of American imperialism by Mark Zwonitzer

Works of Fiction Set in the Industrial Revolution

· The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

· Peony by Pearl S. Buck

· The Alienist by Caleb Carr

· Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

· The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

· A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett

· The Hornblower Series by C.S. Forester

· The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

· Babel by R.F. Kuang

· The call of the wild  by Jack London ; with paintings by Wendell Minor

· The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy

· Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

· Ahab’s Wife or The Star-Gazer by Sana Jeter Naslund

· The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar

· The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

· The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

· Beloved by Toni Morisson

· The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

· The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos L Zafron

· Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang 

June - World War I

Works Written During World War I

· One of Ours by Willa Cather

· The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois

· Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford

· A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

· A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway

· Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery

· The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

· All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

· Collected Poems 1908-1956 by Siegfried Sassoon

Nonfiction About The World War I Years

· The secret rooms: a true story of a haunted castle, a plotting duchess, and a family secret by Catherine Bailey

· George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: three royal cousins and the road to World War I by Miranda Carter

· Secret warriors: the spies, scientists, and code-breakers of World War I by Taylor Downing

· Eden to Armageddon: World War I in the Middle East by Roger Ford

· War against war: The American fight for peace, 1914-1918 by Michael Kazin

· An illustrated history of the First World War by John Keegan

· Dead Wake by Erik Larson

· A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

· The month that changed the world: July 1914 by Gordon Martel

· Wounded: a new history of the Western Front in World War I by Emily Mayhew

· River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

· The Romanov sisters: the lost lives of the daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport

· The last of the doughboys: the forgotten generation and their forgotten World War by Richard Rudin

Fiction Set in During World War I

· A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum

· The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

· To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield

· Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

· The Pull of Stars by Emma Donoghue

· Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

· Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

· I was Anastasia: a novel by Ariel Lawhon

· War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

· The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

· Charles Todd’s Inspector Routledge Series and/or his Bess Crawford Series

· The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani

· Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

· A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

 

July - Between the Wars

Works Written Between the Wars

• And Then There Were None or Murder on the Orient Express by Dame Agatha Christie
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
• The Wasteland and other poems or Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway
• Death of a Peer by Ngaio Marsh
• Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
• The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Works of Nonfiction 

• The world broke in two : the year that changed literature by Bill Goldstein 
• A secret gift by Ted Gup 
• The Langston Hughes Reader 
• Little heathens : hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish 
• The Last Lion: Winston Churchill: Alone by William Manchester
• The Man Who Walked Backwards by Ben Montgomery 
• A rabble of dead money : the Great Crash and the global depression : 1929-1939 by Charles R. Morris 
• The rise and fall of the Third Reich; a history of Nazi Germany by William Shirer 
• Hard times : an oral history of the great depression by Studs Terkel 

Works of Fiction Set Between the Wars

• The Light of Luna Park by Addison Armstrong 
• Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel by Kate Atkinson 
• Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland 
• The Mystery of Mrs. Christie or The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict 
• Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown 
• One Summer, 1927 by Bill Bryson 
• Beautiful Little Fools: A Novel by Jillian Cantor 
• The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton 
• The Masterpiece: A Novel by Fiona Davis 
• Winter of the World by Ken Follett 
• The Lindbergh Nanny: A Novel by Mariah Fredricks 
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann 
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen 
• Time's Undoing by Cheryl A. Head 
• The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah 
• Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham 
• Flight of Dreams: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon 
• The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher 
• Atonement by Ian McEwan 
• West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge 
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

August - World War II

Works Written During World War II

• A Street in Bronzeville  by Gwendolyn Brooks
• A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie
• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Out of the Silent Planet or The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Our Town by Thornton Wilder
• Native Son by Richard Wright

Works of Nonfiction About World War II 

• The Accidental President by A.J. Baime
• Man’s search for meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• X troop: The secret Jewish commandos of World War II by Leah Garrett
• In the Garden of Beasts or The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• Helmet for my pillow: from Parris Island to the Pacific, a young Marine’s stirring account of combat in World War II by Robert Leckie
• The Last Lion by William Manchester 
• Eleanor by David Michaelis
• Leningrad: the epic siege of World War II, 1941-1944 by Anna Reid
• Churchill: walking with destiny by Andrew Roberts
• Underground in Berlin: a young woman’s extraordinary tale of survival in the heart of Nazi Germany by Marie Jalowicz Simon
• The Night Trilogy by Elie Wiesel
• Countdown 1945: the extraordinary story of the atomic bomb and the 116 days that changed the world by Chris Wallace with Mitch Weiss
• 1944: FDR and the year that changed history by Jay Winik

Works of Fiction Set around World War II

• The Little Liar by Mitch Albom 
• The Paris Assignment by Rhys Bowen
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable by John Boyne
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
• The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
• The Beantown Girls by Jane Healey
• The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers
• The Alice Network or The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
• The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
• Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
• The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams
• Blackout by Connie Willis
• The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Works Written During The COLD WAR 

• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown 
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 
• Silent Spring by Rachel Carson 
• Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? by Philip K. Dick 
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Moonraker by Ian Fleming
• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan 
• Howl and other poems by Allen Ginsberg  
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 
• It by Stephen King 
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
• Beloved by Toni Morrison  
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 
• The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger 
• And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts 
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan 
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker 
• Charlotte's Web by E.B. White 

Nonfiction About The Cold War Years

• His Very Best: Jimmy Carter by Jonathan Alter 
• Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum
• The Vietnam War by Ken Burns 
• Richard Nixon: A Life by John A. Farrell 
• Strategies of Containment by John Lewis Gaddis 
• The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush  
• Gandhi by  Ramachandra Guha 
• The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam 
• His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham
• The End of the Cold War by Robert Service  
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly 
• Reagan: An American Journey by Bob Spitz 
• Incomparable Grace: JFK in the presidency by Mark K. Updegrove
• The Double Helix by James Watson  

Fiction Set in During the Cold War

• Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Kama Brown 
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson 
• Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig 
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich 
• The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson 
• The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts 
• The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles 
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