The Return of Historical Fiction: What’s Driving the Trend?

Historical fiction is having a moment again. In the United States, the bestselling book of 2024 was a work of historical fiction: Kristin Hannah’s The Women. That single data point does not prove a category wide boom on its own, but it helps explain the feeling many readers have right now. Stories set in the past are crowding front tables, fueling book club selections, and anchoring streaming adaptations. This piece separates signal from noise and looks at what is actually driving the renewed attention.

A market that favors fiction, plus one blockbuster

Adult fiction has led overall print growth since the pandemic’s peak, and it continued to do so through 2025. Publishers Weekly, using Circana BookScan data, reported that adult fiction units rose nearly five percent in 2025. The same report named The Women as the bestselling book of the year, with nearly 1.5 million copies sold. Taken together, those facts tell us two things. First, readers kept leaning into escapist and immersive reading. Second, a historical title did not just participate in the trend. It led the year.

The nuance: not every subgenre is rising at the same rate
It is important to acknowledge regional and subcategory differences. In the United Kingdom, overall fiction revenue hit a record in 2024, but war fiction declined year over year by roughly eighteen percent. That suggests that the return of historical fiction is not a uniform surge. Certain eras and tones are winning attention, while others are cooling. Books about twentieth-century women’s lives, civil rights, and communities at the edges of official histories are attracting a broad readership, while some traditional battlefront narratives are cycling down.

Big drivers of the comeback

1) Cross-media moments that refresh the backlist
High-profile adaptations are pulling older historical novels back into public conversation. FX’s Shogun dominated cultural coverage in 2024 and then went on to make Emmy history with a record trophy haul. The series’ success reminded readers that a sweeping historical epic can feel modern in scope and theme. While there is no single public data point that isolates the novel’s sales lift from the show, the pattern is familiar. When a major series lands, the original book typically returns to charts and gains a new generation of readers.

2) BookTok and the backlist flywheel
TikTok’s book community has reshaped how readers find titles. Most reporting has focused on romance and fantasy, but the same mechanics apply to historical fiction. Readers post tearful or joyful reactions, annotate sprayed-edge editions, and share shelf tours. That activity puts older titles back in circulation. One day, a reader films a copy of a five-year-old novel with a heartfelt caption, and the next week the book is face out again at a local store. Because many historical novels are already in paperback and have robust reading group guides, they are perfect for this kind of rediscovery.

3) The appeal of “immersive truth” in uncertain times
Historical fiction offers a blend of distance and relevance. It lets readers explore themes that feel urgent today, but it does so through characters who are safely outside the present news cycle. That combination is valuable during periods of social stress. When people want to think about moral courage, community, migration, or public health without doomscrolling, a richly detailed historical narrative provides an emotionally manageable route. The best of these novels also push against nostalgia, showing the past as complicated and contested, not tidy or simple.

4) Strong author brands and reliable reader trust
Authors like Kristin Hannah, Amor Towles, Maggie O’Farrell, Kate Quinn, and Anthony Doerr have taught readers to expect high craft and high feeling from the category. When a new release arrives from one of these names, readers trust that research, pacing, and character work will repay their time. That trust gives publishers confidence to invest in major launches, which in turn creates more front-list visibility for the category as a whole.

5) Libraries and book clubs as amplifiers
Historical fiction travels well through book clubs and libraries. Clubs favor novels with ethical dilemmas, social texture, and meaty discussion prompts. Libraries champion books that help patrons connect to local histories or under-told national stories. Both channels deepen the pool of word-of-mouth recommendations. A single successful club pick in a neighborhood can spur dozens of additional checkouts and purchases over a season.

Where the growth is coming from

Readers are responding to certain patterns in today’s historical fiction.

• Women at the center. The Women is emblematic. It reframes a familiar era by centering people who were long at the margins of official narratives. That approach aligns with a broader publishing shift toward recovering voices that were previously sidelined.

• Cross-genre blends. Many recent hits mix romance, mystery, or speculative elements with historical settings. This allows the books to benefit from multiple discovery channels, especially online communities that sort by trope as much as by shelving category.

• Backlist with a new hook. Adaptations and anniversaries create excuses to revisit older books. A new edition, a reading group guide, or a prominent staff pick can nudge a classic back into carts.

What to watch in the next twelve months

• Adaptation pipeline. Studios continue to lean on known properties. Each high-profile series or film puts related books back into circulation. Shogun’s awards run is a clear example of how a historical epic can recapture attention, and other adaptations will repeat the pattern.

• Retail presentation. “As seen on BookTok,” tables have trained readers to look for social proof in stores. As more historical titles circulate through those displays, expect a longer tail of backlist discovery.

• International markets. Nielsen’s latest reporting showed fiction revenue growth in many territories in 2025, even as some national markets softened. Historical fiction will likely ride that tide, though specific subgenres will vary by region.

How we know the trend is real, and where caution is warranted

The evidence for a return is strongest where we have clean, public data. The Women topping the annual U.S. charts is hard proof. Fiction’s continued strength in both the U.S. and U.K. supports the idea that readers want immersive narrative. Awards and adaptations have kept historical stories in the conversation. At the same time, the U.K. data point about declining war fiction is a useful check against over claiming. The category is not surging in every corner. It is better to say that historical fiction’s center of gravity has shifted toward voices and topics that feel newly relevant, while some traditional subgenres are in a cyclical lull.

Practical recommendations
For readers: sample across subgenres. If large-scale epics feel daunting, try mid-length novels that focus on one family or one neighborhood. If you want a surprise, look for historical mysteries or novels that braid present and past chapters. For book clubs, pair a new title with a short nonfiction article or museum visit to deepen discussion.

For booksellers and librarians: connect readers to backlist quickly. Build small displays that link a current hit to three older gems by theme or setting. Use staff picks to surface diverse voices and lesser-known eras. Track local interest in specific time periods and rotate accordingly.

For publishers and marketers: when an adaptation lands, make the path from screen to shelf easy. Reissue reading group guides, coordinate social content with creators who specialize in historical recs, and keep the backlist in print. Where possible, highlight the author's research journeys, because behind the scenes process has become reliable content for discovery platforms.