Historical Fiction for Celebrating Pride Month

In the heat of the summer of 1518, a plague strikes the women of the city: a plague of dancing. As more and more women join the frenzy and the city declares a state of emergency, a pregnant woman tends to the bees that are her livelihood just beyond city limits. When her sister-in-law returns from a six-year penance, Lisbet’s life is turned upside down. And soon, Lisbet along with her best friend Ida and the sister-in-law she just met, are dancing to a tune perhaps even more dangerous than the one consuming so many others in the streets.

In post-Communist Albania, friends Bujar and Agim struggle with the state of their worlds, both personal and political. They flee to Italy, but while Bujar finds new opportunity to live life authentically, Agim is lost somewhere along the way. And Bujar is haunted by the loss of the one person who meant the most all these years.

A young dairy maid in 1740s Essex follows the lure of the sea despite warnings of its danger in this lush historical novel. Moving to a naval port to work as a lady’s maid for wealthy sea captain’s daughter, she finds her new mistress to be haughty, headstrong, and unexpectedly fascinating. Intertwined with her story, is the story of Luke, pressganged at fifteen into the Royal Navy and forced to learn fast how to survive in this harsh new environment. And when their stories meet, it changes all of their lives irrevocably.

Ijeoma comes of age along with her nation, born in the years before Nigeria’s independence and only 11 when civil war breaks out in the new republic. Sent away to safety, she falls in love with another child. But they are from different tribes. And they’re both girls. Okparanta draws inspiration from war and folklore to paint a beautiful and heart wrenching novel about the challenges of living and loving openly.

Two women in early twentieth-century Vienna find solace in the city’s Jewish quarter, where they are more free to be themselves. They fall in love with each other and their newfound independence, but Julia’s longing for a baby threatens to derail the lives of all those closest to her. Through an exploration of queer characters against the backdrop of a changing city, Hitchman explores how people live through oppression and fight for those they love.

Okay, this one you can’t read quite yet, but you should definitely be pre-ordering it / requesting it at your library / adding it to your TBR. A mixed-race heiress flees Haiti in the wake of the Haitian Revolution, only to find herself in Paris on the verge of another revolution. Soon, she finds herself enamored with the budding movement and the revolutionaries themselves, particularly Robespierre and his mistress, Cornélie Duplay. But her heart is torn between the man whose ideals she loves and the woman who has become her safe harbor.