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1610: A Sundial in a Grave

Mary Gentle · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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A Dead Man in Deptford

Anthony Burgess · 272 pages

The whole of Elizabethan England--from the court and its intrigue to the theatre and its genius to London and its slums--is brilliantly recreated in this joyous celebration of the life of Christopher Marlowe, killed in highly suspicious circumstances in a tavern brawl in Deptford hundreds of years ago.

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadDense Prose
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The Abominable

Dan Simmons · 663 pages

"A thrilling tale of high-altitude death and survival set on the snowy summits of Mount Everest, from the bestselling author of The Terror. It's 1924 and the race to summit the world's highest mountain has been brought to a terrified pause by the shocking disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine high on the shoulder of Mt. Everest. By the following year, three climbers -- a British poet an

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Caprice and Rondo

Dorothy Dunnett · 576 pages

"Winter, 1474: In the frozen port of Danzig, Nicholas de Fleury, one-time soldier, merchant, and banker to kings, leads his raffish companions on frivolous, drunken adventures that give little indication of the dark and complex events that have brought him among them - his activities as a spy; his shifts of allegiance from the Duke of Burgundy to the Holy Roman Emperor, and back; the mischief-maki

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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The Scottish Prisoner

Diana Gabaldon · 560 pages

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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The Untouchable

John Banville · 410 pages

(From the Hardcover edition) Twenty years after his "retirement," ex-spy Victor Maskell attempts to come to terms with what has happened to his life by embarking on his memoirs. This is the plot which fuels Banville's stunning new novel--a story that goes beyond the mere facts of espionage to penetrate the intricate heart of the spy.

EspionageHistorical FictionDense ProseMale Lead
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Quicksilver

Neal Stephenson · 927 pages

Quicksilver is a massive, exuberant and wildly ambitious historical novel that's also Neal Stephenson's eagerly awaited prequel to Cryptonomicon--his pyrotechnic reworking of the 20th century, from World War II codebreaking and disinformation to the latest issues of Internet data privacy. Quicksilver, "Volume One of the Baroque Cycle", backtracks to another time of high intellectual ferment: the

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadDense Prose
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Shōgun

James Clavell · 979 pages

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and free

EspionageHistorical FictionDense ProseMale Lead
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Blood and Honor

W.E.B. Griffin · 553 pages

As did his three immensely popular series Brotherhood of War, The Corps and Badge of Honor, W.E.B. Griffin's novel of World War II espionage Honor Bound became an immediate bestseller: "A superior war story" (Library Journal) "whose twists and turns keep readers guessing until the last page" (Publishers Weekly). Now the characters of Honor Bound are back, in an adventure as exciting as anything Gr

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Checkmate

Dorothy Dunnett, Vintage Books · 586 pages

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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The Fortune of War

Patrick O'Brian · 348 pages

Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, arrives in the Dutch East Indies to find himself appointed to the command of the fastest and best-armed frigate in the Navy. He and his friend Stephen Maturin take passage for England in a despatch vessel. But the war of 1812 breaks out while they are en route. Bloody actions precipitate them both into new and unexpected scenes where Stephen's past activities as a secret a

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadDense Prose
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Think of England

K.J. Charles · 202 pages

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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The Winds of War

Herman Wouk · 960 pages

Follows the various members of the Henry family as they become involved in the events preceeding America's involvement in World War II. Like no other masterpiece of historical fiction, Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II is the great novel of America's Greatest Generation. Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events, as well as all the drama, romance, heroism, an

EspionageHistorical FictionSprawling EpicDense Prose
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Kim

Rudyard Kipling · 345 pages

Kim is Rudyard Kipling's story of an orphan born in colonial India and torn between love for his native India and the demands of Imperial loyalty to his Irish-English heritage and to the British Secret Service. Long recognized as Kipling's finest work, Kim was a key factor in his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Assegai

Wilbur Smith · 492 pages

By 1913, Leon Courtney has become a big game hunter in British East Africa. One of his clients is a German industrialist and military weapons manufacturer. From Von Meerbach's mistress, Leon learns about a conspiracy that would unite part of the Kaiser's army with the survivors of the Boer War against British forces in Africa.

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Libra

Don DeLillo · 456 pages

In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will g

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadDense Prose
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Ink and Steel

Elizabeth Bear

Kit Marley, playwright and spy in the service of Queen Elizabeth, has been murdered. His true gift to Her Majesty was his way with words, crafting plays infused with a subtle magic that maintained her rule. He performed this task on behalf of the Prometheus Club, a secret society of nobles engaged in battle against sorcerers determined to destroy England. Assuming Marley’s role is William Shakespe

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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The Devil in Amber

Mark Gatiss · 256 pages

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadLGBTQ+ Protagonist
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Brethren

Robyn Young · 497 pages

An international bestseller certain to appeal to fans of The Last Templar?the thrilling first book in a sweeping medieval trilogyOn the eve of the last Crusade, two men?s destinies will come together as two great civilizations go to war. Amidst conspiracy and intrigue in Europe, Will Campbell, a young knight, risks his life to recover the stolen Book of the Grail. Hidden within its pages are the h

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Q

Luther Blissett, Wu Ming · 653 pages

In 1517, Martin Luther nails his ninety-five theses demanding reform of the Catholic Church to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral, setting off a period of upheaval, war, civil war and violence we now know as the Reformation. In this age devastated by wars of religion, a young theology student adopts the cause of the heretics and the disinherited. Across the chessboard of Europe, from the German p

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas · 555 pages

Three great swordsmen, Porthos, Aramis, and Anthos, with their protege, D'Artagnan, match wits with the sinister Cardinal Richelieu who seeks to divide the royalty in his own quest for power.

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally · 429 pages

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mer

Historical FictionEspionageMale LeadDense Prose
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In Search of Klingsor

Jorge Volpi · 416 pages

EspionageHistorical FictionDense ProseMale Lead
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Harlot's Ghost

Norman Mailer · 1,310 pages

"The most daring, ambitious and by far the best written of the several very long, daring and ambitious books Norman Mailer has so far produced....Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book....There can no longer be any doubt that he possesses the largest mind and imagination at work in American literature tod

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadSprawling Epic
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M. Butterfly

David Henry Hwang · 100 pages

During the Cultural Revolution in China in the mid-1960s, a French diplomat falls in love with a singer in the Beijing Opera, not knowing that the object of his affection is a man. Interwoven with allusions to the Puccini opera "Madama Butterfly", a story of love and betrayal unfolds.--Adapted from imdb.com.

EspionageHistorical FictionMale LeadLGBTQ+ Protagonist

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