Seven books that explain Salem in 1692 and the centuries of witch belief behind it: narrative histories, the classic social study, the frontier-war argument, a pre-Salem case from Springfield, a global history of the witch, and Arthur Miller’s play.
Start with Outlander and read the nine main novels in publication order. Here is where the Lord John books and novellas fit, plus the latest on Book 10 and the Starz series.
For readers who love Bernard Cornwell: where to start with Conn Iggulden’s Emperor (Julius Caesar), Khan Dynasty (Genghis Khan), and Wars of the Roses series.
Military history collections worth owning beyond the WWII-specific box sets already covered elsewhere on this site — ancient Chinese strategy classics in one boxed set, a five-volume military history encyclopedia, a special-forces operational library, and how to think about Osprey Publishing’s long-running illustrated series.
Four verified 2025-2026 books working the genuinely booming border between true crime and serious history — a 16th-century countess accused of mass murder, a wrongful-death case that shaped how a city remembers police violence, forensic science identifying decades-old victims, and a 1930s Paris execution overshadowed by a much larger horror.
Four recent graphic-format history books solving a genuinely current problem — readers, kids and adults alike, who will not pick up dense narrative nonfiction but will read a comic — covering trans history, a chess-match Cold War thriller, and two more accessible entry points into real events.
Four recent history releases worth choosing in audio specifically — including one scholar narrating her own book, a true-crime history with a dedicated professional narrator, and two narrative-nonfiction titles built for the format — plus how to tell when audio genuinely suits a given book.
Four biographies and memoirs currently doing real business at retail — a fresh reframing of Lincoln as political operative, a Marlowe biography that reads like a thriller, a landmark James Baldwin biography, and an enduring Holocaust survivor memoir — and what actually separates a strong recent biography from a competent one.
Three verified 2026 historical novels — an Irish pirate queen who met Elizabeth I, a multi-generational family epic rooted in the aftermath of the Great Famine, and two women who took on a mob boss in 1930s New York — and how each turns documented history into a genuinely readable story.
Four genuinely new 2025-2026 books reclaiming history that mainstream publishing skipped for generations — women writers erased from the record, a Black Seminole resistance leader, Indigenous women whose deaths went uninvestigated, and the enslaved people who fled north-to-south seeking freedom in Latin America.
