My favorite thing about writing up new release lists is that I inevitably wind up discovering new books that I convince myself to read even as I’m explaining why you might want to read them. I don’t know if that’s a bit like a comedian laughing at their own jokes or if I should just take heart in the fact that I’m persuading at least one person to pick up some of these new releases. Hopefully, my success rate is a little higher than that. But then again, if the comedian doesn’t find their own jokes funny and the writer isn’t enjoying their exposition, then what’s the point of any of it in the first place? All this to say, my own TBR struggles as much with all these incredible new releases as yours do.
As for March’s historical fiction new releases? Well, I’ve got four new books queued up to read. There’s a plethora to choose from, too. These new releases span from the Trojan War to postwar Japan and even a few books that take us up to modern day before they’re through. Go on and let the whims of fate and fancy take you to your next favorite historical fiction novel.
What Keeps Us by Jeanine Boulay
Release date: March 1, 2026
The living and the dead reside together at Green-Wood Cemetery. It’s been that way for more than a century. The cemetery stands sentinel, and Rebecca, its archivist, guards its stories. Through a series of interconnected stories, the lives of four women intersect with the cemetery as they face everyday occurrences and impossible choices from post-Civil War New York City to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer
Release date: March 3, 2026
Author of one of my favorite historical fiction books of the last few years, You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue has now set his sights on the history of the borderlands fought over by Mexico and the United States, and all the people caught up in it. It’s a story that reimagines the wild freedom of the Old West and how exactly it was “won.”
All access members continue below for more of this month’s best new historical fiction.
Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
Release date: March 3, 2026
In a small prairie town in 1940s Saskatchewan, a woman who’s spent years outrunning her past finds it catching up to her when a Métis hired hand recognizes her at a local diner. Now, the life she’s so carefully curated here is turned on its head, and she’ll have to choose whether to cling fast to the woman she’s made herself into or risk everything to help the people she came from.
Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi
Release date: March 17, 2026
At the end of his life, a dying man looks back on his lifelong search for home and belonging after being displaced by the 1948 Nakba shortly after he was born in Palestine. His travels have taken him to Kuwait, Italy, and the United States. He falls in love, goes to university, and becomes a father. But always, he is searching for something that was lost and can never quite be recaptured.
The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall
Release date: March 17, 2026
Twins Tessa and Theo are eager to do their part after the outbreak of WWII in Europe. Theo finds himself recruited by the RAF. Tessa joins the Special Operations Executive, learning the art of espionage and sabotage used behind enemy lines. When the fighting is over, only one of them returns home. Years later, a PhD student will help uncover answers about what happened all those years ago, buried deep in the wake of the war.
The Quarter Queen by Kayla Hardy
Release date: March 31, 2026
Inspired by the life of Marie Laveau, The Quarter Queen is a story of 19th-century New Orleans and its Voodoo high priestess. The novel is a powerful blend of historical fiction and fantasy, blending fact and fiction told in alternating perspectives between Marie’s rise in the 1820s and her daughter’s attempts to understand—and save—her comatose mother 25 years later.
Son of Nobody by Yann Martel
Release date: March 31, 2026
In this inventive retelling of the Trojan War from the author of Life of Pi a new epic joins the ranks of the Odyssey and the Illiad: the Psoad, a free verse saga of a goatherd who leaves behind his home to join the fighting in Troy. Psoas, and his story, never make it out alive. But centuries later, when a Canadian academic discovers fragments of the poem, he contends with his own questions about ambition and responsibility in both the ancient and modern world.
The Traitor by Abe Kōbō, translated by Mark Gibeau
Release date: March 31, 2026
A writer and an innkeeper meet in postwar Japan. The innkeeper, a former member of the military police, shares his obsession with a nineteenth-century saga about an admiral serving in the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate who managed to regain a position of power under the Meiji government. The innkeeper, still wracked by his own complicity in the arrest and murder of his brother-in-law during the war, sends the author a manuscript purporting Admiral Enomoto betrayed a samurai. The Traitor, in its first ever English translation, shows off the prowess of one of Japan’s most illustrious 20th century writers.
There’s been a lot of great new historical fiction coming out this year. Check out January and February’s historical fiction new releases to catch up on any books you might’ve missed.
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