Best of Historical Fiction with Elizabeth Barnhill | Ep. 236

Sarah Dickinson (0:09)

Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling.

Welcome to the latest installment of our Best of series. We bring on guests who are great evangelizers for a particular genre that Catherine, Chrissy, and I may not read as much of. Our experts are expert readers of a particular genre, not industry experts necessarily.

They share their all-time top 10 best of list for that particular genre and a couple of well-known books in that genre that they did not like.

Y'all know I don't read a ton of, let's say, traditional historical fiction. I do read a little bit more of the untraditional kind, but it's not one of my overall top genres. So historical fiction is a genre I knew we needed to cover in our best of series. And I have one of y'all's favorite repeat guests joining me as our expert reader of historical fiction. Elizabeth Barnhill is here, the buyer at Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas. She can be found on Instagram at Waco Reads. And she is also one of my best recommendation sources year after year. And many of you know her as well from her role co-hosting Currently Reading's bonus series, All Things Murderful with Meredith Mondae Schwartz. But in addition to Murderful books, Elizabeth does read other things, including historical fiction. Welcome back, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Barnhill (1:36)

Oh, Sarah, I'm so glad to talk to you. I've had so much fun doing a deep dive into all these historical fiction books that have brought me so much joy over the years and ones that I recommend all the time. So thank you for having me back.

Sarah Dickinson (1:50)

I always love talking to you. Everybody loves hearing from you. And your list of top 10, I've only read two of them. And I had not heard of a lot of them. So this is going to be a good bust up your TBR episode.

Elizabeth Barnhill (2:04)

Oh, I'm so glad. This was so much fun to look through. And I've tried to, of course, when you say top 10, I'm like, Sarah.

Sarah Dickinson (2:12)

I know, I know.

Elizabeth Barnhill (2:14)

I need like a top 10 for every decade of historical fiction. And then I think I could cover it. But I'm going to try to throw in a few extras here and there.

Sarah Dickinson (2:23)

And we know you can do that. You do that very well. And if there's anything that we just run out of time for in the big show, we always have the bonus superlatives episode for paying members and you can stick things in there too.

Elizabeth Barnhill (2:35)

Excellent.

Sarah Dickinson (2:37)

And y'all know we always include links for all the books we talk about in the episode in our show notes. Today, all of those links are going to be going to Fabled Bookshop. So if you choose to purchase any of the books we talk about, please use our Fabled links to do that. If your budget allows.

And as a bonus, we have a promo code for you, just like we did for Elizabeth's Narrative Nonfiction Episode, she did with me. If you use the code Sarah, and that's Sarah with an H, at checkout on Fabled's website, you will get 10% off of your order. And y'all ordered tons of books from the Narrative Nonfiction Episode.

Elizabeth Barnhill (3:13)

That was such a blessing. Everyone in the staff was like, why are all these narrative nonfiction flying off the shelves? And I'm like, well, because of Sarah's Bookshelves Live. And I love your patrons. And of course, I'm a patron myself because I love the content so much. So thank you so much to everyone who helped support Fabled and support your show.

Sarah Dickinson (3:35)

Yes, and when Elizabeth first told me that she was gonna give us a code, I was like, oh my God, well, I hope some people buy things from it. I got so nervous.

Elizabeth Barnhill (3:44)

I know, and people are still emailing me from that episode. That was so much fun. I love talking narrative nonfiction and just in general, always love talking about books with you.

Sarah Dickinson (3:54)

That was a great episode. And just as a random note, the book I am currently reading as we speak is from that episode.

Elizabeth Barnhill (4:04)

I love it. Which one is that?

Sarah Dickinson (4:06)

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, the book about James Garfield.

Elizabeth Barnhill (4:10)

That's an absolute banger of a book, which you would never think a dead president book from the 1800s would be, but somehow Candice made it happen.