The Best New Historical Fiction Books Out in October 2026

I have one word for October’s historical fiction releases: rich. Decadent, even (okay, so two words). There’s a Victorian-era version of Hamlet, a grotesque ball, artists—in love in the 18th-century, and in the underground scene in 1920s Berlin—and a series of punk murders in New York in the ’80s. There’s even new Susanna Clarke, of Piranesi and