For pure escapism, there’s nothing quite like historical fiction. These vividly imagined novels transport you back to another time and place, from a sweeping love story against the backdrop of the American Civil War to a thrilling murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence.

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

American literature’s “best-known, least-seen writer” is back with his first book in over a decade, said Randy Boyagoda in the Financial Times . Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1932, the action follows Hicks McTaggart, a private eye living “pay cheque to pay cheque” as he tries to track down a missing cheese heiress. Written in the “swaggering, zingy lingo of hard-boiled detective fiction and vintage caper movies”, it’s a “charming” (and at times hard to follow) novel that immerses yo

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