Girl with a Pearl Earring

The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas

D'Artagnan arrives in Paris with nothing but a horse and outsized ambition, and within weeks is fighting duels alongside the most famous swordsmen in France.

The Little Stranger Sarah Waters

A country doctor becomes obsessed with a crumbling post-war English manor house and its declining family -- and something in the house begins responding to his obsession.

The Last Kingdom Bernard Cornwell

A Saxon boy captured by Vikings grows up to fight for both sides, uncertain which he is -- and finds himself at the center of Alfred the Great's struggle to hold England together.

Rules of Civility Amor Towles

A secretary from Queens with impeccable taste navigates 1938 Manhattan society, where everyone is rewriting their own origins and some do it better than others.

The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro

An elderly couple in post-Arthurian Britain set out on a journey through a landscape where everyone has forgotten something enormous -- and love may depend on keeping it forgotten.