Five historical fiction titles about little known history

Rachel Brittain is a writer, Day Dreamer, and Amateur Aerialist. Her short fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Andromeda Spaceways, and others. She is a contributing editor for Book Riot, where she screams into the void about her love of books. Brittain lives in Northwest Arkansas with a rambunctious rescue pup, a snake, and a houseful of plants (most of which aren’t carnivorous).

At Book Riot she tagged five "historical fiction books about little-known history [that] bring the more obscure sides of history to light." One entry on the list:

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

More lives were lost in the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff than the Titanic and Lusitania combined, but many people have never even heard of it. I hadn’t before reading this heartbreaking historical fiction novel by Ruta Sepetys. The ship, overcrowded with more than 10,000 wartime personnel and refugees on a craft only meant for 1,800, was hit by a Russian torpedo in the Baltic Sea. To tell its tragic story, Sepetys imagines the people who might’ve found their way to the Wilhelm Gustloff: a young Lithuanian nurse, a Prussian soldier ferreting away Nazi treasures, and a heavily pregnant Polish girl, all fleeing for their lives.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue