If you don't see the appeal of the burgeoning "romantasy" genre, your neighbor, roommate or co-workers likely do.

The latter is tricky to pull off—so much so that we had to make a list of the best of the best historical fiction books, ranging in time periods from ancient Greece to 1960s Saigon.

Instead, it breathes life into historical characters we might already be familiar with, or gives a voice to forgotten figures ...