@Lew, I got hooked on the genre reading Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and The Source and Leon Uris' Exodus in my college years. Went on to read almost all of Michener's historical fiction and Wouk's. I fell in love with the epic historical, but in recent years, I've also come to appreciate other approaches, including Julia Alvarez' In the Name of Salome (with its unique double narrative, one going forward in time, one going backward). My current effort to break into the commercially published world in the crime genre should not be read as abandoning my first love.
Grovel, grovel, @jannert. Sorry for the omission! Some of the writers that I found really good were Maureen McCollough, The First Man in Rome series, Lindsey Davis with her Didius Falco and Flavia Alba Roman whodunits, Steve Saylor, and Jack Whyte, who covers everything from the fall of Rome in Britain to Robert the Bruce. All have a real talent for bringing the reader into the era, letting them see, feel and smell what life was like in that era, especially the little people, whose story was not captured in the literature of the era. Also Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth.
On topic, I want to slip a link in. I read ' The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet'– enjoyed it immensely. I imagined the author could lie for England, or he'd done a ton of research. Turns out he had (the latter), he'd gone the extra mile in his quest to portray the past. Interesting and informative read here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/7685510/David-Mitchell-on-Historical-Fiction.html
Just finished reading The Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris. Excellent, although very complex. (Recommended to me by our old mod, Lemex!) But Harris's writing makes the complexity easy to follow. He's mastered the writer's trick of always reminding the reader where minor characters were last mentioned.
With you on that @jannert . Recently read Enigma by the very man, enjoyed it a lot and agree he's got a knack for making the complex comprehensible. It educated me on matters Bletchley Park that would have otherwise been blurry/even whoosh over my head.
