Historical Fiction · December 2026
6 New Historical Fiction Books Coming in December 2026
Perfume formulas, a painting and objects taken from prisoners carry histories that the people holding them do not yet understand.
A notebook may contain the perfumes that can save a family business. A painting has a confession hidden on the back. In two of these novels, someone trying to put a life together in the present finds a much older problem waiting to be understood.
The other stories move through Grasse across centuries, a woman’s search for stability through the Depression and war, families scattered from Vietnam, and the work of returning possessions taken during the Holocaust. These are six different fictional accounts, with scheduled US releases on December 1 and 8.
At a glance
The six historical fiction dates
The Perfumer’s Secret, The Heart Note, The Lost Painting and Wild Aster are scheduled for December 1. The Three Daughters of Annam and The Bureau of Unknown Fates follow on December 8. All dates are for the US.
01 · Wartime secrets and a family perfumery
The Perfumer's Secret
By Fiona Schneider
· US · Harper Perennial
In 1996, Stella Penhallam is trying to save her family’s London perfumery. A notebook belonging to her estranged great-aunt Iris seems to offer a way forward, but crucial pages are missing. Looking for the formulas takes Stella to Paris and into the history Iris has been reluctant to explain.
The earlier story follows Iris during the Second World War, when her work with perfume takes her through France and Italy as people she cares about face fascist persecution. Stella hopes the old formulas will save the perfumery. Understanding how Iris created them means confronting wartime choices and accusations about her aunt that have kept the family apart.
A standalone dual-timeline novel. The Paris Affair is a separate Schneider book.
02 · Three timelines in the history of perfume
The Heart Note
By Vanessa McCausland
· US · Crown
Eva has lost her sense of smell after illness, and her mother Lily is living with dementia. In 2022, a fragment of Lily’s memory sends Eva back toward Grasse, the French perfume town they visited together in 2001. Something happened on that earlier trip that Lily has never properly explained.
A third thread reaches back to 1532 and Heli, a glove maker’s daughter who wants to learn her mother’s work with flowers and scents. The novel connects these women through perfume and memory, setting the strained mother-daughter holiday beside a much older story of craft and invention.
An independent novel with its own three timelines; no earlier McCausland book is needed.
03 · An art mystery across two eras
The Lost Painting
By Sara Blaydes
· US · Lake Union Publishing
Grieving widow Maya Bishop moves to an inherited cottage in the Pacific Northwest. A painting hidden in a linen chest has a bloodstained frame and a confession on the back. Finding it pulls her into a murder that happened long before she arrived.
In 1943, Ava Holland takes a domestic job at a wealthy railroad family’s North Carolina estate. She is really investigating the death of her sister Isabelle, an art curator who was engaged to the family’s heir. Maya’s discovery and Ava’s search connect through a work of art that someone wanted kept out of sight.
A standalone story, separate from The Restoration Garden and The Last Secret of Lily Adams.
04 · An American life across the mid-twentieth century
Wild Aster
By Anna Hogeland
· US · Bloomsbury Publishing
Mae Smith grows up moving from place to place because her biological mother, Ida, took her from her adoptive parents. Home has never meant staying still. After Ida dies, Mae wants to build a life with a kind of security she has never had.
The story follows the next half century, including the Depression and the Second World War, as marriage and motherhood complicate Mae’s effort to live differently. Its historical span comes through one woman’s changing circumstances: the homes she tries to make, the obligations she accepts and the consequences she cannot plan away.
A standalone novel about Mae’s life, with no earlier book required.
05 · Vietnamese families across generations
The Three Daughters of Annam
By Phong Nguyen
· US · Grand Central Publishing
Nhung, Mai and Anh are close friends in Nam Dinh, northern Vietnam, in 1935. They come from very different circumstances, but their ambitions link them as they grow up under French colonial rule. Even naming their country becomes a charged act.
Their lives and families eventually spread from Vietnam to Paris and the United States. The novel spans nearly ninety years, following what happens to the women’s bonds as their descendants inherit different versions of home and belonging. Nguyen draws on his own family’s history for this fictional story about the three friends and the families that follow them.
A separate novel from Bronze Drum. This is a twentieth-century family story, not a continuation of that book’s ancient Vietnamese setting.
06 · The aftermath of the Holocaust
The Bureau of Unknown Fates
By Gaëlle Nohant
· US · St. Martin's Press
Irène moves from France to her husband’s hometown of Bad Arolsen in Germany, where people have little to say about what they did during the war. A job at the International Tracing Service gives her a different way to confront that silence: working out what happened to people killed or displaced by the Nazis.
Later, she is asked to return objects recovered from the camps to their owners’ descendants. A doll, a medallion or a handkerchief can be the starting point for finding a person’s name and history. Her searches take her across Europe, with the everyday objects offering a way into lives that official totals cannot describe.
An independent novel in English translation. The tracing service is real; Irène and the story built around her work belong to the fiction.
How the past enters these stories
The Perfumer’s Secret and The Lost Painting build investigations around discoveries in later lives. The Heart Note uses three periods, while Wild Aster follows one woman across decades. The Three Daughters of Annam widens into several family lines. The Bureau of Unknown Fates centers on the painstaking work of attaching names and families to objects left behind.