May New Releases: Historical Fiction

Release date: May 5, 2026

This new book from the author of The Help follows a group of women in 1930s Oxford, Mississippi, who decide to take back what’s rightfully theirs in a time when women’s rights and freedoms are perilously precarious. Birdie, an outspoken single woman, comes to Oxford to convince her socialite sister to help out her struggling family, but her sister’s life turns out to be a thin veneer. Then, she meets a down-on-her-luck woman and an orphan named Meg, and the three concoct an outrageous scheme to defy the conventions of the time and claim their own place in this world.

Release date: May 5, 2026

The authors of My Dear Hamilton and America’s First Daughter give us their take on Abigail Adams, a woman who was the wife of one president and who gave birth to another. From the war-torn streets of revolutionary Boston to the heart of the presidential administration, Abigail Adams proved herself to be a steadfast, independent woman equally capable of managing her family’s farm and advising her husband on matters of state. Repeatedly, she bids her husband to “remember the ladies,” as she watches a young nation grow into its own.

Release date: May 5, 2026

Three women at the forefront of their respective countries, Abigail Adams, Queen Charlotte, and Marie-Antoinette, form an unexpected bond as the public and private landscapes they inhabit change in ways both irrevocable and unescapable. When Abigail rejoins her husband in Europe after the end of the Revolutionary War, she knows befriending the queens of the continent could make or break her young country. The glittering courts of England and Versailles are foreign to the life she’s known, but she’s determined to find common ground with Charlotte and Marie-Antoinette. The queens have long found solace in their correspondence, but as Charlotte battles the private struggles of her family, Marie-Antoinette hopes her friends may offer one last chance for escape from the doom she knows is headed her way.

Release date: May 5, 2026

Pitched as an “anti-western,” Treat Them as Buffalo follows a young man from a Métis community who loves to play buffalo hunter even though the days of seeing buffalo grazing along the plain have long since passed. But when Niko’s cousin goes missing, the first in a long string of Indigenous boys to do so, the tribe and a woman-led coalition of freedom fighters will have to go up against the Mounted Police, who refuse to investigate and root out this evil for themselves.

Past Tense

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Release date: May 5, 2026

Ellie Chang is a twenty-eight-year-old Chinese American journalist on a military flight to cover a battle in North Korea when her plane is shot down. Now, trapped behind enemy lines and surrounded by armed soldiers, she’s sure she’ll be killed or imprisoned. Instead, a woman rushes forward and claims Ellie is the lost daughter she’s been searching for, despite the fact that she doesn’t speak a word of Korean. She’s saved for the moment, but she knows that won’t be the case for long. Finally, she convinces her rescuers that their best hope for the future—and for finding their real daughter—lies beyond a dangerous journey to the south, where the possibility of freedom and safety awaits.

Release date: May 12, 2026

The author of The Unexpected Diva and more than 30 other novels is back with a story of Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois and the Harlem Renaissance’s most famous Black debutante. Her wedding to the famous poet Countee Cullen was the event of the season. But despite the more than 3,000 attendees, Cullen was not the man Yolande truly wanted to marry. Her heart belonged to a jazz musician in Colorado. As soon as the wedding bells end and the newlyweds head home, Yolande is forced to reckon with whether she’ll continue down the path her beloved father has set for her or make a choice for herself, even if it means going against Dr. Du Bois himself.

Release date: May 12, 2026

Switching between two timelines set in 1950s Ireland and the present day, The Forgotten Midwife tells the story of two young women, one who sets off on a journey of self-discovery after discovering a tattered Irish birth certificate following her wedding, the other a free-spirited Irish woman forced to take the veil after her older sister unexpectedly passes away. Sent by the Sisters of Mercy to a home for expecting unmarried mothers, Margaret does her best to care for these women despite her lack of training or skills. But when the sister of her childhood best friend arrives, she will go to any lengths to protect the terrified girl from the cruelty and abuse she’s come to know as the hallmark of the Home for Fallen Girls.

Release date: May 15, 2026

In 1960s Casablanca, Morocco, a teenager sent to live with her uncle in the city after the death of her father finds comfort and friendship with a singer who shares her love of Moroccan folk music and an activist whose hopes for the country are contagious. When protest and violence erupt in the streets, everyone and everything is suddenly thrown into question under the country’s ever-increasing surveillance.

Release date: May 26, 2026

Lottie Turner is a schemer. By 1974, she’s already infamous for her scams, but Lottie’s always looking to make cash in creative new ways. Finding babies for desperate families looking to adopt without asking too many questions might just be her latest way. Twenty years later, Bless is crossing the country with her found family, the people she’d die for, as they smash and grab to make ends meet. But a tangled web of horrors connecting the present to the past soon traps her and Lottie in unsettling and unforgettable ways.

Don’t forget to catch up with this year’s other historical fiction new releases from April and March. You’re also not going to want to miss these new historical fiction books by Black Authors.