use European history or historical legends as a background for asking timeless questions about life, love, and the reality of magic," including:Outlander by Diana GabaldonRead about another entry on the list.
Come for the time travel, stay for the kilts. Gabaldon’s book is famously hard to categorize—is it fantasy? Sci-fi? Historical romance with a slightly magical twist? In the end, it doesn’t matter what it is, because what it isn’t is boring. Ever. Taking a plucky World War II nurse and throwing her back in time to Scotland during the Jacobite rebellion lets the reader discover this time and history right along with the intrepid heroine. (And if it, ahem, has rather more sexytimes than most history texts, well! As I said, the past isn’t dull in Gabaldon’s hands.) I’m guessing that, like me, most readers start out not knowing much about this period in Scottish history, and come away feeling like they lived it.
--Marshal Zeringue
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