'Real' historical fiction for 16yo

I love a Barbara Erskine book - always spend ages googling all the historical events and go down many rabbit holes! The last one I read was The Story Spinner and I spent ages researching and reading about St Elen!

Also - last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant (19th century American history - fiction loosely based on a real community)

Passion by Jude Morgan (fiction based on the lives of Byron, Shelley and Keats)
Taste of Sorrow by Jude Morgan (lives of the Brontes)
The Household (about the home for 'fallen women' opened by Charles Dickens)
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (Dinah and other biblical figures)
Daphne by Justine Picardie (life of Daphne du Maurer interwoven with a story about a fictional biographer)
Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (Greek mythology)
Silence of the Girls (Pat Barker - more Greek mythology)
The Players by Minette Walters (includes real historical figures and events of the reign of James II but has quite a nice lightweight story)

Slightly different:
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (a novel set during the Nazi invasion of Paris written during it by a woman living through it - fictional characters but obviously very accurate telling from life)
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd - the life story of a fictional 'wife of Jesus'.
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee - not about famous historical people, but semi-fictionalised autobiograph

I love "Katherine" by Anya Seyton and read it first when I was 15 or 16. Katherine was the sister-in-law of Geoffrey Chaucer who is in it as a supporting character, lived through various wars and plagues and peasant revolts and was mistress to the Duke of Lancaster, who she much later (when her bastard children by him were adults) actually married him and the pope declared the bastards to be legitimised - one of whom became the great grandmother of Edward IV and Richard III and another became the great grandfather of Henry VII. It's a fascinating run through history through a somewhat rose-tinted and romancy lens

Mary Renault, Robert Harris, Hilary Mantel.

There are interesting female characters in the above, but the protagonists in the ones I have read are male.

She might enjoy Sarah Dunant's 'The Birth of Venus' for something with a female lead - it fictional story and protagonist but within a historical setting and featuring historical characters too. Tracy Chevalier's 'The Glassmaker' evokes various periods but the main character and story is again fictional.

Another one with a male lead, but I really enjoyed 'The Agony and the Ecstasy' a few years ago. I think I read it in one sitting!

The last Kingdom books by Bernard Cornwell are good fun.

Another vote for The Sunne in Splendour.

Venetia Stanley is a great female character in Precipice, which has the benefit of containing the actual letters from HH Asquith to Venetia (though hers to him are invented by Robert Harris)

The St Mary’s books are great. Fictional as it’s about time travel but lots of historical detail and research has gone into them.

agree re the Dominic Sandbrook books and Anya Seaton’a Katherine. Medieval Woman by Ann Baer is good as well.

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig. Set in WW2, but mostly in Siberia. Made a huge impression on me as a young teen.

Oh my gosh - I’d completely forgotten about half of a yellow sun! I loved it - I’m going to re-read! Thank you x

I second Dorothy L Sayers!

Also I don’t know if they count as historical fiction but some of the 19th century classics certainly depict the era well - North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell with a female protagonist and focus on 19th century industrial relations (honestly the problems are still the same!!), also The Tenant of Wildfel Hall and Tess of the d’Urbervilles are wonderful tales of women’s situations at that time.

Not fiction but Housewife, 49 and the other Nella Last diaries are also an easy read and historically fascinating on the lives of women during and after the war years.

Mary Renault. Great books. The Bull From the Sea. Superb modern classics set in Ancient Greece. Reprinted by Virago.

Very light and easy to read (and probably only tenuously historical!) - Fiona Valpy books.

Robert Massie's book on the last Tsar of Russia is an enjoyable read.

Brotherless Night is fiction set in Sri Lanka in the 1980s - the main character is a woman.

Half of a Yellow Sun is fiction set in Nigeria in the 1960s and one of the main characters is a woman.

This ☝️ x 100!

Hamnet and others by the same author

sarah dunant “in the name of the family” is great

Also, a classic Forever Amber

Cynthia Harrod Eagles is excellent
Edward Rutherford - start with Sarum or The Forest
Ken Follett

Jean M Auel's books are set during prehistoric times.

Barbara Erskine has written some great books, spread over different periods. She includes some supernatural type elements sometimes but the historical facts are always correct. I think (iirc) that she has some sets as well as stand alones. They're marketed as adult fiction but I'd think they're suitable for a teenager with an interest in history 😊

The Kate Quinn WWII books or Mistress of Rome might work. As a teenager, I enjoyed Jean Plaidy. Maybe also Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks, or something by Isabel Allende.