I love historical novels. I think they have much more in common with fantasy and science fiction than is sometimes allowed by people who like to firmly categorise books and keep them on their allotted shelves. The thing they have in common, of course, is that they take you to a place that is not now, and is not somewhere you can ever directly experience. And a great deal of it is made up, just like in fantasy, though you do get more credibility from basing something on a primary text in Latin (read in the original of course) than you do from nicking it out of some other fantasy book you read when you were twelve. Not that I do that. Though I am planning on writing a book about a short hairy-footed chap who goes on a quest with some slightly taller but more heavyset fellows.

The best fantasy novels read as if they are based on real history. Just a history that has never happened for a world that doesn't exist.
Enough musing on the similarities between good fantasy novels and good historical novels. No, wait, the thing they have in common is that you want to believe they are true . . . except this is the case for all successful novels. They should feel true as you read them, no matter whether the setting is fantastical, realistic, historical, futuristic or whatever.

That was a ten minute digression. I wanted to simply mention some favourite historical novels, because I have been re-reading them (there's that rereading thing again). This is just those books that have passed my bedside table again recently, there are many, many more great historical novels I could recommend. Including ones that weren't historical when they were written but are now.

Knight's fee or any Rosemary Sutcliff
The Long Ships Viking classic
The White Company This guy wrote some detective fiction too, or so I'm told :-)
Tank Commander or any Ronald Welch
Knight with Armour
The Unknown Ajax hard to pick a favourite Heyer Regency novel, this is in top 5
Dissolution and the sequels
A Morbid Taste for Bones start here and go on
The Long Pilgrimage