I love the historical novel, but my favorites are:
Mary Renault "The Persian Boy"
Collen McCullough "The first man in Rome"
Mika Waltari "Sinuhe"
Santiago Posteguillo "Scipio Arfricanus trilogy"
Steven Pressfield "Gates of fire"
Arturo P�rez-Reverte "El capit�n Alatriste"
Gore Vidal "Julian"
Gisbert Haefs "Troy"
Stephen J. Rivelle "The crusader
and of course Robert Graves: "I Claudio", "Count Belisarius"...
The Renault, Waltari, McCullough and Gore Vidal books I've read and enjoyed. The rest will go on my "to read" list. Thanks.
Some more:
Imperium, by Robert Harris, about Cicero
Tiberius-by Allen Massie (it's a good antidote to Robert Graves' depiction)
A book that I think anyone interested in genetic genealogy would enjoy is The Source by James Michener. Although it's pretty old and the parallel "modern" story in it is pretty dated, the portions set in the ancient past hold up very well. It's still assigned in some American high schools for summer reading.
"Wiki"
"Archaeologists digging at the
tell at Makor uncover artifacts from each layer, which then serve as the basis for a chapter exploring the lives of the people involved with that artifact. The book follows the story of the Family of Ur from a
Stone Age family whose wife begins to believe that there is a supernatural force, which slowly leads us to the beginnings of
monotheism. The descendants are not aware of the ancient antecedents revealed to the reader by the all-knowing writer as the story progresses through the
Davidic kingdom,
Hellenistic times,
Roman times, etc. The site is continually inhabited until the end of the
Crusades when it is destroyed by the victorious
Mameluks (as happened to many actual cities after 1291) and is not rebuilt by the
Ottomans.