20 Essential Christian Historical Authors As Chosen By FamilyFiction Readers
We asked our readers to name their five favorite Christian Historical authors, and these 20 talented writers earned the most votes.
1. Karen Witemeyer
Winner of the HOLT Medallion and the Carol Award and a finalist for the RITA and Christy Award, bestselling author Karen Witemeyer writes Historical Romance to give the world more happily-ever-afters.
2. Julie Klassen
Julie Klassen loves all things Jane and Jane Austen. Three of her books have won the Christy Award for Historical Romance. She has also been a finalist in the RWAs RITA Awards and ACFW’s Carol Awards.
3. Laura Frantz
Laura Frantz is a Christy Award finalist and the ECPA bestselling author of several books, including The Frontiersman’s Daughter, Courting Morrow Little, The Colonel’s Lady, The Mistress of Tall Acre, A Moonbow Night, and The Ballantyne Legacy Series.
4. Tracie Peterson
Tracie Peterson is a best-selling author of more than 100 books. Tracie was awarded the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for 2007 Inspirational Fiction and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from American Christian Fiction Writers.
5. Elizabeth Camden
Elizabeth Camden is a historical author whose fiction has been honored with both the RITA Award and the Christy Award. With a master’s in history and a master’s in library science, she is a research librarian by day and scribbles away on her next novel by night.
6. Lynn Austin (tie)
Lynn Austin has sold more than one and a half million copies of her books. She has won multiple Christy Awards for her historical fiction, and was inducted into the Christy Award Hall of Fame. Her novel Hidden Places was made into a Hallmark Channel movie.
6. Mary Connealy (tie)
Mary Connealy writes romantic comedies with cowboys and is celebrated for her fun, zany, action-packed style. She has more than 1.5 million books in print. She is the author of Wild at Heart, Kincaid Brides, and more.
8. Roseanna M. White
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award-nominated author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. She is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books.
9. Jocelyn Green
Jocelyn Green inspires faith and courage as an award-winning author of historical fiction, including the Christy Award-winning The Mark of the King. Jocelyn graduated from Taylor University with a BA in English.
10. Sarah Sundin
Sarah Sundin’s novels have received starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. Her book, Through Waters Deep, was a Carol Award finalist and Booklist’s “101 Best Romance Novels of the Last 10 Years.”
11. Jody Hedlund
Jody Hedlund is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including Luther and Katharina, winner of the 2016 Christian Book Award. She received a bachelor’s from Taylor University and a master’s from University of Wisconsin, both in social work.
12. Michelle Griep
Michelle Griep seeks to glorify God in all that she writes—except for that graffiti phase she went through as a teenager. She is an Anglophile at heart, she runs away to England every chance she gets.
13. Janette Oke
Janette Oke was one of the first inspirational authors in the Christian Fiction market. Her debut, Love Comes Softly, has sold over one million copies. She is now the bestselling author of over 70 books, 32 of which have been translated into fourteen languages. Her books have sold over 22 million copies.
14. Jen Turano (tie)
Jen Turano is the critically acclaimed author of The Ladies of Distinction Series, and A Class of Their Own Series. Her novel, After a Fashion, was chosen as a top pick from Romantic Times.
14. Jaime Jo Wright (tie)
Jaime Jo Wright is the author of the acclaimed novels The House on Foster Hill and The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond. She’s also the Publishers Weekly and ECPA bestselling author of two novellas.
16. Francine Rivers
Francine Rivers’ Christian novels have been awarded or nominated for numerous honors, including the RITA Award, Christy Award, ECPA Gold Medallion, and Holt Medallion in Honor of Outstanding Literary Talent. In 1997, she was inducted into the Romance Writers of America’s Hall of Fame.
17. Kim Vogel Sawyer
Kim Vogel Sawyer is a highly acclaimed, best-selling author with more than one million books in print, in seven different languages. Her titles have earned numerous accolades including the ACFW Carol Award, the Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award, and the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence.
18. Kimberley Woodhouse
Kimberley Woodhouse is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than thirty books. A lover of history and research, she often gets sucked into the past and then her husband has to lure her out with chocolate and the promise of eighteen holes on the golf course. She loves music, kayaking, and her family.
19. Erica Vetsch
Erica Vetsch’s favorite books are historical novels and history books—and one of her greatest thrills is stumbling across some obscure historical factoid that makes her imagination leap. When she’s not writing, she is company bookkeeper for the family lumber business, mother and wife.
20. Terri Blackstock
Terri Blackstock is a New York Times and USA Today best-seller, with over seven million books sold worldwide. She is the winner of two Carol Awards, a Christian Retailers Choice Award, and a Romantic Times Book Reviews Career Achievement Award, among others. Terri spent the first twelve years of her life traveling in an Air Force family. She lived in nine states. Because she was a perpetual “new kid,” her imagination became her closest friend. That, she believes, was the biggest factor in her becoming a novelist.