Eight historical epics to get gloriously lost in

Sometimes you don't want a book — you want a world to disappear into for a week. These eight historical epics are the ones to clear your calendar for.

Start with the cathedral. Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth makes twelfth-century stonework as gripping as war across a thousand pages. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall goes inside the mind of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII's court, and won the Booker for its intimacy. Kathryn Stockett's The Help brings the civil-rights-era South alive through three unforgettable voices.

For sagas that span generations, Min Jin Lee's Pachinko follows a Korean family across the twentieth century in Japan, and Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing traces eight generations from a single split in Ghana. Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See braids a blind French girl and a German boy through occupied France with luminous care.

And two more intimate epics: Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet reimagines the grief behind Shakespeare's greatest play, and Diana Gabaldon's Outlander sends a modern nurse tumbling into the Scottish Highlands of 1743. Each one earns its length. Pack accordingly.