A Place of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel)

Hilary Mantel, the late Goddess of historical fiction, is most known for her Wolf Hall series, but A Place of Greater Safety gets my vote for her most brilliant work. It chronicles the lives of Camille Desmoulins, Georges Danton and Maximillien Robespierre from their childhoods through their ascension to power during the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror to their (not-so-spoiler alert) untimely demise(s).

Mantel cuts through the rose-colored hue that typically clouds tales of the French Revolution, and meticulously clocks how a noble cause, when followed uncompromisingly, can lead to unfettered and unjustifiable amounts of violence and destruction. But the way she does so is subtle and completely fair to her characters: it's an honest, funny, and tragic story of Three Great Men who are undoubtedly no match for the power of Fate and History.