The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is incredible. It's about the 1893 Chicago World's fair, the architects who designed it, and has a murder/mystery aspect to it. It's 100% historically factual but it reads like a novel. I can't recommend it enough.

Do you mean fiction or nonfiction, or will you accept recommendations for both? At the moment, my favorite nonfiction read would probably have to be Keith Brown's Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution as it gives a pretty good overview of elite society and culture in early modern Scotland and I jokingly referred to it as my secondary 'Bible' while writing up the thesis for my research master's. In a couple of years, this might change, but it's easy to read and to get through and detailed enough to be useful while providing a good collection of references in the endnotes and bibliography to give the reader some good leads on other material to look into. For fiction, I will always swear by Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels as some of the best researched and most authentic-feeling historical fiction about the Napoleonic Wars out there.

'Viva la Revolution' which is a book about the French Revolution by British left-wing comedian Mark Steel. I know many would be sceptical about a comedian writing history, but his comedy career has involved a lot of comedy-history lectures and it's one of the things he's famous for in the UK. (Search 'Mark Steel lectures' on youtube) He specialises in finding out the weird stuff that doesn't make it to the standard text books but is too good not to share, such as the reports that Descartes liked to sit inside a warm oven whilst he was thinking. The historical content of the Viva La Revolution is sound, he references the works of the standard Historians you'd read if you were studying the subject at undergraduate level so the basic narrative is well explained, but what makes it stand out is the use of humour and the fact that he tells the story mostly from the vantage point of the ordinary people on both sides. Stuff like how wig-makers coped with the drop in demand for wigs or why ordinary shop keepers would suddenly start joining in building barricades. He doesn't present it as just a thing that happened in a foreign country a long time ago, but something that's understandable in relation to modern political campaigns.

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman and illustrated by John Reynolds. The title alone should sell this one to you. The best bits, in my opinion, are the exam questions such as 'How would you have attempted to deal with (a) The Venomous Bead? (b) A Mabinogion or Wapentake? (Be quick.)' or 'King John had no redeeming features. (Illustrate.)'

Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History by Giles Minton, which is all about the struggle between the Dutch and the English to control the world nutmeg supply in the 17th c. This may sound a bit obscure but it was a BIG deal, Manhattan changed hands because of it.

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, which is just a really accessible biography of Shakespeare and a really sound refutation to anti-Stratfordians.

John Dower's War Without Mercy, on WWII in the pacific theater and specifically the propaganda employed by both sides is my favorite history text pertaining to US-Japanese history and I highly recommend it ! Dower seems to be "the man" as far as US perspectives on the historical relationship between the two countries, as far as I know.