This is a great question! As a librarian and historian, I love reading historical fiction (even more so when it's historically accurate). I recommend Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden, about a woman who survived WWII in Leningrad. It begins in 1990, and the woman who is now known as Anya tells her story to her two daughters in fulfillment of her dying husband's last wish. She begins her story as a fairy tale. Leningrad is the Snow Kingdom, and its villagers are very happy save for when the Black Knight (Stalin) takes villagers into his carriage where they are never seen again. Anya's father is one such victim, and her mother suggests dealing with the pain (and staying safe) by never speaking of their father again.

Slowly, Anya presents her story a biography rather than a fairy tale. Kristin Hannah does an excellent job of recreating life during the seige of Leningrad. She describes the mile long queues of women waiting to get their rations of bread, and how one's rations were at risk of being stolen on the way home by desperate people. The price of sugar was ten times the usual price, but furs and jewelry became so worthless that they were sold for pennies. During one desperate winter, Anya was forced to boil wall paper for her children to eat. The lack of heat causes the death of her mother.

Hannah vividly portrays the reality of women needing to survive on their own in a city without men. Anya cannot bear bringing her children onto the train when Stalin orders all children to be evacuated. She manages to bring them home, but then volunteers to work in an all women run group on the railroad. After later being separated from her children while trying to book a passage out of Russia, it's suggested that she had to prostitute herself for a train ticket.

I highly recommend Hannah's work because of its attention to historical detail. My only criticism is that much of the book's beginning sets up the family dynamic in the 1990s. Once the fairytale begins, the novel becomes great historical fiction.