Ooh, I was going to suggest Bernard Cornwell! I fell in love with his Warlord Trilogy (Arthurian legend as told by a kind-of bystander) and have been really wanting to read the one about William the Conquerer. (Along the lines of Arthurian legend without magic in a more historical setting is Jack Whyte's Camulod books. Very densely written, kind of slow whenever I start one out, but then in the last third of the book I can't put it down.)

Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna isn't exactly historical fiction, but it is about an alternate timeline wherein Rome never fell. It's essentially a bunch of short stories he wrote in the setting collected in chronological order.