Showing titles in Historical Fiction

Cordelia Lu Hankins is the half Caucasian, half Chinese - and all albino. She has grown up in a remote lumber town with her distant father and a giant stepmother nicknamed Babe (after Paul Bunyan's blue ox), convinced she is ugly. Then, in the summer of 1918, when she is fourteen, she falls in love with the dashing Squirl. One day they meet on the mountain and Cordy receives her first kiss, as well as a wild ride down a log flume that gets Squirl fired.

In 1944, while much of the world is at war, 14-year-old Teddy wages her own war against herself, her brother, and her perfect, and perfectly despised, mother. Forced to spend the summer at the beach with a grandmother she'd never met, Teddy faces her enemies with arrogance and anger. But as the summer unfolds, she begins learning the answers to some painful questions about the past that destroyed her family and left her mother and grandmother bitterly divided.

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts - no home, no family, no plan. Her mother died when she was six, and her selfish father hires her out as a companion to a country doctor's elderly mother. Iris, stuck in the middle of 1920s rural Missouri, discovers that "hobo" is short for "homeward bound," and cultivates an eccentric cast of folks into family, creating the home she never had. But when she learns that a neighboring tenant farmer may have had more than his hands on his pregnant daughter, Iris must intervene to save the girl and her unborn baby.

World War II is raging in Europe, but back home in Sweet Creek, Pennsylvania, Bud Shoemaker, a Quaker and a pacifist, has taken a one-man stand against the fight by declaring himself a conscientious objector. Fourteen-year-old Jubal sees his brother's choice as noble and brave, although most of the town (including Jubal's dream girl, Daria) sees Bud as a coward - or worse. The line between right and wrong has become alarmingly blurred, and it won't be long before Jubal's family begins to buckle as it struggles to cope with the consequences of Bud's decision.

When Lily was three, her mother put her up for adoption, then disappeared without a trace. Or so Lily was told. Lily grew up in her new family and tried to forget her past. But with the Korean War raging and the fear of "Commies" everywhere, Lily's Asian heritage makes her a target. She is sick of the racism she faces, a fact her adoptive parents won’t take seriously. For Lily, war is everywhere - the dinner table, the halls at school, and especially within her own skin.

Henry Vestin always believed that, despite being a carpenter with no training in swordplay or survival, he could lead Isabelle and his friends to safety. He thought he could defy an emperor and protect Isabelle from harm. He was certain that love and friendship would help them survive. He was wrong.

It's 1950 and Mickey Tussler - the now-famous pitching prodigy with autism and a golden arm - is back for another baseball season in this third installment of Frank Nappi's critically acclaimed Legend of Mickey Tussler series. Talk of Mickey's legendary exploits on the field has grown since his improbable debut two years prior, as have the fortunes of Murph and the rest of the lovable ragtag Brew Crew. Now Mickey, Murph, and Lester find themselves heading to Bean Town to play for the Boston Braves.

In this romantic and evocative fantasy, Najwa is a jinni, training to be a spy in the war against the humans. Zayele is a human on her way to marry a prince of Baghdad - which she’ll do anything to avoid. So she captures Najwa and makes a wish. With a rush of smoke and fire, they fall apart and re-form - as each other. A jinni and a human, trading lives. Both girls must play their parts among enemies who would kill them if the deception were ever discovered - enemies including the young men Najwa and Zayele are just discovering they might love.

Sixteen-year-old Celstia spends every summer with her family at the elite resort at Lake Conemaugh, a shimmering Allegheny Mountain reservoir held in place by an earthen dam. Tired of the society crowd, Celestia prefers to swim and fish with Peter, the hotel's hired boy. It's a friendship she must keep secret, and when companionship turns to romance, it's a love that could get Celestia disowned. These affairs of the heart become all the more wrenching on a single, tragic day in May 1889.

By the author of the acclaimed Passion Blue, a Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2012 and "a rare, rewarding, sumptuous exploration of artistic passion," comes a fascinating companion novel.

Artistically brilliant, Giulia is blessed—or cursed—with a spirit’s gift: she can hear the mysterious singing of the colors as she creates them in the convent workshop of Maestra Humilitá. It’s here that Giulia, forced into the convent against her will, has found unexpected happiness and rekindled her passion to become a painter—an impossible dream for any woman in 15th century Italy.

But when a dying Humilitá bequeaths Giulia her most prized possession—the secret formula for the luminously beautiful paint called Passion blue—Giulia realizes she’s in danger from those who have long coveted the famous color. Faced with the prospect of a life in the convent barred from painting as punishment for keeping Humilitá’s secret, Giulia is struck by a desperate idea: What if she disguises herself as a boy? Could she make her way to Venice and find work as an artist’s apprentice?

Along with the truth of who she is, Giulia carries more dangerous secrets: the exquisite voices of her paint colors and the formula for Humilitá’s Passion blue. And Venice, she discovers, with its gilded palazzos and masked balls, has secrets of its own. Trapped in her false identity in this dream-like place where reality and reflection are easily confused, and where art and ambition, love and deception hover like dense fog, can Giulia find her way?

This stunning, compelling novel explores timeless themes of love and illusion, gender and identity as it asks the question: what does it mean to risk everything to pursue your passion?

"Next stop Hollywood!" Django yelled as the bus transporting the Nazis' Gypsy prisoners turned west. Django and fifteen-year-old Lilo are picked out of a lineup by Hitler's favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, to work as extras in her new movie. The route to the filming location seems to lead away from the labor camps being built in Eastern Europe, but does it really offer anything more than a bizarre detour? Lilo, her mother, and her new friend Django soon find themselves in the alternate reality of a film set. Amid glamorous surroundings, the Gypsy extras are barely fed, closely guarded, and kept locked in a barn when they're not working.

When Evan's father dies suddenly, Evan finds a hand-bound yellow book on his desk - a book his dad had been reading when he passed away. The book is the diary of a Japanese soldier stranded on a small Pacific island in WWII. Why was his father reading it? What is in this account that Evan's grandfather, whom Evan has never met before, fears so much that he will do anything to prevent its being seen? And what could this possibly mean for Evan?

Annie Lockwood is testing Time. She's traveled through it before, but always at Time's bidding. Now she is asking Time to take her to the year 1899, when Strat is in Cairo. But Time doesn't like to be tested. In what feels like a cruel joke, Annie is transported to ancient Egypt, thousands of years before Strat was born - to a world far removed from the one she knows. Meanwhile, in 1899, Strat is photographing the same pyramids that Annie walks among. But while Strat eagerly awaits Annie's arrival, another visitor arrives: his father, Hiram Stratton, Sr., has come to Egypt to collect his son.

It’s 1949 and 18-year-old pitching phenom Mickey Tussler is back with the rejuvenated minor league Brewers in the sequel to The Legend of Mickey Tussler (the basis for the television movie A Mile in His Shoes). Despite Mickey’s proclamation that he will never play baseball again after last season’s violent conclusion, his manager - and now surrogate father - Arthur Murphy cajoles the emotionally fragile, socially awkward boy with autism into giving it another shot.

It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city with a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn't the only thing that is divided. Ada lives among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg in West Berlin. Stefan lives in East Berlin, in a faceless apartment bunker of Friedrichshain. Bound by love and separated by circumstance, their only chance for a life together lies in a high-risk escape. But will Stefan find the courage to leap? Or will forces beyond his control stand in his way?

In the late 1940s, the minor league Milwaukee Brewers are foundering yet again and manager Arthur Murphy is desperate. When he sees 17-year-old Mickey Tussler throwing apples into a barrel, he knows he has found the next pitching phenom. But not everyone is so hopeful. Mickey’s autism - a disorder still not truly understood even today - has alienated the boy from the world, and he is berated by other players and fans. Mickey faces immense trials in the harsh and competitive world of baseball while coping with the challenges inherent to his disorder.

Set in New York in the 1980s, this story of two ballet dancers (one American, one Russian) recounts the unforgettable night they spend in the city, and celebrates the friendship they form despite their cultural and political differences.

The adventures of a British girl in China, hunting for the orchid that will save her family. Staid, responsible Elodie Buchanan is the eldest of ten sisters growing up in a small English market town in 1861. The girls barely know their father, a plant hunter usually off adventuring through China...

“A gripping saga of wartime survival.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Based on a true story, this World War II novel by Scott O’Dell Award winner Graham Salisbury tells how Zenji, 17, is sent from Hawaii to the Philippines to spy on the Japanese. Zenji Watanabe was born in Hawaii. He’s an...

The Bluebeard fairy tale retold. . . . When seventeen-year-old Sophia Petheram’s beloved father dies, she receives an unexpected letter. An invitation—on fine ivory paper, in bold black handwriting—from the mysterious Monsieur Bernard de Cressac, her godfather. With no money and fewer...