Historical Fiction
9th-12th Grades
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, vol. 1: The Pox Party
M. T. Anderson
Diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American boy, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.
Fiction ANDERSON
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Libba Bray
After the suspicious death of her mother in 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma returns to England, after many years in India, to attend a finishing school where she becomes aware of her magical powers and ability to see into the spirit world. SEQUELS: Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing.
Fiction BRAY
Ten Cents a Dance
Christine Fletcher
When her mother falls ill in 1940s Chicago, fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski, in order to support her family, lands a job as a taxi dancer—a girl paid ten cents to dance with any man—and becomes submerged in a dangerous world where the only one who can save her is herself.
HS DISPLAY/ FLETCHER
Troy
Adèle Geras
The last weeks of the Trojan War find the women sick of tending the wounded, men tired of fighting, and bored gods and goddesses trying to find ways to stir things up.
Fiction GERAS
The Luxe
Anna Godbersen
The revelation of a dark family secret exposes a great scandal that soon sends the lives of the beautiful Holland sisters into a tailspin with lies and betrayal jeopardizing their high-ranking positions in Manhattan society. SEQUEL: Rumors: A Luxe Novel.
Fiction GODBERSEN
The Fighter
Jean-Jacques Greif
Waiting for the day when his brothers will send for him to live in Paris, Moshe does his best to stay alive in the poor and mean streets of Warsaw, but when the Nazis take him away to Auschwitz and make him fight dying prisoners for their entertainment, Moshe's morals conflict with his desire to survive.
Fiction GREIF
Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.
Fiction GRUEN
Color of the Sea
John Hamamura
Separated from his Japanese-American family and girlfriend by the interment practices of World War II, martial arts master Sam Hamada is recruited by the U.S. Army for a secret mission in Japan, where he finds himself torn between cultures.
Fiction HAMAMURA
Silent Echoes
Carla Jablonski
When sixteen-year-old Lindsay hears the voice of a girl from nineteenth century New York in her head, she thinks she may be going crazy, while Lucy, the nineteenth-century con artist whose voice Lindsay hears, thinks she might truly be a spiritual medium after all.
Fiction JABLONSKI
Duchessina: A Novel of Catherine de Medici
Carolyn Meyer
While her tyrannical family is out of favor in Italy, young Catherine de Medici is raised in convents, then in 1533, when she is fourteen, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arranges for her marriage to prince Henri of France, who is destined to become king.
Fiction MEYER
When the Emperor Was Divine
Julie Otsuka
A story told from five different points of view—a mother receiving the evacuation order, her daughter on the train ride to the camp, the son in the desert internment camp, the family's return home, and the final release of the father after years in captivity—chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.
Fiction OTSUKA
Tamar
Mal Peet
In England in 1995, fifteen-year-old Tamar, grief-stricken by the puzzling death of her beloved grandfather, slowly begins to uncover the secrets of his life in the Dutch resistance during the last year of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the climactic events that forever cast a shadow on his life and that of his family.
Fiction PEET
Song of the Sparrow
Lisa Ann Sandell
In fifth-century Britain, nine years after the destruction of their home on the island of Shalott brings her to live with her father and brothers in the military encampments of Arthur's army, seventeen-year-old Elaine describes her changing perceptions of war and the people around her as she becomes increasingly involved in the bitter struggle against the invading Saxons.
Fiction SANDELL
Ceremony
Leslie Marmon Silko
On a New Mexico reservation, one Navajo family—including Tayo, a World War II veteran deeply scarred by his experiences as a Japanese POW and by the rejection of his own people—struggles to survive in a world no longer theirs in the years just before and after World War II.
Fiction SILKO
Resurrection Men
T. K. Welsh
In London in 1830, where the selling of human corpses to those in science has become a lucrative business, Victor is aware that his body would fetch a good price and so must watch out for those who mean to do him harm while working to put a stop to their evil ways.
Fiction WELSH
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel, a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.