Showing titles in Historical Fiction

For a climber, letting go means certain death. For Atlas, it means something even worse. But he'll have to learn how to let go and look up if he ever wants to see the top....

When Felix Robbins gets a crush on Lily Goldstein, a classmate who is adopted from China, he decides to try to take her back in time so that she can see the country where she was born. Maisie discovers his plot, and foils it. But the twins end up in a small village on the Yangtze River, where they meet a girl named Pearl Buck in the days just before the Boxer Rebellion. With bandits chasing them, will they ever find safety . . . and return home?

With a name like Hurricane, you'd think this girl would take the world by storm. But instead, she's almost invisible. And when her sister gets tuberculosis, Hurricane is sent to live in the city with her Aunt Claire, an intimidating and disapproving presence surrounded by stodgy furniture and stodgier ideas. Like no dirty stray cats in the house. And certainly not as pets! But Aunt Claire doesn't know quite what she's up against—Hurricane may be quiet, but she's about to discover that she's also strong.

It’s 1889, barely twenty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and a young Black family is tired of working on land they don’t get to own. So when Will and his father hear about an upcoming land rush, they set out on a journey from Texas to Oklahoma, racing thousands of others to the place where land is free—if they can get to it fast enough. But the journey isn’t easy—the terrain is rough, the bandits are brutal, and every interaction carries a heavy undercurrent of danger.

This gripping, accessible novel by celebrated Ukrainian Canadian author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch follows two sisters as they struggle to survive the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In the momentous fall of 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a Black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh. Beginning with the Birmingham bombing and featuring the Kennedy assassination and Beatlemania, Radiant is a finely crafted novel-in-verse about race, class, and finding a place in a loving family and a complicated world.

When Sound of Running Feet first sees white settlers on Nez Perce land, she vows to fight them. She'll fight all the people trying to steal her people's land and to force them onto a reservation, includ­ing the soldiers with their guns. But if to fight means only to die, never win, is the fight worth it? When will the killing stop? Like the author's Newbery Medal-winning classic Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell's Thunder Rolling in the Mountains is a gripping tale of survival, strength, and courage.

One day, Kim and Eila are walking in the woods, and Eila finds an enigmatic, otherworldly object. Kim thinks it's bad news...but Eila begins to commune with it. Kim has every reason to be worried, because soon, Eila is able to control the minds of everyone around her...in ways she says is the best for everyone.

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elspeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elspeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage. Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston.

Summer, 1940. Nineteen-year-old Jakob Novis and his quirky younger sister Lizzie share a love of riddles and puzzles. And now they’re living inside of one. The quarrelsome siblings find themselves amidst one of the greatest secrets of World War II—Britain’s eccentric codebreaking factory at Bletchley Park. As Jakob joins Bletchley’s top minds to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, fourteen-year-old Lizzie embarks on a mission to solve the mysterious disappearance of their mother.

When Nazi bombs begin to destroy Bess Walder’s hometown of East London, Bess convinces her parents to evacuate her and her younger brother, Louis, to Canada aboard the SS City of Benares. On the journey, she meets another evacuee, Beth Cummings. Bess and Beth have a lot in common—both strong and athletic, both named for Queen Elizabeth, both among the older kids on the ship, and both excited about life in Canada.

Every day, more and more people fleeing war in the north show up at Kyung Tak and her family’s house on the southeastern shore of Korea. With nowhere else to go, the Taks' home is these migrants' last chance of refuge “before falling into the sea,” and the household quickly becomes crowded, hot, and noisy. Then war sirens cry out over Kyung's city too, and her family and their guests take shelter underground. When the sirens stop, Kyung is upset—she wishes everything could go back to the way it was before: before the sirens, before strangers started coming into their home.

Onyx lives with his mother, who is showing signs of early-onset dementia. He doesn't want to bring attention to his home—if Child Protective Services finds out, they'll put him into foster care. As he's trying to keep his life together, the Civil Rights Movement is accelerating. Is there anywhere that's safe for a young Black boy? Maybe, if only Onyx can fulfill his dream of becoming an astronaut and exploring space, where none of these challenges will follow him. In the meantime, Onyx can dream. And try to get his mom the help she needs.

Barrio Logan, one of San Diego’s oldest Chicane neighborhoods, once brimmed with families and stretched all the way to the glorious San Diego Bay. But in the decades after WWII, the community lost their beach and bayfront to factories, junkyards, and an interstate that divided the neighborhood and forced around 5,000 people out of their homes. Then on April 22, 1970, residents discovered that the construction crew they believed was building a park—one the city had promised them years ago—was actually breaking ground for a police station.

Un vívido relato de ficción histórica sobre el activismo comunitario que dio lugar a la construcción del Parque Chicano de San Diego, hogar de la colección de murales al aire libre más grande de los Estados Unidos, ejemplo de la rica historia de resistencia y resiliencia de la comunidad mexicoamericana.

The kids in 1944 want to know all about the future: are there jetpacks? Laser guns? Teleportation? Most of all, they want to know about the outcome of the war their dads and brothers are fighting in. Henry and his friends are cautious—they’ve all seen movies about what happens when you disrupt the fabric of time—but figure there’s no harm in telling them a little bit, just enough so they can stop worrying so much. And, at first, everything seems fine. Nothing’s changed—well, nothing so big they can’t contain it, anyway.

When the tyrannical family patriarch Sir Ignatious Gristle is murdered on his 90th birthday at his country estate, every one of his gathered family members is a suspect. Trapped by a snowstorm with no way to contact the police, it's up to his mettlesome granddaughter, Edna, and her trusted tortoise, Charles Darwin, to determine whodunnit!

Omakakiins and her family live on an island in Lake Superior. Though there are growing numbers of white people encroaching on their land, life continues much as it always has. But the satisfying rhythms of their life are shattered when a visitor comes to their lodge one winter night, bringing with him an invisible enemy that will change things forever—but that will eventually lead Omakakiins to discover her calling.

Twins Pew and Basket Church dream of escaping the miserable misfortune of their isolated orphanage. Or, even better, the return of their unknown parents. But even in their wildest dreams, they never imagined the truth: The twins can travel through time. Armed only with perplexing clues to their past and a time travel talisman that is key to their future, Pew and Basket embark on an epic quest. It takes them into George Washington’s war tent and on a hunt for the Liberty Bell, from the battlefields of the American Revolution to a pirate republic in the Caribbean and beyond.

Britain, 1940, the world is at war and 10-year-old twins Harry and Sophie are evacuated from London to live with their Great Uncle. The twins immediately miss home and perhaps most of all for Harry, the tearoom where their mum works, and Harry spends hours watching the professional dancers – secretly dreaming of the day he might do the same.