Adult Historical Fiction

A vivid portrayal of the Civil War, and a look at the reasons behind the conflict. Johnny Heller, 14, convinces his mother to let him join a wagon train carrying food to Confederate soldiers. Along the way he’s captured by Blue Coats, and a black Union soldier insists that Johnny teach him to read. Brought up to believe that black people are inferior, Johnny deliberately tricks him. But as they get to know each other an uneasy alliance develops, followed by a friendship that surprises them both.

Laura Amy Schlitz wrote the Newbery Medal winner Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! for the students at the school where she is a librarian. The 22 monologues introduce readers to everyone in a medieval village, from the town half-wit, to Nelly the Sniggler, to the Lord's daughter.

It's May 1944, and Josiah Wedgewood and Marcus Perry - two young men of different races and backgrounds - are headed to Normandy's front lines. There they'll share the joys of friendship, the terrible truths of war, and what it's like to fear that each day will be their last.

This book chronicles the long history of the fight for women's voting rights, beginning in 1848, with a focus on the years between 1913 and 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. The book includes profiles of notable women in the struggle.

After Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, over 100,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to leave their homes. The government was afraid that because they looked like “the enemy,” they might be spies. One American, librarian Clara Breed, was heartbroken and outraged. As the San Diego Public Library’s Children’s Librarian, Miss Breed was close to many of the children who were evacuated. She went to the train station the day they left, handing out postcards and telling them to send her letters.

A finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award, Sue Macy’s Wheels of Change offers young listeners an ear-opening account of how, beginning in the late 19th century, the bicycle helped change the course of women’s history. Macy meticulously documents how women used the freedom of their newfound mobility to effect social change, even in the face of constant challenges.

In 1932, Americans’ dreams were simple: a job, food to eat, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes. But for millions of people these simple needs were nothing more than dreams. When he was just 15 years old, Josh had to make his own way through a country of angry and frightened people. This is the story of his struggle to find a life for himself during those turbulent times.

One of the most important patriots in post-Revolutionary times. Most people know Noah Webster for his dictionary masterpieces and his promotion of a living "American Language" that embraces words and idioms from all its immigrant peoples. But he was also the driving force behind universal education for all citizens, including slaves, females, and adult learners. Speaker of twenty languages, he developed the new country's curriculum, writing and publishing American literature, American history, and American geography. He published New York City's first daily newspaper.

As the Civil War swirls closer to her home in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, 13-year-old India Moody is tutored by a young scholar who sparks her interest in biology, chemistry, and college. But when India's father goes missing, she searches for him on the ghastly Antietam battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

In 1790, during the summer of her 16th year, Rosemary makes a new friend. Mrs. DiAngeli and her husband have moved into the village in North Carolina where Rosemary lives. When the girl visits, Mrs. DiAngeli talks and laughs with Rosemary as she would with another adult. Immediately, Rosemary treasures their relationship. But Rosemary knows that her friend is different from the rest of her neighbors.

Life will never be the same for Red Porter. He's a kid growing up around black car grease, white fence paint, and the backward attitudes of the folks who live in his hometown, Rocky Gap, Virginia. Red's daddy, his idol, has just died, leaving Red and Mama with some hard decisions and a whole lot of doubt. Should they sell the Porter family business, a gas station, repair shop, and convenience store rolled into one, where the slogan - "Porter's: We Fix it Right!" - has been shouting the family's pride for as long as anyone can remember?

Amidst the 1971 Troubles between the Irish Republican Army and Northern Ireland, 12-year-old Finn lives in a world of her own of fairy tales. Raised by her grandmother, Nuala, who is the village storyteller, Finn spends her days playing make-believe in the forest, weaving tall tales to tell her friend Darcy, longing to go to the island of Inis Eala to meet the swans there, and waiting for her father to return from the war. She's long since stopped believing in happy endings and miracles, preferring to believe instead in serendipity, or "happy mistakes".

Having narrowly escaped financial ruin, Lawrence turns his attention to helping Holo find her ancient homeland in the North. But how long can a traveling merchant afford to wander the countryside looking for a village that he suspects may have ceased to exist long ago? When a rival merchant sets his sights on Lawrence's beautiful companion, though, can Lawrence truly be confident that Holo will remain by his side? Has the time come when Lawrence must ask himself whether his relationship with the Wisewolf is business or pleasure?

Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, passenger liner SS City of Benares set out in a convoy of 19 ships sailing for Canada. On board were 90 CORB children, chaperones, and crew, along with paying passengers. When the war ships escorting the Benares to safe waters peeled off, a German submarine attacked and torpedoed the Benares.

Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustave von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.

When a spontaneous time leap sends Nickolas Flux back to Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance Expedition to Antarctica, what's a teenage history buff to do? Try to avoid becoming stranded at the bottom of the world, of course!

It’s the summer of 1962, and Scott and his friends spend their days playing baseball and thinking about girls. But the threat of nuclear war looms over everything they do, and they are haunted by the idea that they could all be dead tomorrow. Even though the possibility of war is all anyone talks about, Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst, building a bomb shelter to protect his family and stocking it with enough supplies to keep them alive for two critical weeks. The neighbors scoff, but then, in the middle of the night in late October, the unthinkable happens.

En une nuit, la vie de Cyrielle vacille. Des pillards attaquent son couvent, sauvé in extremis par des guerriers étrangers. Leur chef, un horrible balafré, croise alors le chemin de la jeune fille. Une rencontre qui scelle leur destin. Le couvent détruit, Cyrielle est renvoyée auprès de son oncle, le comte de Montfaucon. De retour dans le château de son enfance, d'étranges évènements surviennent, qui soulèvent des questions sur son passé et son futur.

Everyone's favorite frontier heroine, Andi Carter, is back! Only she's Andrea Prescott now, and she and her husband, Riley, are starting their lives together. From their honeymoon in Yosemite—and the holdup that happens on their way—to the corners of their new home on Memory Creek ranch, just down the road from Circle C, Andi and Riley's first year of marriage is full of excitement in Yosemite at Last.

Edyth grew up in a quiet village with a loving family, before losing everything she holds dear in the blink of an eye. Suddenly sent to live in a priory and work with ancient texts, Edyth must come to terms with her new life and the gifts she discovers in herself. But outside the priory, something much worse is coming. With the reappearance of a boy from her past and the ominous Great Plague creeping closer and closer to the priory, it will be up to Edyth to rise above it all and save herself.