Historical Fiction Library

Sylvie and her mother and grandmother are beloved, trusted healers in their medieval French village, though some whisper that 15-year-old Sylvie and her grand-mere deal in more than herbs and medicines. Perhaps they’re a bit...witchy? After her grandmother dies, and an attempt to use magic to heal her mother’s grief brooks tragic consequences, Sylvie leaves her village in search of a teacher. The journey subjects her to strange alliances, powerful temptations, danger, and deceit. In the end, there may be only one wise woman Sylvie can trust in a world that would define her limits.

At the turn of the new year in 1948, Amil and his family are trying to make a home in India, now independent of British rule. Both Muslim and Hindu, twelve-year-old Amil is not sure what home means anymore. The memory of the long and difficult journey from their hometown in what is now Pakistan lives with him. And despite having an apartment in Bombay to live in and a school to attend, life in India feels uncertain.

In 1465 a simple pocketful of herbs could get you burned at the stake, but Luccia Alimenti, daughter of one of the legendary women doctors called Salernistas, travels Europe secretly distributing medical texts to midwives and herbalists. Despite dodging the Inquisition and battling the Plague with her beloved Irish godmother, Luccia finds love as well as heartbreak. Pushed to the edge, however, she must use her skill as an archer to rescue women being taken to the pyre.

The Otiosi? As far as Mathew Longstaff knows, they're just a group of harmless scholars with an eccentric interest in the works of antiquity. When they ask him to travel east to recover a lost text from Ivan the Terrible's private library, he can't think of anything but the reward - home and a return to England and an end to the long years of exile and warfare. But the Otiosi are on the trail of a greater prize than Longstaff realizes - the legendary "Devil's Library". And they are not alone. Gregorio Spina, the Pope's spymaster and Chief Censor, is obsessed with finding the Library.

At first, Hiram is excited to visit his hometown in Mississippi. But soon after he arrives, he crosses paths with Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who is also visiting for the summer. Hiram sees firsthand how the local whites mistreat blacks who refuse to "know their place". When Emmett's tortured dead body is found floating in a river, Hiram is determined to find out who could do such a thing. But what will it cost him to know?

A brilliant schoolboy in 17th-century Amsterdam, Bento Spinoza⏤formally Baruch and later Benedict de Spinoza⏤quickly learns to keep his ideas to himself. When he is 23, those ideas prove so scandalous to his own Jewish community that he is cast out, cursed, and effectively erased from their communal life. The scandal shows no sign of waning as his ideas spread throughout Europe. At the center of the storm, he lives the simplest of lives, quietly devoted to his work as a lens grinder and to his steadfast search for truth, striving to embody a philosophy of tolerance and benevolence.

Play ball! Jack and Annie aren’t great baseball players... yet! Then Morgan the librarian gives them magical baseball caps that will make them experts. They just need to wear the caps to a special ballgame in Brooklyn, New York. The magic tree house whisks them back to 1947! When they arrive, Jack and Annie find out that they will be batboys in the game - not ballplayers. What exactly does Morgan want them to learn? And what’s so special about this game? They only have nine innings to find out!

Certain the "smart" Steffington twin is the person who can help her recover her late husband's nearly priceless stolen Chaucer manuscript, Catherine Bexley tearfully persuades the scholar to assist her. A deal is struck. She's particularly pleased that the doctor of letters is not interested in seducing her because she's finished with men (owing to her late husband's multitude of unfortunate alliances with...doxies).

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.

As school begins in 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh. Set against the historic backdrop of the Birmingham church bombing, the Kennedy assassination, and Beatlemania, Radiant is a finely crafted novel in verse about race, class, faith, and finding your place in a loving family and a complicated world.

Sixteen-year-old Bridey Corkill longs to leave her small island and see the world; the farther from the sea, the better. When Bridey was young, she witnessed something lure her granddad off a cliff and into a watery grave with a smile on his face. Now, in 1913, those haunting memories are dredged to the surface when a young woman is found drowned on the beach. Bridey suspects that whatever compelled her Granddad to leap has made its return to the Isle of Man. Soon, people in Bridey’s idyllic village begin vanishing, and she finds an injured boy on the shore.

James Henry used to be brave. He hasn't been the same since that fateful night at the lighthouse when his ma went searching for Dog. Now months later, he feels as small as the space between the numbers on a watch, nervous day and night, barely able to go outside. Even words have a hard time leaving his mouth. The only person he speaks to is Hattie, his courageous twin sister, who fiercely protects him, especially from bullies. James Henry wants nothing more than to be brave again. However, finding his voice will mean confronting the truth about what happened at the lighthouse.

To save her best friend from the horrors of Nazi Germany, an invisible girl must embark on an utterly unforgettable journey of redemption and revenge. The Vanishing is fierce and loving, devastating and compelling, a breathtaking blend of history, fiction, and magical realism.

Lula Viramontes aches to one day become someone whom no one can ignore: a daring ringleader in a Mexican traveling circus. But between working the grape harvest in Delano, California, with her older siblings under dangerous conditions; taking care of her younger siblings and Mamá, who has mysteriously fallen ill; and doing everything she can to avoid Papá’s volatile temper, it’s hard to hold on to those dreams.

Best friends Mary Lennox, Sara Crewe, and Cedric Erroll are best friends. And thank goodness, since their boarding school is basically insufferable. When one of the friends suffers a personal tragedy, a plan—and a secret—change everything for the trio...for good.

Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the heart of Jim Crow, Dovey Johnson Roundtree felt the sting of inequality at an early age and made a point to speak up for justice. She was one of the first Black women to break the racial and gender barriers in the US Army when women were barely allowed to serve; a fierce attorney in the segregated courtrooms of Washington, DC; and a minister in Black churches, where women had never before had the chance to speak.

Anne Boleyn is the odd girl out. Newly arrived to the court of King Henry VIII, everything about her seems wrong, from her clothes to her manners to her witty but sharp tongue. So when the dashing poet Thomas Wyatt offers to coach her on how to shine at court - and to convince the whole court they're lovers - she accepts. Before long, Anne's popularity has soared, and even the charismatic and irresistible king takes notice. More than popularity, Anne wants a voice - but she also wants love. What began as a game becomes high stakes as Anne finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between her heart's desire and the chance to make history.

From the pen of best-selling western author Zane Grey comes The Heritage of the Desert. It is the story of John Hare, who has arrived in the West to recover after a health scare and finds himself a hunted man. His crime? He is "Dene's Spy". From dealing with Mormons and Indians to riding with rustlers, dealing with land thieves, and discovering the canyons of Utah, he lives the life of a true pioneer trying to find his way in a brand new world. Forget Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp - John Hare is the name of a true American legend.

For Kit, the Depression has brought big changes: a houseful of boarders, tons of chores, and no birthday party. Then Aunt Millie arrives, and it looks as if her great ideas might turn things around for the Kittredges. But when Kit’s taste for adventure gets her into trouble, she discovers that the Depression has hit a lot of people far worse than her own family. Can one girl make a difference for homeless kids—when even grownups have lost hope?

A Gothic thriller and captivating love story set in Civil War Mississippi. Seventeen-year-old Violet Dancey has been left at home in Mississippi with a laudanum-addicted stepmother and love-crazed stepsister while her father fights in the war - a war that has already claimed her twin brother. When she comes across a severely injured Union soldier lying in an abandoned lodge deep in the woods, things begin to change. Thomas is the enemy - one of the men who might have killed her own brother - and yet she’s drawn to him. But Violet isn’t Thomas’s only visitor.