Historical Literature For Teens

Contrary to her dearest wish to find a safe place and stay there, Major Tanya von Degurechaff continues to wade through the fog of war with her troops on land, at sea, and in the air. After many battles with the increasingly numerous enemies of the Empire, a chance for a breakthrough finally appears. But when her comrades begin celebrating the glories they've reaped, savoring the sweet nectar of imminent triumph, Tanya alone is frozen in fear. Has the Empire decisively won the war, or is this nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory?

Enter Regency-era England—and a world in which magical mayhem and high society go hand in hand—with three novels featuring cousins Cecelia and Kate. In Sorcery & Cecelia, the two cousins have been inseparable since girlhood. But in 1817, Kate goes to London to make her debut into English society, leaving Cecelia behind. While visiting the Royal College of Wizards, Kate stumbles on a plot to destroy a beloved sorcerer—and only Cecelia can help her save him.

In the realms of The Memory Thief, memories are currency that can be traded for goods, services, skills, and experiences. A group of people—the Gifted—can steal and redistribute memories. Etta is secretly one of them, but she hasn’t used her Gifted abilities since she left the rebel Shadows following her mother’s accident two years ago. But when her mother is again in danger, Etta has no choice but to return to the underground group in order to complete her greatest heist and save her mother’s life.

Winter is drawing thick in 1932 Shanghai, as is the ever-nearing threat of a Japanese invasion. Rosalind Lang has suffered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she’s been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment for the infamous Lady Fortune, she’s barely left her bedroom in weeks, plotting her next course of action after Orion was taken and his memories of Rosalind wiped. Though their marriage might have been a sham, his absence hurts her more than any physical wound. She won’t rest until she gets him back. But with her identity in the open, the task is impossible.

Once Amy and Dan Cahill's choice was simple - take a million dollars or the first of 39 Clues that lead to the source of unimaginable power. Now it's clear that the hunt for Clues is bigger than anything that Amy and Dan could ever have imagined.

The touching story of a young, mortally ill priest who spends his last days working among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia.

Because she is Jewish, 14 year-old Piri has been held prisoner in Nazi concentration camps for two years. She is freed when Bergen-Belsen is liberated, but she is very ill and has deep psychological scars. In a voice full of innocence and courage, Piri tells how she got through the first years after the Holocaust.

Esta isn’t a stranger to high-stakes heists. She’s a seasoned thief who has no reservations about using her affinity for time to give her an edge, and she’s trained her whole life for one mission: travel back to 1902 New York, steal the ancient Book of Mysteries, and use its power to destroy the Brink and free the Mageus from the Order’s control. But the book held a danger that no one anticipated - Seshat, an angry goddess, was trapped within its pages.

Fourteen-year old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. More interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea - and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy - Mrs. Temminnick is desperate her daughter become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish all right - but it's a different kind of finishing.

Welcome to 1876 America, a place bursting with gunslingers, outlaws, and garou - better known as werewolves. And where there are garou, there’re hunters: the one and only Calamity Jane, to be precise, along with her fellow stars of Wild Bill’s Traveling Show, Annie Oakley and Frank “the Pistol Prince” Butler. After a garou hunt goes south and Jane finds a suspicious-like bite on her arm, she turns tail for Deadwood, where there’s talk of a garou cure. But rumors can be deceiving - meaning the gang better hightail it after her before they’re a day late and a Jane short.

Rose has been appointed as a healer’s apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter’s daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her. When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she’s never felt before and wonders if he feels the same.

Eleven-year-old Adam loved to travel throughout 13th-century England with his father, a wandering minstrel, and his dog, Nick. But when Nick is stolen and his father disappears, Adam suddenly finds himself alone.

In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, 10-year-old Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle. But it turns out he isn't the one joining. Anjali's mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use "ahimsa" - non-violent resistance - to stand up to the British government. First the family must trade in their fine foreign-made clothes for homespun cotton, so Anjali has to give up her prettiest belongings.

In the last glittering decade of European empires, courts, and kings, three young women are on a collision course with history—and with each other.

All her life, 19-year-old Liesl has heard tales of the beautiful, mysterious Goblin King. He is the Lord of Mischief, the Ruler Underground, and the muse around which her music is composed. Yet, as Liesl helps shoulder the burden of running her family's inn, her dreams of composition and childish fancies about the Goblin King must be set aside in favor of more practical concerns. But when her sister Kathe is taken by the goblins, Liesl journeys to their realm to rescue her sister and return her to the world above.

Rapunzel can throw a knife better than any man. She paints beautiful flowering vines on the walls of her plaster houses. She sings so sweetly, she can coax even a beast to sleep. But there are two things she is afraid her mother might never allow her to do: learn to read and marry. Fiercely devoted to Rapunzel, her mother is suspicious of every man who so much as looks at her daughter and warns her that no man can be trusted.

In 1911, three men were in the final round of the famed Pendleton Round-Up. One was white, one was Indian, and one was black. When the judges declared the white man the winner, the audience was outraged. They named black cowboy George Fletcher the "people's champion" and took up a collection, ultimately giving Fletcher far more than the value of the prize that went to the official winner. Award-winning author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson tells the story of Fletcher's triumph with a western flair that will delight kids - and adults - who love true stories, unlikely heroes, and cowboy tales.

A year after a grand tour with her brother, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals - avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect will never be enough in the eyes of the sexist administrators. But then a window of opportunity opens - a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes this man can help her, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity.

As a boy, Elias learned the hard way what happens when you don’t heed the old tales. Nine years after his lack of superstition got his father killed, he’s grown into a young man of piety, with a deep reverence for the hallowed sea and her fickle favor. As stories of the fisherman’s son who has managed to escape the most deadly of storms spreads from port to port, his devotion to the myths and creeds has given him the reputation of the luckiest bastard to sail the Narrows.

The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself - for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.