Historical fiction balances creativity and facts, sometimes including real people in the action!
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Iceberg by
As disaster looms on the horizon, a young stowaway onboard the Titanic will need all her courage and wits to stay alive.
The Night War by
It's 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. But Miri's life is no fairy tale. Her parents are gone--maybe alive, maybe not. Taken in at the boarding school near the chateau, pretending to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture, Miri volunteers one night to undertake a deadly task, one that spans the castle grounds, its bridge, and the very border to freedom.
Heroes: a Novel of Pearl Harbor by
December 6, 1941: Best friends Frank and Stanley have it good. With their dads stationed at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, the boys get to soak up the sunshine while writing and drawing their own comic books. World War II might be raging overseas, but so far America has stayed out of the fight. There's nothing to fear, right? December 7th, 1941: Everything implodes.
The Windeby Puzzle by
Estrild is not like the other girls in her village; she wants to be a warrior. Varick, the orphan boy who helps her train in spite of his twisted back, also stands apart. In a world where differences are poorly tolerated, just how much danger are they in
Balto and Togo: Hero Dogs of Alaska by
It's the winter of 1924 and a diptheria outbreak is threatening the population of Nome, Alaska. The only way to stop the deadly illness from causing a full blown epidemic is to immediately deliver one million units of the diptheria antitoxin to the affected communities --a task that seems impossible given that the only way to reach any place in Alaska at this time of year is by dog sled. The stakes are high, and the snow is piling higher. Will the antitoxin make it in time? Or will the infection spread faster than they can treat it...
The Davenports by
The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love--even where they're not supposed to. There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married . . . until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love--unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business--and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest . . . until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.
The Lost Year by
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation. But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother's belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh's latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor - the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades. An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh's own family history,
Secret of the Moon Conch by
In modern-day Mexico, Sitlali is all alone after the death of her beloved abuela. Targeted by a dangerous gang member, she flees to the United States to find her father. The night before her journey, she finds an ancient conch shell on the beach and takes it with her as a memento of home. In 1521, Calizto is trapped in the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, which is besieged by Spanish invaders. He has fought valiantly, but hope for his people is running out. Desperate to escape, he takes up his mother's sacred conch and sounds a plea to the gods. The conch holds magic neither Sitlali nor Calizto understand, magic that allows them to communicate across centuries--and find comfort in each other as they fight to survive. With each conversation, they fall deeper in love, and as the moon waxes, they become more present to each other. But as danger threatens at every turn, will they ever find a way to truly be together?
Daughter of Sparta by
Seventeen-year-old Daphne has spent her entire life honing her body and mind into that of a warrior, hoping to be accepted by the unyielding people of ancient Sparta. But an unexpected encounter with the goddess Artemis, who holds Daphne's brother's fate in her hands, upends the life she's worked so hard to build. Nine mysterious items have been stolen from Mount Olympus. If Daphne cannot find them, the gods' waning powers will fade away, the mortal world will descend into chaos, and her brother's life will be forfeit.
The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by
Based on the true story of two friends who unite to help rescue immigrant women in the most dangerous corners of San Francisco's Chinatown in the late 1890s. When Tai Choi leaves her home in the Zhejiang province of China, she believes she'll be visiting her grandmother. But in truth, despite her mother's opposition, her father has sold her to pay his gambling debts. Alone and afraid, Tai Choi is put on a ship headed for San Francisco, known among the Chinese as Gold Mountain. When she arrives, she is forced to go by the new name listed on her paper documents: Tien Fu Wu. Her new life as a servant at a gambling den is hard. She is told to stay hidden, to stay silent, and to perform an endless list of chores, or else she will be punished. Tien Fu thinks her life couldn't get any worse, until she is sold again to an abusive shopkeeper and tasked to care for a young boy. If she is to survive, Tien Fu must persevere, and learn who to trust. When Dolly Cameron arrives in San Francisco to teach sewing at a mission home for orphaned Asian girls, she meets Tien Fu, who is willful, defiant, and unwilling to trust anyone. Dolly quickly learns that all the girls at the home were freed from lives of servitude and maltreatment. Dolly immediately joins the group of women dedicated to saving more of these "paper daughters" because some in authority have turned a blind eye to the situation. Despite many challenges, Dolly and Tien Fu forge a powerful friendship as they mentor and help those in the mission home and work to win the freedom of thousands of immigrant women and girls.
Day by
NATIONAL BESTELLER * An "exquisite" (The Boston Globe) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life--and how we all must learn to live together and apart--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours "The only problem with Michael Cunningham's prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals' work. He is the most elegant writer in America."--The Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub, Paste, Kirkus Reviews April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart--and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel's younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house--and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents. April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts--and his secret Instagram life--for company. April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality--and with what they've learned, what they've lost, and how they might go on. "[Cunningham] is one of love's greatest witnesses."--Los Angeles Times "An absolutely stunning portrait of humanity . . . a masterpiece."--Literary Hub
The Fraud by
It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper--and cousin by marriage--of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The "Tichborne Trial"--wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title--captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . . Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of "other people."
The Glassmaker by
It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass--but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, in a Venice where time moves as slowly as molten glass, we follow Orsola and her family as they live through creative triumph and heartbreaking loss, from a plague devastating Venice to Continental soldiers stripping its palazzos bare, from the domination of Murano and its maestros to the transformation of the city of trade into a city of tourists. In every era, the Rosso women ensure that their work, and their bonds, endure. Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is as inventive as it is spellbinding: a mesmerizing portrait of a woman, a family, and a city as everlasting as their glass.
Wandering Stars by
A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK * The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous. "For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you." --Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle,where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines. In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There--warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts--asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange's monumental gifts.
The Weaver and the Witch Queen by
The lives of two women--one desperate only to save her missing sister, the other a witch destined to become queen of Norway--intertwine in this spellbinding, powerful Viking Age historical fantasy novel from the acclaimed author of The Witch's Heart. Oddny and Gunnhild meet as children in tenth century Norway, and they could not be more different: Oddny hopes for a quiet life, while Gunnhild burns for power and longs to escape her cruel mother. But after a visiting wisewoman makes an ominous prophecy that involves Oddny, her sister Signy, and Gunnhild, the three girls take a blood oath to help one another always. When Oddny's farm is destroyed and Signy is kidnapped by Viking raiders, Oddny is set adrift from the life she imagined--but she's determined to save her sister no matter the cost, even as she finds herself irresistibly drawn to one of the raiders who participated in the attack. And in the far north, Gunnhild, who fled her home years ago to learn the ways of a witch, is surprised to find her destiny seems to be linked with that of the formidable King Eirik, heir apparent to the ruler of all Norway. But the bonds--both enchanted and emotional--that hold the two women together are strong, and when they find their way back to each other, these bonds will be tested in ways they never could have foreseen in this deeply moving novel of magic, history, and sworn sisterhood.