Young Adult Historical Fiction

In the late 1940s, the minor league Milwaukee Brewers are foundering yet again and manager Arthur Murphy is desperate. When he sees 17-year-old Mickey Tussler throwing apples into a barrel, he knows he has found the next pitching phenom. But not everyone is so hopeful. Mickey’s autism - a disorder still not truly understood even today - has alienated the boy from the world, and he is berated by other players and fans. Mickey faces immense trials in the harsh and competitive world of baseball while coping with the challenges inherent to his disorder.

Although the mission school bans all that is Navajo, Ned secretly clings to his native language and culture. Proudly joining the U.S. Marines in 1943, he becomes a top-secret Navajo Code Talker. During bloody battles for Japanese islands, Ned and his brave band of code-talking brothers save thousands of lives using Navajo encryption the enemy never cracks.

Judea has always been the crossroads and battlefield of contending nations. It is no less so in this biblical time of the Judges. Uriah Tarhund's Hittite home is destroyed by invading Greeks. His dying father tells him to go south to seek a Canaanite named Sisera. When he saves a young boy from being sacrificed to Moloch, he is given succor for a time by the Hebrews. Later, he finds Sisera and joins him in war against these same people. When the Canaanites are defeated, the young Hittite has the opportunity to come to peace with himself, the Hebrew people, and their God.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents captures the vivid lives of the Garcia sisters, four privileged and rebellious Dominican girls adapting to their new lives in America. In the 1960s, political tension forces the Garcia family away from Santo Domingo and toward the Bronx. The sisters all hit their strides in America, adapting and thriving despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice.

A high school rebel and a minister's daughter find strength in each other in this star-crossed tale of "young but everlasting love" (Chicago Sun-Times). There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every...

In the Old Kingdom, a land of ancient and often terrible magics, 18-year-old orphan Terciel learns the art of necromancy from his great-aunt, Tizanael. But not to raise the Dead, rather to lay them to rest. He is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Tizanael is the Abhorsen, the latest in a long line of people whose task it is to make sure the Dead do not return to life.

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers. Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

If 14-year-old Cassandra Reed makes it through her first day at Miss Castwell’s Institute for the Magical Instruction of Young Ladies without anyone discovering her secret, maybe, just maybe, she’ll let herself believe that she really does belong at Miss Castwell’s. Except Cassandra Reed’s real name is Sarah Smith and up until now, she lived her whole life in the Warren, serving a magical family, the Winters, as all non-magical “Snipes” are bound by magical Guardian law to do. That is, until one day, Sarah accidentally levitates Mrs. Winter’s favorite vase in the parlor....

It has been a year of change since Gemma Doyle arrived at the foreboding Spence Academy. Her mother murdered, her father a laudanum addict, Gemma has relied on an unsuspected strength to turn catty schoolgirls into loyal friends, and has discovered an ability to travel to an enchanted world called the realms, where dark magic runs wild.

"The Near Witch" is only an old story told to frighten children. If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely and always looking for company. There are no strangers in the town of Near. These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life. But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.

When Nic, a slave in the mines outside of Rome, is forced to enter a sealed cavern containing the lost treasures of Julius Caesar, he finds much more than gold and gemstones: He discovers an ancient bulla, an amulet that belonged to the great Caesar and is filled with a magic once reserved for the Gods - magic some Romans would kill for.

With starred reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews, this moving novel by acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers is a modern classic. In the late 1960s, Richie Perry is growing up fast on the battlefields of Vietnam. But in the war-torn jungle, every moment is a struggle to survive. All Richie wants is to make it out alive.

Madrid, 1957. Under the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, Spain is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, tourists and foreign businessmen flood into Spain under the welcoming promise of sunshine and wine. Among them is 18-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of an oil tycoon, who arrives in Madrid with his parents hoping to connect with the country of his mother's birth through the lens of his camera. Photography - and fate - introduce him to Ana, whose family's interweaving obstacles reveal the lingering grasp of the Spanish Civil War.

Seventeen-year-old Lady Alexandra is strong-willed and sharp-tongued - in a house full of older brothers and their friends, she had to learn to hold her own. Not the best makings for an aristocratic lady in Regency London. Yet her mother still dreams of marrying Alex off to someone safe, respectable, and wealthy. But between ball gown fittings, dances, and dinner parties, Alex, along with her two best friends, Ella and Vivi, manages to get herself into what may be her biggest scrape yet.

After the long journey from England, Ellis arrives in America full of hope. James Fort is where a better life will begin for her: where she will work as an indentured servant to Henry Collins and his pregnant wife, gain financial security, and fall deeply in love with bold, glorious Jane Eddowes. But as summer turns to fall, Ellis begins to notice the cracks in this new life—the viciousness of the colonists toward the Indigenous people and the terrifying anger Henry uses to control his wife and Ellis—leaving her to wonder if she has sentenced herself to a prison rather than a new home.

After a life of hurt and disappointment, Raya, the spiky-haired, Doc Marten-wearing 14-year-old decides it’s time to strike out on her own. She leaves the boring English village and what she's determined will be her last foster placement for the excitement of London. But it turns out she’s a witch, with the annoying habit of time-traveling - by accident. And a sarcastic witch’s cat Oscar tags along for the ride. Why would she fling herself into the midst of the Essex Witch Trials in 1645 England?

In the eighth and final installment in The Last Pendragon Saga, Cade and his companions have reached the final reckoning. He must either rise to the promise of his birth and become the legend that prophecy foretold - or face the ultimate destruction of his country and his people.

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.

Gisela's childhood was filled with laughter and visits from nobles such as the duke and his young son. But since her father's death, each day has been filled with nothing but servitude to her stepmother. So when Gisela learns the duke's son, Valten - the boy she has daydreamed about for years - is throwing a ball in hopes of finding a wife, she vows to find a way to attend, even if it's only for a taste of a life she'll never have. To her surprise, she catches Valten's eye.