History class making you think the past is dusty and dull? Make history come alive with a little help from the historical fiction reading lists!
In Historical Fiction: 20th Century and Onward, explore the Turn of the Century, the Great Depression, WWII, the Civil Rights Movement, plus much more!
Chasing Charity: Texas Fortunes Trilogy, Book 2 by Marcia Gruver
In this second book of the Texas Fortunes series, Charity Bloom is left stranded at the altar after her best friend takes off with her fiance. How will she ever show her face in town again? After Buddy Pierce discovers oil on the Bloom property, he realizes the real treasure may be above ground-in the form of Charity Bloom. Can he strike it rich in Charity? When her ex-fiance decides he wants her back, whom will Charity choose--the handsome roughneck or the deceitful rogue?
Courting Trouble by Deeanne Gist
It's 1894, the year of Essie's thirtieth birthday, and she decides the Lord has more important things to do than provide her a husband. If she wants one, she needs to catch him herself. So, she writes down the names of all the eligible bachelors in her small Texas town, makes a list of their attributes and drawbacks, closes her eyes, twirls her finger, and...picks one.
Kaspar the Titanic Cat written by Michael Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman
When Kaspar the cat first arrived at London’s Savoy Hotel, it was Johnny Trott who carried him in. But when tragedy befalls the Countess during her stay, Kaspar becomes more than Johnny’s responsibility: Kaspar is Johnny’s new cat, and his new best friend.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo
In 1914, Joey, a beautiful bay-red foal with a distinctive cross on his nose, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges toward the enemy, witnessing the horror of the battles in France.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Living in Germany during World War II, young Liesel Meminger scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist --- books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids.
Countdown by Deborah Wiles
It's 1962, and it seems everyone is living in fear. Twelve-year-old Franny Chapman lives with her family in Washington, DC, during the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Amidst the pervasive threat of nuclear war, Franny must face the tension between herself and her younger brother, figure out where she fits in with her family, and look beyond outward appearances.
Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood
As much as Glory wants to turn 12, sometimes she wishes she could turn back the clock a year. Her sister Jesslyn no longer has the time of day for her now that she’s entering high school. Things have always been so easy with her best friend Frankie, but now suddenly they aren’t. And then there’s the debate about whether or not the town should keep the segregated public pool open.
More books like the ones on this list »
History class making you think the past is dusty and dull? Make history come alive with a little help from the historical fiction reading lists!
In Historical Fiction: Before the 20th Century, explore the Medieval age, Salem Witch Trials, moving to the Western Frontier and the Civil War, plus much more!
To see historical fiction books from the 20th century and onward, click here.
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
As the Revolutionary War begins, 13-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.
More books like the ones on this list »
Editorial Content for Beginning Middle End
Book
Teaser
From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE and TELL ME HOW IT ENDS comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.
Promo
From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE and TELL ME HOW IT ENDS comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.
About the Book
From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE and TELL ME HOW IT ENDS comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.
This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?
While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo --- cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making up --- her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins, not just to the familial past across continents, languages and generations, but also farther back, to a mythical and even geological past.
BEGINNING MIDDLE END evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness, spanning four generations of women. In their travels through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers and elders, and also its volcanoes, its winds and its waters. Weaving myths, ancient philosophy and natural history with fleeting moments of contemporary life, the unforgettable characters in this novel take us on a journey across time and confront some of life’s primary questions: How do stories shape our children’s memories and imagination? How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family’s memories made, and what happens when they disappear?
Warm, funny and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.
Editorial Content for City of Widows
Book
Teaser
An epic saga of fear, resistance, change and reinvention, CITY OF WIDOWS gives voices to the unforgettable Afghan women at a crossroads of history.
Promo
An epic saga of fear, resistance, change and reinvention, CITY OF WIDOWS gives voices to the unforgettable Afghan women at a crossroads of history.
About the Book
From bestselling novelist Nadia Hashimi comes a gripping, occasionally terrifying, yet ultimately hopeful novel focusing on the women of Afghanistan in the years since the Taliban regained power.
In February 2020, the US began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of occupation. A whole generation of Afghan women had been born during that time --- women who had grown up in relative peace, gone to school, entered the professions, even served in the army and Parliament. The women of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban filled the streets again. They knew everything was about to change.
In the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Kabul, women are TV newscasters, shop owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, even soldiers. They include Marjan, who fought with the Afghan army and will risk everything to keep her daughter, Hawa, safe. In her earlier days Marjan was called Rahima and had lived the life of a bacha posh --- a girl raised as a boy until she came of age. Forced into an early marriage, Rahima took the name Marjan when she fled her warlord husband. She’s created a whole new life for herself, one she will not give up easily.
So has Soraya, who defiantly wore red lipstick as she led the army’s all-female combat force over the objections of her upper-class family. Soraya is now a wanted woman whose brother may choose not to shelter her from the Taliban. What will become of her? Or Mina, a journalist and broadcaster whose beautiful face is known to everyone in Kabul --- including the new regime?
Fight or flight? Or find a third way? One thing is for certain: none of these women will meekly accept her fate.
An epic saga of fear, resistance, change and reinvention, CITY OF WIDOWS gives voices to the unforgettable Afghan women at a crossroads of history.
Editorial Content for Country People
Book
Teaser
Joyous, absurd and life-affirming, COUNTRY PEOPLE is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.
Promo
Joyous, absurd and life-affirming, COUNTRY PEOPLE is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.
About the Book
A year in the life of a family as they strike out into the unknown (aka Vermont) --- a “witty and gorgeous” (The Guardian) novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason, the bestselling author of NORTH WOODS.
Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, 12 years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family. So when his wife, Kate, accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the faraway forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.
But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, one who possesses, in Kate’s words, a great capacity “to fall in with anyone, anywhere.” And no sooner does he arrive than he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales --- from a ghostly tree surgeon to a scythe-mad biochemist, from a Shakespearean temptress to a photographer of snowflakes obsessed with chronicling, on thousands of index cards, the world’s delusions in an Inventory of Wrong Ideas.
The new friends, the enchanted woods, the histories: sure, no PhD, but all good fun. Until Miles stumbles upon a bizarre --- perhaps ridiculous --- local legend, which, he soon suspects, might not be just a legend after all.
Joyous, absurd and life-affirming, COUNTRY PEOPLE is a luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.































































































































































