The Age of Discovery (15th – 17th Centuries)
YA F Bjarne The Ring of the Slave Prince
Fourteen-year-old Tom O’Connor, a poor, adventurous, charming liar who lives with his mother and half-sister at a tavern on the island of Nevis in 1639, rescues a slave from drowning, learns he is a prince, and brings him home to Cape Verde, hoping for a grand reward. By Reuter Bjarne 384 pages
England
YA F Hooper The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose
Thrown out of her home by her stepmother in 1670, fifteen-year-old Eliza Rose becomes a companion to the Nell Gwyn, a mistress of Charles II, and learns a surprising truth about her parentage. By Mary Hooper 334 pages
YA F Meyer Loving Will Shakespeare
In Stratford-upon-Avon in the sixteenth century, Anne Hathaway suffers her stepmother’s cruelty and yearns for love and escape, finally finding it in the arms of a boy she has grown up with, William Shakespeare. By Carolyn Meyer 265 pages
YA F Sturteva A True and Faithful Narrative
In London in the 1680s, sixteen-year-old Meg tries to decide whether to marry either of the two men who court her, taking into account both love and her writing ambitions. By Katherine Sturtevant 250 pages
Italy
YA F Dines The Queen’s Soprano
Seventeen year-old Angelica Voglia lives in seventeenth-century Rome and has the voice of an angel, but because the pope forbids women to sing in public, she must escape to Queen Christina’s palace to become a court singer. By Carol Dines 318 pages
The Netherlands
YA F Cullen I am Rembrandt’s Daughter
In Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, Cornelia’s life as the illegitimate child of renowned painter Rembrandt is marked by plague, poverty, and despair at ever earning her father’s love, until she sees hope for a better future in the eyes of a wealthy suitor. By Lynn Cullen 320 pages
The Plague
YA F Turnbull Forged in the Fire
After spending three years apart, eighteen-year-old Susanna is eager to be reunited with her fiancé Will who is due to arrive from London so that they can be married, but it is the summer of 1665 and, unbeknownst to Susanna, the plague is beginning to spread throughout the city. This book is the sequel to No Shame, No Fear. By Ann Turnbull 312 pages
YA F Hooper At the Sign of the Sugared Plum
In June 1665, excited at the prospect of coming to London to work at her sister Sarah’s candy shop, teenaged Hannah is unconcerned about rumors of plague until, as the hot summer advances and increasing numbers of people succumb to the disease, she and Sarah find themselves trapped in the city with no means of escape. By Mary Hooper 169 pages
Petals in the Ashes is the sequel to At the Sign of the Sugared Plum by Mary Hooper.
The Reformation (16th – 17th Centuries)
America
YA F Jordan The Raging Quiet
Suspicious of sixteen-year-old Marnie, a newcomer to their village, the residents accuse her of witchcraft when she discovers that the village madman is not crazy but deaf and she begins to communicate with him through hand gestures. By Sherryl Jordan 266 pages
YA F Lasky Beyond the Burning Time
When, in the winter of 1691, accusations of witchcraft surface in her small New England village, twelve-year-old Mary Chase fights to save her mother from execution. By Kathryn Lasky 272 pages
YA F Rees Witch Child
In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts. By Celia Rees 261 pages
YA F Rinaldi A Break with Charity
While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692. By Ann Rinaldi 257 pages
YA F Speare The Witch of Blackbird Pond
In 1687, sixteen-year-old Kit leaves the West Indies to live with her Puritan relatives in Connecticut Colony. Her friendship with an outcast Quaker woman makes her a target for charges of witchcraft. By Elizabeth Speare 249 pages
England
YA F Hearn The Minister’s Daughter
In 1645 in England, the daughters of the town minister successfully accuse a local healer and her granddaughter of witchcraft to conceal an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but years later during the 1692 Salem trials their lie has unexpected repercussions. By Julie Hearn 263 pages
YA F Turnbull No Shame, No Fear
In England in 1662, a time of religious persecution, fifteen-year-old Susanna, a poor country girl and a Quaker, and seventeen-year-old William, a wealthy Anglican, meet and fall in love against all odds. By Ann Turnbull 293 pages
Forged in the Fire is the sequel to No Shame, No Fear by Ann Turnbull.
Colonial and Revolutionary America
(16th -18th Centuries)
YA F Anderson Fever, 1793
In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic. By Laurie Halse Anderson 251 pages
YA F Anderson The Pox Party: The Astonishing Life of
Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation
Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. By M.T. Anderson 351 pages
YA F Blackwood Year of the Hangman
In 1777, having been kidnapped and taken forcibly from England to the American colonies, fifteen-year-old Creighton becomes part of developments in the political unrest there that may spell defeat for the patriots and change the course of history. By Gary L. Blackwood 261 pages
YA F Collier My Brother Sam Is Dead
Recounts the tragedy that strikes the Meeker family during the Revolution when one son joins the rebel forces while the rest of the family tries to stay neutral. By James Lincoln Collier 216 pages
YA F O’Dell Sarah Bishop
Left alone after her father and brother take opposite sides in the War for Independence, Sarah flees the British by trying to shape a new life for herself in the wilderness. By Scott O’Dell 184 pages
YA F Rinaldi The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre
Fourteen-year-old Rachel Marsh, an indentured servant in the Boston household of John and Abigail Adams, is caught up in the colonists’ unrest that eventually escalates into the massacre of March 5, 1770. By Ann Rinaldi 335 pages
YA F Rinaldi The Secret of Sarah Revere
Paul Revere’s daughter describes her father’s “rides” and the intelligence network of the patriot community prior to the American Revolution. By Ann Rinaldi 320 pages
YA F Rinaldi Time Enough for Drums
Fifteen-year-old Jem and her servant struggle to keep things going at home in Trenton, New Jersey, when the family men join the war for independence from Britain. By Ann Rinaldi 249 pages
Colonization and Native Americans
YA F Cooney The Ransom of Mercy Carter
In 1704, in the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, eleven-year-old Mercy and her family and neighbors are captured by Mohawk Indians and their French allies, and forced to march through bitter cold to French Canada, where some adapt to new lives and some still hope to be ransomed. By Carolyn B. Cooney 249 pages
YA F Kirkpatrick Trouble’s Daughter
When her family is massacred by Lenape Indians in 1643, nine-year-old Susanna, daughter of Anne Hutchinson, is captured and raised as a Lenape. By Katherine Kirkpatrick 247 pages
YA F O’Dell The Serpent Never Sleeps
In the early seventeenth century, Serena Lynn, determined to be with the man she has loved since childhood, travels to the New World and comes to know the hardships of colonial life and the extraordinary Princess Pocahontas. By Scott O’Dell 227 pages
YA F O’Dell Sing Down the Moon
A young Navajo girl recounts the events of 1864 when her tribe was forced to march to Fort Sumner as prisoners of the white soldiers. By Scott O’Dell 137 pages
YA F Richter The Light in the Forest
As part of a peace treaty between the Delaware Indians and British settlers in 1764, a young man who had been kidnapped at the age of four and raised by the Delaware is returned to the settlers, but has difficulty adjusting. By Conrad Richter 120 pages
YA F Speare Calico Captive
In 1754, on the brink of the French and Indian War, young Miriam Willard and her older sister’s family are captured in an Indian raid on Charleston, New Hampshire where they are held for ransom. By Elizabeth George Speare 274 pages
YA F Speare The Sign of the Beaver
Left alone to guard the family’s wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills. By Elizabeth George Speare 135 pages
War of 1812
YA F Rinaldi Broken Days
In 1811, life with her Aunt Hannah in Salem, Massachusetts, becomes even more difficult for fourteen-year-old Ebie with the arrival of a half-Indian girl who claims to be the daughter of Hannah’s sister, Thankful, and with the threat of impending war. By Ann Rinaldi 273 pages
The Age of Enlightenment (18th Century)
England
YA F Gavin Coram Boy
In the mid-eighteenth century, an unsavory character and his simpleton son become involved in the lives of a wealthy English family when that family’s eldest son is disinherited because of his love of music. By Jamila Gavin 327 pages
YA F Holmes Rider in the Dark
In Dorset in 1740, after her father brings home a mysterious and defiant stallion, fifteen-year-old Helena is desperate to keep the horse for her own. By Victoria Holmes 305 pages
YA F Meyer In Mozart’s Shadow
Nannerl Mozart was a musical prodigy who seemed to have a brilliant future. But once her younger brother, Wolfgang, began composing symphonies at the age of five, her career and talents were utterly eclipsed. By Carolyn Meyer 350 pages
YA F Priestley Death and the Arrow
After his friend Will, a pickpocket in London in 1715, is murdered as part of a series of mysterious deaths, fifteen-year-old Tom Marlowe asks his friend Dr. Harker to help find the killer. By Chris Priestley 161 pages
YA F Rees Sovay
It’s England, 1783. When the rich and beautiful Sovay isn’t sitting for portraits, she’s donning a man’s cloak and robbing travelers—in broad daylight. But in a time when political allegiances between France and England are strained, a rogue bandit is not the only thing travelers fear. By Celia Rees 404 pages
France
YA F Meyer Marie, Dancing
A fictionalized autobiography of Marie Van Goethem, the impoverished student from the Paris Opera ballet school who became the model for Edgar Degas’s famous sculpture, “The Little Dancer.” By Carolyn Meyer 255 pages
Ireland
YA F Schmidt Anson’s Way
While serving as a British Fencible to maintain the peace in Ireland, Anson finds that his sympathy for a hedge master places him in conflict with the law of King George II. By Gary D. Schmidt 213 pages
Scotland
YA F Yolen Prince Across the Water
In 1746, a year after the Scottish clans have rallied to the call of their exiled prince, Charles Stuart, to take up arms against England’s tyranny, fourteen-year-old, epileptic Duncan MacDonald and his cousin, Ewan, run away to join the fight at Culloden and discover the harsh reality of war. By Jane Yolen 290 pages
Sailing the High Seas
YA F Avi True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
As the lone lady on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, Charlotte learns the captain is murderous and the crew rebellious. By Avi 215 pages
YA F Collison Star-crossed
Having been discovered as a stowaway as she tries to reach Barbados in 1760 to claim her father’s estate, teenaged English orphan Patricia Kelley struggles to survive by learning to be a ship’s doctor and by disguising herself as a man when necessary. By Linda Collison 408 pages
YA F Lawrence The Buccaneers
In the eighteenth century seventeen-year-old John Spencer sails from England in his schooner, the Dragon, to the Caribbean, where he and the crew encounter pirates, fierce storms, fever, and a strange man who some fear may be cursed. By Iain Lawrence 244 pages
YA F Lawrence The Smugglers
In eighteenth-century England, after his father buys a schooner called the Dragon, sixteen-year-old John sets out to sail it from Kent to London and becomes involved in a dangerous smuggling scheme. By Iain Lawrence 183 pages
YA F Moore The Man with the Silver Oar
In 1718, fifteen-year-old Daniel leaves his guardian uncle’s Quaker household to stowaway on a ship in pursuit of a pirate captain bent on raiding the coast of North America before returning to port in Hispaniola. By Robin Moore 183 pages
The Industrial Revolution (18th – 19th Century)
America
YA F Rinaldi The Blue Door
When her grandmother sends her alone on a difficult journey up North, fourteen-year-old Amanda encounters the exploitation of women in textile mills. By Ann Rinaldi 272 pages
YA F Skurzyns Rockbuster
In 1915, after being asked to sing at the funeral of executed songwriter and member of the international union, Industrial Workers of the World, Joe Hill, eighteen-year-old Utah coal miner Tommy Quinlan begins to accept his past and make decisions about his future. By Gloria Skurzynski 253 pages
Immigration (18th – 19th Century)
YA F Auch Ashes of Roses
Sixteen-year-old Margaret Rose Nolan, newly arrived from Ireland, finds work at New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory shortly before the 1911 fire in which 146 employees died. By Mary Jane Auch 250 pages
YA F Avi The Escape from Home
Driven from their impoverished Irish village, fifteen-year-old Maura and her younger brother meet their landlord’s runaway son in Liverpool while all three wait for a ship to America. By Avi 295 pages
YA F Giff Water Street
In the shadow of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, eighth-graders and new neighbors Bird Mallon and Thomas Neary make some decisions about what they want to do with their lives. By Patricia Reilly Giff 176 pages
YA F Nixon Land of Dreams
In 1902 sixteen-year-old Kristin travels with her family from Sweden to a new life in Minnesota, where she finds herself frustrated by the restrictions placed on what girls of her age are expected or allowed to do. By Joan Lowery Nixon 153 pages
YA F Nixon Land of Hope
Rebekah, a fifteen-year-old Jewish immigrant arriving in New York City in 1902, almost abandons her dream of getting an education when she is forced to work in a sweatshop. By Joan Lowery Nixon 171 pages
YA F Yolen The Rogues
After his family is evicted from their Scottish farm, fifteen-year-old Roddy forms an unlikely friendship with a notorious rogue who helps him outwit a tyrant landlord in order to find a family treasure and make his way to America. By Jane Yolen 277 pages
Napoleonic Era (1799 - 1815)
YA F Dowswell Powder Monkey: Adventures of Sam Witchall
Thirteen-year-old Sam endures harsh conditions, battles, and a shipwreck after being pressed into service aboard the HMS Miranda during the Napoleonic Wars. By Paul Dowswell 275 pages
Prison Ship is the sequel to Powder Monkey by Paul Dowswell.
YA F Holub An Innocent Soldier
A sixteen-year-old farmhand is tricked into fighting in the Napoleonic Wars by the farmer for whom he works, who secretly substitutes him for the farmer’s own son. By Josef Holub 240 pages
YA F Rabin Betsy and the Emperor
In 1815 on the remote island of Saint Helena, fourteen-year-old Betsy Balcombe develops a friendship with Napoleon Bonaparte who, after his defeat at Waterloo, is brought there as an exile and is housed with her family. By Staton Rabin 294 pages
Slavery and the Underground Railroad (19th Century)
YA F Ayers North By Night
Presents the journal of a sixteen-year-old girl whose family operates a stop on the Underground Railroad. By Katherine Ayers 176 pages
YA F Ayers Stealing South
Sixteen-year-old Will Spencer leaves home to become a peddler, but gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to go to Kentucky, steal two slaves, and help them reach their brother in Canada. By Katherine Ayers 201 pages
YA F Brenamen Evvy’s Civil War
In Virginia in 1860, on the verge of the Civil War, fourteen-year-old Evvy chafes at the restrictions that her society places on both women and slaves. By Miriam Brenamen 209 pages
YA F Carbone Stealing Freedom
A novel based on the true story of Ann Maria Weems, a young slave girl from Maryland who endures all kinds of mistreatment and cruelty, including being separated from her family, but who eventually escapes to freedom in Canada. By Elisa Lynn Carbone 258 pages
YA F Draper Copper Sun
Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant-- escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves. By Sharon M. Draper 302 pages
YA F Hahn Promises to the Dead
Twelve-year-old Jesse leaves his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to help a young runaway slave find a safe haven in the early days of the Civil War. By Mary Downing Hahn 202 pages
YA F Lasky True North
Because of the strong influence which her grandfather, an abolitionist, has in her life, fourteen-year-old Lucy assists a fugitive slave girl in her escape. By Kathryn Lasky 267 pages
YA F Rinaldi Come Juneteenth
Fourteen-year-old Luli and her family face tragedy after failing to tell their slaves that President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made them free. By Ann Rinaldi 246 pages
YA F Rinaldi Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons
A fictionalized biography of Phillis Wheatley who, brought to the United States as a slave, later finds renown for her poetry. By Ann Rinaldi 336 pages
YA F Rinaldi Wolf by the Ears
Harriet Hemings, rumored to be the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of his black slaves, struggles with the problems facing her--to escape from the velvet cage that is Monticello, or to stay, and thus remain a slave. By Ann Rinaldi 252 pages
The American Civil War (1861 – 1865)
YA F Blackwood Second Sight
In Washington, D.C., during the last days of the Civil War, a teenage boy who performs in a mind reading act befriends a clairvoyant girl whose frightening visions foreshadow an assassination plot. By Gary L. Blackwood 279 pages
YA F Elliott Annie, Between the States
Instead of spending her teen years at parties and balls, Annie, an idealistic, poetry-loving patriot, finds herself nursing soldiers, hiding valuables, and running the household as the Civil War rages around her family’s Virginia home. By Laura Malone Elliott 488 pages
YA F Keith Rifles for Watie
Sixteen-year-old Jeff Bussey is captured by the Confederate forces led by Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian. In order to discover who is smuggling Union rifles to Confederates, Jeff volunteers to join Watie’s rebel army. By Harold Keith 332 pages
YA F Wells Red Moon at Sharpsburg
Her school shuttered at the outbreak of the Civil War, India Moody, a 12-year-old Southerner, receives tutoring in natural sciences from progressive Emory Trimble, who encourages the smart, restless girl to aim for college. By Rosemary Wells 236 pages
YA F Wemmlinger Booth’s Daughter
In nineteenth-century New York City, Edwina, daughter of the famous actor Edwin Booth and niece of John Wilkes Booth, finds it difficult to escape the family tragedy and to meet the needs of a demanding father while maintaining her independence. By Raymond Wemmlinger 210 pages
For more Civil War book suggestions, see the separate Young Adult Civil War Fiction booklist.
American Frontier (19th Century)
YA F Bruchac Sacajawea
Sacajawea, a Shoshoni Indian interpreter, peacemaker, and guide, and William Clark alternate in describing their experiences on the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Northwest. By Joseph Bruchac 200 pages
YA F Hale Dark Water Rising
While salvaging and rebuilding in the aftermath of the Galveston flood of 1900, sixteen-year-old Seth proves himself in a way that his previous efforts never could, but he must still face his father man-to-man. By Marian Hale 240 pages
YA F Heuston Shakeress
While searching for her true self and for the way to meet the needs of her personal sense of spirituality, an orphaned teenaged girl joins a Shaker community in mid-nineteenth century New England and learns about a new religion called Mormonism. By Kimberley Heuston 207 pages
YA F Holm Boston Jane
Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory. By Jennifer Holm 242 pages
YA F Hudson Sweetgrass
Living on the western Canadian prairie in the nineteenth century, Sweetgrass, a fifteen-year-old Blackfoot Indian girl, saves her family from a smallpox epidemic and proves her maturity to her father. By Jan Hudson 159 pages
YA F Rinaldi The Coffin Quilt
In the 1880s, young Fanny McCoy witnesses the growth of a terrible and violent feud between her Kentucky family and the West Virginia Hatfields, complicated by her older sister Roseanna’s romance with a Hatfield. By Ann Rinaldi 228 pages
YA F Rinaldi The Second Bend in the River
In 1798 Rebecca, a young settler in the Ohio territory, meets the Shawnee called Tecumseh and later develops a deep friendship with him. By Ann Rinaldi 279 pages
YA F Rinaldi A Stitch in Time
Shortly after the War of Independence, Hannah sees her family being torn apart by old secrets and new developments, as her sister resolves to marry a sea captain and other siblings prepare to help start a new town in the Northwestern Territory. By Ann Rinaldi 305 pages
YA F Schulte The Journey West
Abby Windsor Talbot finds that she is bankrupt after her father dies, and she decides to join a wagon train going west. By Elaine L. Schulte 274 pages
YA F Wolf New Found Land
The letters and thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, members of the Corps of Discovery, their guide Sacagawea, and Captain Lewis’s Newfoundland dog, all tell of the historic exploratory expedition to seek a water route to the Pacific Ocean. By Allan Wolf 500 pages
The Victorian Era (1837 – 1901)
America
YA F Blos A Gathering of Days
The journal of a fourteen-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father’s remarriage, and the death of her best friend. By Joan W. Blos 144 pages
YA F Godbersen The Luxe
In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others. By Anna Godbersen 433 pages
Rumors is the sequel to The Luxe.
England
YA F Avi Traitor’s Gate
When his father is arrested as a debtor in 1849 London, fourteen-year-old John Huffman must take on unexpected responsibilities, from asking a distant relative for help to determining why people are spying on him and his family. By Avi 351 pages
YA F Colfer Airman
In the late nineteenth century, when Conor Broekhart discovers a conspiracy to overthrow the king, he is branded a traitor, imprisoned, and forced to mine for diamonds under brutal conditions while he plans a daring escape from Little Saltee prison by way of a flying machine that he must design, build, and, hardest of all, trust to carry him to safety. By Eoin Colfer 412 pages
YA F Hearn Ivy
In mid-nineteenth-century London, young, mistreated, and destitute Ivy, whose main asset is her beautiful red hair, comes to the attention of an aspiring painter of the pre-Raphaelite school of artists who, with the connivance of Ivy’s unsavory family, is determined to make her his model and muse. By Julie Hearn 355 pages
YA F Holeman Search of the Moon King’s Daughter
After her father dies, Emmaline and her family move to a mill town in Victorian England, but when her mother becomes addicted to pain killers and sells her son for money, Emmaline must travel to London to get her brother back. By Linda Holeman 320 pages
YA F Newbery Set in Stone
The alternating narratives of art tutor Samuel Godwin and governess Charlotte Agnew, who work for the wealthy Farrow family in 1898 England, reveal the secrets that almost everyone in the household is hiding. By Linda Newbery 368 pages
YA F Pullman The Ruby in the Smoke
In nineteenth-century London, sixteen-year-old Sally Lockhart, a recent orphan, becomes involved in a deadly search for a mysterious ruby. By Philip Pullman 230 pages
The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well, and The Tin Princess complete the Sally Lockhart series by Philip Pullman.
YA F Pullman The White Mercedes
Seventeen-year-old Chris, living and working in Oxford, falls in love with an elusive girl and while searching for her discovers the devastating consequences of placing his trust in the wrong person. By Philip Pullman 170 pages
YA F Updale Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman?
In Victorian London, after his life is saved by a young physician, a thief utilizes the knowledge he gains in prison and from the scientific lectures he attends as the physician’s case study exhibit to create a new, highly successful, double life for himself. By Eleanor Updale 240 pages
Montmorency on the Rocks, Montmorency and the Assassins, and Montmorency’s Revenge complete the Montmorency series by Eleanor Updale.
YA F Wallace The Unrivalled Spangles
Longing to give up the nineteenth-century English circus life she was born into, sixteen-year-old Ellen Spangle secretly prepares to be a governess and is courted by a wealthy young man until two tragedies lead her to reevaluate her plans. By Karen Wallace 240 pages
Russia
YA F Lasky Broken Song
In 1897, fifteen-year-old Reuven Bloom, a Russian Jew, must set aside his dreams of playing the violin in order to save himself and his baby sister after the rest of their family is murdered. By Kathryn Lasky 158 pages
Women’s Rights
YA F Ritthaler With Love, Amanda
In 1869, Amanda Chappell returns to the Wyoming Territory to take up a teaching position, and she becomes involved in the controversy over women having the right to vote while trying to cope with her feelings for Thomas Lewellen. By Shelley Ritthaler 182 pages
The Edwardian Period (1901 – 1910)
YA F Donnelly A Northern Light
In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiancé, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. By Jennifer Donnelly 389 pages
YA F Schmidt Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner’s--want to change into a tourist spot. By Gary D. Schmidt 219 pages
World War I (1914 – 1918)
YA F Larson Hattie Big Sky
After inheriting her uncle’s homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe. By Kirby Larson 304 pages
YA F Lawrence Lord of the Nutcracker Men
An English boy during World War I comes to believe that the battles he enacts with his toy soldiers control the war his father is fighting on the front. By Iain Lawrence 212 pages
YA F Morpurgo Private Peaceful
When Thomas Peaceful’s older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself. Michael Morpurgo 202 pages
YA F Rostkows After the Dancing Days
A forbidden friendship with a badly disfigured soldier in the aftermath of World War I forces thirteen-year-old Annie to redefine the word “hero” and to question conventional ideas of patriotism. By Margaret Rostkowski 217 pages
YA F Sedgwick The Foreshadowing
Having always been able to know when someone is going to die, Alexandra poses as a nurse to go to France during World War I to locate her brother and to try to save him from the fate she has foreseen for him. By Marcus Sedgwick 293 pages
YA F Slade Megiddo’s Shadow
After the death of his beloved older brother Hector in World War I, sixteen-year-old Edward leaves the family farm in Canada to enlist in Hector’s battalion, where he attempts to come to terms with what has happened. By Arthur Slade 290 pages
The Roaring Twenties (1918-1929)
YA F Haddix Uprising
In 1927, at the urging of twenty-one-year-old Harriet, Mrs. Livingston reluctantly recalls her experiences at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, including miserable working conditions that led to a strike, then the fire that took the lives of her two best friends, when Harriet, the boss’s daughter, was only five years old. By Margaret Peterson Haddix 346 pages
YA F Ibbotson A Countess Below Stairs
A young earl cancels his original wedding plans when he falls in love with the new housemaid, Anna, a penniless Russian countess exiled to England. Eva Ibbotson 383 pages
YA F Kidd Monkey Town: A Story of the Scopes Trial
When her father hatches a plan to bring publicity to their small Tennessee town by arresting a local high school teacher for teaching about evolution, the resulting 1925 Scopes trial prompts fifteen-year-old Frances to rethink many of her beliefs about religion and truth, as well as her relationship with her father. By Ronald Kidd 259 pages
YA F McNaughton To Dance at the Palais Royale
In 1928, seventeen-year-old Aggie Maxwell leaves her home and family in Scotland to begin a new life as a domestic servant in Canada. By Janet McNaughton 218 pages
YA F Myers Harlem Summer
In 1920s Harlem, sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis, an aspiring jazz saxophonist, gets a summer job as an errand boy for the publishers of the groundbreaking African American magazine, “The Crisis,” but soon finds himself on the enemy list of mobster Dutch Shultz. By Walter Dean Myers 165 pages
YA F Newton Runner
In Richmond, Australia, in 1919, fifteen-year-old Charlie Feehan becomes an errand boy for a notorious mobster, hoping that his ability to run will help him, his widowed mother, and his baby brother to escape poverty. By Robert Newton 224 pages
The Depression Era (1929 – 1939)
YA F DeFelice Nowhere to Call Home
When her father kills himself after losing his money in the stock market crash, twelve-year-old Frances, now a penniless orphan, decides to hop aboard a freight train and live the life of a hobo. By Cynthia DeFelice 199 pages
YA F Hesse Out of the Dust
In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. By Karen Hesse 227 pages
YA F Hunt No Promises in the Wind
A fifteen-year-old boy struggles to survive and come to terms with inner conflicts in the desperate world of the Depression. By Irene Hunt 249 pages
YA F Peck A Long Way from Chicago
A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother. By Richard Peck 148 pages
YA F Slade Dust
Eleven-year-old Robert is the only one who can help when a mysterious stranger arrives, performing tricks and promising to bring rain, at the same time children begin to disappear from a dust bowl farm town in Saskatchewan in the 1930s. By Arthur Slade 183 pages
YA F Taylor Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
A Black family living in the South during the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don’t understand. By Mildred D. Taylor 276 pages
Let the Circle Be Unbroken is the sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor.
World War II (1937 – 1939)
YA F Ibbotson The Morning Gift
In pre-World War II Vienna, Ruth Berger becomes the love and inspiration of brilliant pianist Heini Radek, but with the coming of Hitler’s forces, Ruth must choose between Heini and an Englishman who makes her a tempting offer. By Eva Ibbotson 410 pages
YA F Ibbotson A Song for Summer
A young Englishwoman travels to Austria to transform a boarding school and meets Marek, a school handyman and composer, but the war separates them. By Eva Ibbotson 282 pages
YA F Greene Summer of My German Soldier
When German prisoners of war are brought to her Arkansas town during World War II, twelve-year-old Patty Bergen, a Jewish girl, shelters a pacifist German POW who escapes. She must face the consequences of her actions as she risks losing her family and friends over her new friendship. By Bette Greene 199 pages
YA F Hughes Soldier Boys
Two boys, one German and one American, are eager to join their respective armies during World War II, and their paths cross at the Battle of the Bulge. By Dean Hughes 162 pages
YA F Kerr Your Eyes in Stars
In their small New York town, two teenaged girls become friends while helping each other make sense of their families, neighbors, and selves as they approach adulthood in the years preceding World War II. By M.E. Kerr 229 pages
YA F Napoli Stones in Water
After being taken by German soldiers from a local movie theater along with other Italian boys, Roberto is forced to work in Germany before desperately trying to make his way back home to Venice. By Donna Jo Napoli 209 pages
YA F Salisbury Under the Blood-red Sun
Tomikazu Nakaji’s biggest concerns are baseball, homework, and a local bully, until life with his Japanese family in Hawaii changes drastically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. By Graham Salisbury 246 pages
YA F Salisbury Eyes of the Emperor
Following orders from the United States Army, several young Japanese-American men train K-9 units to hunt Asians during World War II. By Graham Salisbury 229 pages
YA F Taylor The Bomb
In 1945, when the Americans liberate the Bikini Atoll from the Japanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat. By Theodore Taylor 197 pages
YA F Westall Blitzcat
During World War II a black cat journeys all across war-ravaged England in an effort to track down her beloved master. By Robert Westall 230 pages
YA F Zindel The Gadget
In 1945, having joined his father at Los Alamos, where he and other scientists are working on a secret project to end World War II, thirteen-year-old Stephen becomes caught in a web of secrecy and intrigue. By Paul Zindel 184 pages
England
YA F Westall The Kingdom by the Sea
During World War II, twelve-year-old Harry and a stray dog travel through war-torn England in search of safety. By Robert Westall 175 pages
France
YA F Bradley For Freedom
Despite the horrors of World War II, a French teenager pursues her dream of becoming an opera singer, which takes her to places where she gains information about what the Nazis are doing--information that the French Resistance needs. By Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 181 pages
Germany
YA F Tunnell Brothers in Valor
Three German teenagers who are members of the Mormon Church join forces to create a youth resistance movement during World War II, putting their lives at risk. By Michael O. Tunnell 260 pages
Italy
YA F Napoli Fire in the Hills
Upon returning to Italy, fourteen-year-old Roberto struggles to survive, first on his own, then as a member of the resistance, fighting against the Nazi occupiers while yearning to reach home safely and for an end to the war. By Donna Jo Napoli 215 pages
Netherlands
YA F Reuter The Boys From St. Petri
In 1942, a group of young men begin a series of increasingly dangerous protests against the German invaders of their Danish homeland. By Bjarne Reuter 215 pages
Poland
YA F Laird Shadow of the Wall
Living with his mother and two sisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, Misha is befriended by the director of the orphanage, Dr. Korczak, and finds a purpose to his life when he joins a resistance organization. By Christa Laird 144 pages
YA F Orlev The Man From the Other Side
Living on the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, fourteen-year-old Marek and his grandparents shelter a Jewish man in the days before the Jewish uprising. By Uri Orlev 186 pages
The Holocaust
YA F Bat-Ami Two Suns in the Sky
Fifteen-year-old Adam, a Yugoslav Jew is living in the refugee camp at Oswego, New York when he begins a romance with a local girl named Chris. By Miriam Bat-Ami 223 pages
YA F Friedman Escaping into the Night
Thirteen-year-old Halina Rudowski narrowly escapes the Polish ghetto and flees to the forest, where she is taken in by an encampment of Jews trying to survive World War II. By D. Dina Friedman 208 pages
YA F Mazer Good Night Maman
After spending years fleeing from the Nazis in war-torn Europe, twelve-year-old Karin Levi and her older brother Marc find a new home in a refugee camp in Oswego, New York. By Norma Fox Mazer 185 pages
For more Holocaust book suggestions, see the separate Young Adult Holocaust booklist.
The Cold War (1945 – 1989)
America
YA F Cushman The Loud Silence of Francine Green
In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values. By Karen Cushman 225 pages
YA F Fuqua The Willoughby Spit Wonder
In 1950s Norfolk, Virginia, as Carter and his sister watch their dying father struggle to remain cheerful, Carter decides to emulate Prince Namor, comic superhero, in order to inspire his father to stay alive. By Jonathon Scott Fuqua 160 pages
YA F Krisher Fallout
The move of an unconventional Hollywood family to a coastal North Carolina town in the early 1950s results not only in an unlikely friendship between high school age Genevieve and newcomer Brenda but also in a challenge to traditional ways of thinking. By Trudy Krisher 364 pages
YA F Krisher Spite Fences
As she struggles with her troubled relationship with her mother during the summer of 1960, a young girl is also drawn into the violence, hatred, and racial tension in her small Georgia town. By Trudy Krisher 283 pages
Kinship is the sequel to Spite Fences by Trudy Krisher.
YA F Levine Catch a Tiger by the Toe
In the Bronx, New York, during the McCarthy era, twelve-year-old Jamie keeps a terrible secret about her
family, but when the truth is exposed, her parents lose their jobs and she is fired from the school newspaper. By Ellen Levine 208 pages
YA F Mackall Eva Underground
In 1978, a high school senior is forced by her widowed father to move from their comfortable Chicago suburb to help with an underground education movement in communist Poland. By Dandi Daley Mackall 239 pages
England
YA F Hendry Double Vision
Fifteen-year-old Eliza, the middle of three daughters, longs to escape from her predictable life in a small English seaside village in the 1950s, but she does not known to what she wishes to escape. By Diana Hendry 270 pages
Germany
YA F Degens Freya on the Wall
Fourteen-year-old Freya, whose home has always been in East Germany, offers her view of the complex events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. By T. Degens 281 pages
The 20th Century (1950s – 1960s)
YA F Holt My Louisiana Sky
Growing up in Saitter, Louisiana, in the 1950s, twelve-year-old Tiger Ann struggles with her feelings about her stern, but loving grandmother, her mentally slow parents, and her good friend and neighbor, Jesse. By Kimberly Willis Holt 200 pages
YA F Trottier Three Songs for Courage
In 1956, sixteen-year-old Gordon Westley finds his summer vacation shattered by tragedy, forcing him to come face-to-face with the darkest--and the sweetest--side of human nature. By Maxine Trottier 324 pages
YA F Weaver Full Service
In the summer of 1965, teenager Paul Sutton, a northern Minnesota farm boy, takes a job at a gas station in town, where his strict religious upbringing is challenged by new people and experiences. By Will Weaver 231 pages
YA F White Belle Prater’s Boy
When Woodrow’s mother suddenly disappears, he moves to his grandparents’ home in a small Virginia town where he befriends his cousin and together they find strength to face the terrible losses and fears in their lives. By Ruth White 196 pages
Racism and Civil Rights (1920s – 1960s)
YA F Crowe Mississippi Trial, 1955
In Mississippi in 1955, a sixteen-year-old finds himself at odds with his grandfather over issues surrounding the kidnapping and murder of a fourteen-year-old African American from Chicago. By Chris Crowe 231 pages
YA F Curtis The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963
The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963. By Christopher Pail Curtis 210 pages
YA F Davis Just Like Martin
Following the deaths of two classmates in a bomb explosion at his Alabama church, fourteen-year-old Stone organizes a children’s march for civil rights in the autumn of 1963. By Ossie Davis 215 pages
YA F Hesse Witness
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town. By Karen Hesse 161 pages
YA F Houston New Boy
As the first black student in an elite Connecticut boarding school in the late 1950s, Rob Garrett, 16, knows he is making history. He works hard not to fall off the honor roll, even as he misses his home in Virginia and feels like a stranger in the dorm and in class. By Julian Houston 282 pages
YA F Kadohata Kira-Kira
Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. By Cynthia Kadohata 244 pages
YA F Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
Scout’s father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town during the 1930s. By Harper Lee 296 pages
YA F Veciana Flight to Freedom
Thirteen-year-old Yara describes life with her family in Havana, Cuba, in 1967 as well as her experiences in Miami, Florida, after immigrating there to be reunited with relatives. By Ana Veciana-Suarez 215 pages
Vietnam War (1961 – 1975)
YA F Hughes Search and Destroy
Recent high school graduate Rick Ward, undecided about his future and eager to escape his unhappy home life, joins the army and experiences the horrors of the war in Vietnam. By Dean Hughes 216 pages
YA F Myers Fallen Angels
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam. By Walter Dean Myers 309 pages
