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Drawn from the author’s own experiences, this is the moving story of a young Jewish girl, Rosemarie Brenner, and her experiences in a concentration camp during World War II.

Based on historical fact, this is a story that brings World War II home, just off the coast of Maine where Jill Winters has been sent to live with her grandmother. With her mother traveling the Atlantic to visit a sick brother and German submarines stalking in the nearby waters, Jill is feeling very nervous about the war, especially after finding a carrier pigeon transporting a note written in German. After she hears her grandmother and a German friend repeat the message on the note, she becomes suspicious. Determined to find the Nazi spy and solve the mystery, Jill finds herself in her own deep waters.

Soonie’s great-grandma was just seven years old when she was sold to a big plantation without her ma and pa, and with only some fabric and needles to call her own. She pieced together bright patches with secret meanings made into quilts called Show Ways — maps for slaves to follow to freedom. When she grew up and had a little girl, she passed on this knowledge. 

Tree Ear, a homeless orphan, longs to work as a potter, a respected but competitive employment — especially for a boy who lives under a bridge. Set in 12th century Korea, this Newbery Medal winning novel is as relevant as if it were taking place today.

In 1860 Louisiana, as eighty-year-old Madame Sylvie, mistress of a failing plantation, sits for a portrait, horrific stories are revealed: that of Thisbe, an enslaved woman who must stand silent by her mistress but observes everything, and of Byron, heir to the plantation, whose desires cannot fit with his family duty.

When 13-year-old Lakshmi is sold into prostitution by her stepfather, she ends up in a brothel in the slums of Calcutta, where her life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Although a novel, this story reflects a situation that many girls around the world endure today.

Based on a true story, this is a teacher’s recollection of how is life was as a teenager fighting on the side of the Germans as a Hitler Youth. At 16, Erik Brandt was made to fight on the Russian front as a Nazi because of his ability to speak Russian. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that he wants out of this war, especially after he sees the cruelty done to the Jews. After a particular brutal attack on the Germans by the Russians, Erik switches his uniform with that of a dead Russian soldier and feigns amnesia. It is as Soldier X that Erik escapes with a nurse and lives to tell about his inner torment.

Have you ever wondered who your ancestors are or how their lives shaped yours? Milkman, a young, African-American man, sets out to discover his ancestry and learns how racism, injustice, and the disparities between the rich and poor have affected his life and his relatives’ lives. 

Patty Bergen is an abused girl who befriends an escaped German prisoner of war. In spite of what her parents and others say about the Germans, Patty gets to know Anton and falls in love with his gentle spirit.

Robin believes in his country and volunteers to fight in Iraq, but when he arrives in the war zone he realizes that fighting for freedom is not always black and white.

It’s 1953, and the United States has just executed an American couple convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. Everyone is on edge as the Cold War standoff between communism and democracy leads to the rise of Senator Joe McCarthy and his zealous hunt for people he calls subversives or communist sympathizers. Suspicion, loyalty oaths, blacklists, political profiling, hostility to foreigners, and the assumption of guilt by association divide the nation. Richard and his family believe deeply in American values and love of country, especially since Richard’s father works for the FBI. Yet when a family from Czechoslovakia moves in down the street with a son Richard’s age named Vlad, their bold ideas about art and politics bring everything into question.

Richard is quickly drawn to Vlad’s confidence, musical sensibilities, and passion for literature, which Richard shares. But as the nation’s paranoia spirals out of control, Richard longs to prove himself a patriot, and blurred lines between friend and foe could lead to a betrayal that destroys lives.

Arguably Mark Twain’s most famous novel — indeed, one of the greatest works of American literature — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brings together two people from the lower rungs of society, an ill-educated boy escaping an abusive father and a kind, strong man escaping slavery, and puts them on a raft going down the Mississippi River. The raft gives us the quintessential image of Huck Finn, but in fact much of the novel takes place on land, where the protagonists repeatedly find themselves having to escape from one bind or another.

Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore’s proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces.

Set during the American Revolution, Octavian is raised as a pampered African prince by a society of Enlightenment philosophers who view him as an experiment. Realizing that his freedom is an illusion, Octavian sets off on a journey to find freedom and a place in the world. These books will challenge everything you have ever learned about the Revolutionary War.

See also The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. II: The Kingdom on the Waves.

“Opening in the summer of 1847, this story follows an Ojibwe family through four seasons; it focuses on young Omakayas, who turns “eight winters old” during the course of the novel. In fascinating, nearly step-by-step details, the author describes how they build a summer home out of birchbark, gather with extended family to harvest rice in the autumn, treat an attack of smallpox during the winter and make maple syrup in the spring to stock their own larder and to sell to others.” — Publishers Weekly

With the Rodney King riots closing in on Black high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble protecting her from the difficult realities most Black people face, begins to crumble.

Living in Nazi Germany, young Liesel and her foster family choose to lie and steal to protect a Jewish refugee hiding in their basement. Narrated by Death, this is not your typical World War II story.

Berlin, 1942: When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move to a new house far, far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people in the distance.While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different from his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Emi is filled with sadness as she prepares to leave her home for the internment camp where she and her fellow Japanese-Americans will be forced to live. Just before she leaves, her best friend Laurie brings her a special bracelet so that Emi will not forget her. When Emi loses the bracelet though in the crowds, she feels that has lost so much more and even more alone — until she realizes that maybe she doesn’t need the bracelet to remember Laurie after all.

In this historical fiction novel, 12-year-old Hannah find herself transported back in time. As she experiences the horrific events of the Holocaust that were often recounted by her grandparents, Hannah finds new reasons to embrace her family and culture.

A young woman discovers her mysterious powers could help catch a killer in the first book of The Diviners series—a stunning supernatural historical mystery set in 1920s New York City.

In 1890, seventeen-year-old Chinese American Jo Kuan works by day as a lady’s maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, “Dear Miss Sweetie.”

Based on his father’s immigration files from Angel Island, Laurence Yep and his niece Dr. Kathleen S. Yep bring us the story of a ten-year-old boy from China who must prepare for his interrogation at Angel Island. The young boy memorizes everything from the layout of his village to the number of doors in the house, and continues his study on the sea voyage to San Francisco with his father. The Yeps provide a powerful account of the intensity and challenge Chinese immigrants faced at Angel Island, as well as the complexity of the relationships for those families who were spread between China and the U.S.

The year is 1775, and twelve-year-old Gabriel Cooper is an orphaned patriot stuck living in a house of British loyalists. But when the boy discovers a discarded drum in the East River, he sees it as a call to leave his home in New York and join the American colonists’ fight for freedom in Boston. With rich, historic details, Gabriel’s adventure will captivate readers as they join him on the difficult journey to his destiny.