History & Culture

In September 1941, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht surrounded Leningrad. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself was Dmitri Shostakovich....

Ellie has struggled to put the war behind her and lead a normal life....

The World's Best Short Stories is a compendium of crazy and oddly funny stories from different periods across human history. You’ll learn about pompous politicians, admirable animals, and some very strange oddballs....

The explosive finale to the Blood of Gods and Royals epic fantasy series is full of royalty, magic, danger, and betrayal and featuring the life of a young Prince Alexander before he became Alexander the Great....

Two teenagers discover true love aboard the doomed ocean liner....

The Librarian of Auschwitz is the incredible story of a girl who risked her life to keep the magic of books alive during the Holocaust....

The deep and enduring friendship between Vincent and Theo Van Gogh defined both brothers' lives....

An international best seller now available in English for the first time....

A critically acclaimed, multilayered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II, where gods hold the fates - and the hearts - of four mortals in their hands....

Here are the real events that inspired Gary Paulsen to write Brian Robeson’s story in Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian's Hunt....

Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, little six-year-old Peekay learns that small can beat big....

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets the 1700s in this hilarious and swashbuckling standalone teen historical fiction novel....

Set during and after the First World War, A Very Long Engagement is the tale of a young woman's search for her fiancé who she believes might still be alive....

The number one New York Times best-selling series that started with Stalking Jack the Ripper and Hunting Prince Dracula continues in this third bloody installment! A luxurious ocean liner becomes a floating prison of madness and horror when passengers are murdered one by one....

Drawing from her experiences as an Indigenous scientist, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrated how all living things—from strawberries and witch hazel to water lilies and lichen—provide us with gifts and lessons every day in her bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass....

Audrey Rose and Thomas are on the hunt for the depraved, elusive killer known as the White City Devil. A deadly game of cat-and-mouse has them fighting to stay one step ahead of the brilliant serial killer - or see their fateful romance cut short by unspeakable tragedy....

This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.

Mara is a proud and beautiful slave girl who yearns for freedom in ancient Egypt, under the rule of Queen Hatshepsut....

Lukas wants only two things: to rebuild his castle home in time to make it through the coming winter and to reconnect with the sister who was stolen from him in a plot against his family. But then an astrologer appears with foreboding news....

Ten concentration camps. Ten different places where you are starved, tortured, and worked mercilessly. It's something no one could imagine. But it is what Yanek Gruener has to face....

Irene Gut was just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it....

From National Book Award Finalist Albert Marrin comes the moving story of Janusz Korczak, the heroic Polish Jewish doctor who devoted his life to children, perishing with them in the Holocaust....

Brooklyn, 1998. Biggie Smalls was right: Things done changed. But that doesn’t mean Quadir and Jarrell are cool letting their best friend Steph’s music lie forgotten under his bed after he’s murdered - not when his rhymes could turn any Bed-Stuy corner into a party....

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America....

It's the 1920s - cars and planes are new. Lily Gabriel is scruffy and confident and takes no nonsense from anyone. Antony is rich, spoiled, and arrogant, and Lily is in love with him....