Teen Readers Historical Fiction

In the small 14th-century English village where he has lived his entire life, the boy has grown up with no name of his own, known only as "Asta's son". But when his mother dies, the boy receives both his rightful name, Crispin, and a lead cross, inscribed with a secret that soon has him fleeing for his life.

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead.

Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, little six-year-old Peekay learns that small can beat big. Armed with this knowledge, he resolves to take on the injustices of his country, and sets his heart on becoming the welterweight champion of the world. Peekay starts to take boxing lessons, makes new friends, collects cacti, and plays the piano. Above all, he learns to think with his head and then with his heart. Peekay discovers that nothing can defeat the determination to be true to yourself: This is the power of one.

After fighting in the Trojan War against her own people, Daphne is plagued by memories—of her family, of her shortcomings, of her lover, Apollo, and of the secrets he and the gods keep. As she reels from the horrendous sacrifice she had to make and her own failure in the battle for Troy, she knows the Titans are out there—just beyond the island of Aeaea where she has taken refuge—raging a war against the world. As Daphne struggles to regain her will to fight as well as rein in the new abilities that have been thrust upon her, the gods call for her help once more.

Seven months ago, Edda was on the World War I front lines as one of two hundred “Hello Girls,” female switchboard operators employed by the US Army. She spent her nights memorizing secret connection codes to stay ahead of spying enemies, and her days connecting vital calls between platoons and bases and generals, all trying to survive—and win—a brutal war. Their lives were in Edda’s hands, and one day, in fateful seconds, everything went wrong.

Before she became a warrior, Ida B. Wells was an incomparable flirt with a quick wit and a dream of becoming a renowned writer. The first child of newly freed parents who thrived in a community that pulsated with hope and possibility after the Civil War, Ida had a big heart, big ambitions, and even bigger questions: How to be a good big sister when her beloved parents perish in a yellow fever epidemic?

Seventeen-year-old Helena “Nell” Cusack came to New York this summer looking for a story—a real story. She dreams of one day writing hard-hitting articles for the New York Chronicle, but so far she's only managed to land a job as a lowly society reporter. That is, until Alice Austen strolls into her life, an audacious street photographer who encourages Nell to shake up polite society…and maybe also take a chance on love.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history, including Voltaire, the French writer who believed in equality for all; Charlotte Brontë, the British novelist who wrote Jane Eyre; Mark Twain, the American who wrote Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer; Jacques Prévert, the writer known in France as 'the People's Poet'; Ayn Rand, whose writing expressed her own philosophical ideas; and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in a Soviet Labour Camp.

Young Reader's Shakespeare returns, with another visually stunning and brilliantly rewritten version of one of the Bard's classic plays. Julius Caesar has become such a part of our culture that many people even quote from it without realizing they are doing so: phrases such as "the dogs of war," "it's Greek to me," and "the evil that men do" have become part of everyday English.