October 4, 2020 | jonesw
From Ancient China to California in the 1990s, step back in time with these fantastic historical fiction titles.
With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.
After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.
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.
1890, Atlanta. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works 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.
At the Castellana Hilton in 1957 Madrid, eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson connects with Ana Moreno through photography and fate as Daniel discovers the incredibly dark side of the city under Generalissimo Franco's rule.
Vowing to make his yearlong escapade across Europe his last hurrah before taking over the family estate, Henry "Monty" Montague and his best friend Percy find themselves in the middle of a dangerous manhunt involving pirates and highwaymen.
Armed with two bikes and an unlimited supply of root beer floats, Ethan and Juniper set out to find their place in a town that’s bent on rejecting them. As Ethan is confronted for the first time by what it means to be Black in America, Juniper tries to help him see the beauty in even the ugliest reality, and that even the darkest days can give rise to an invincible summer.
Daven McQueen’s Juniper Jones is a character for all ages in this sweet coming of age story set in 1950s Alabama.
After their friend Steph is murdered, Quadir, Jarrell, and Steph's sister Jasmine promote his music under a new rap name, the Architect, but when his demo catches a music label rep's attention, the trio must prove his talent from beyond the grave.
Sixteen-year-old Catholic Stefania Podgarska has worked in the Diamant family's grocery store for four years, even falling in love with one of their sons, Izio; but when the Nazis came to PrzemyÅl, Poland, the Jewish Diamants are forced into the ghetto (and worse) but Izio's brother Max manages to escape, and Stefania embarks on a dangerous course--protecting thirteen Jews in her attic, caring for her younger sister, Helena, and keeping everything secret from the two Nazi officers who are living in her house.
When her ailing father is conscripted to fight invaders from the north, Mulan dresses as a man to take his place in the army, but an old enemy and an attraction for her troop's commander complicate her mission.
Tammy and Sharon are assigned to be pen pals over the summer and have no idea how much they have in common, but when Tammy is forced to come out of the closet, she shows up on Sharon's doorstep.
Eighteen-year-old Lucas Baker's plans for a quiet summer and a trip to Woodstock are overshadowed by draft risks, tests to his fidelity, a bad LSD trip, a run-in with a motorcycle gang, and his parents' worsening estrangement.
For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese-American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate--and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.