Collection: Historical Fiction

**Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist**
In 1983, the world stands at the brink of nuclear annihilation, and only a few people are aware of it. A riveting story of how two men's lives intersect in the midst of an existential crisis, The Able Archers is told through the eyes of two key participants: a young American intelligence officer, Captain Kevin Cattani; and his more experienced Soviet counterpart, Colonel Ivan Levchenko.The story plays out from the skies over Siberia to the gritty, dangerous streets of East Berlin. The radically different worldviews of Cattani and Levchenko punctuate the deep divisions of the Cold War. The evolving relationship between the two men also highlights the humanity common to both sides. Only by working together will Cattani and Levchenko find a way to prevent a global nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

This critically acclaimed picture book suitable for a wide range of readers chronicles the Great Migration--the diaspora of African Americans who headed to the North after WWI--through the iconic paintings and words of renowned artist Jacob Lawrence. The New York Times praised it as "a compassionate and sensitive portrayal of history."

After World War I, large numbers of African Americans began leaving their homes in the rural South in search of employment, and a better life, in the industrial cities of the North like Chicago and Pittsburgh.

Jacob Lawrence chronicled their journey of hope in his sixty-panel Migration Series, a flowing narrative sequence of paintings that can now be found divided between the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection.

In this profound picture book, Lawrence brings all those landmark paintings together and pairs them with poetic text that further explores the experience of those enduring this mass exodus. From dealing with poor working conditions and competition for living space to widespread prejudice and racism, this is the story of strength, courage, and hope of the more than six million African Americans who were trying to build better lives for themselves and their families.

This book features an introduction from Lawrence--whose family was part of this great migration--about its personal significance as well as a poem by Newbery Honor author Walter Dean Myers.

• ALA Notable Book
• ALA Booklist Editors' Choice
• IRA/CBC Teachers' Choice
• Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies (NCSS/CBC)
• Carter G. Woodson Outstanding Merit Book

Heroes shall rise and fall, the earth shall be stained red, and the fate of the Banished Lands will be decided once and for all in A Time of Courage, the gripping conclusion to the Of Blood and Bone trilogy.
Now is the time of reckoning...
The demon-king Asroth is free of his iron prison, and thewhole of the Banished Lands stands on the brink of domination.
With the Ben-Elim broken and routed, half-breed Riv and asmall band of comrades must try to find a way to strike at the demon forces.
Meanwhile, Drem is with the Order of the Bright Star on a desperate march south to join the battle. He fears what they will find along the way, even as he knows it is better to fight and fall than to live without hope.

Of Blood and BoneA Time of DreadA Time of BloodA Time of Courage
The Faithful and the FallenMaliceValorRuinWrath

"Rich in colorful characters, Feldman's riveting tale is one of resilience, determination, and hope." --Booklist

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each...

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble With You is the story of a young woman whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Raised never to step out of bounds, educated in one of the Sister Seven Colleges for a career as a wife and mother, torn between her cousin Mimi who is determined to keep her a "nice girl"--the kind that marries a doctor--and her aunt Rose who has a rebellious past of her own, Fanny struggles to raise her young daughter and forge a new life by sheer will and pluck. When she gets a job as a secretary to the "queen" of radio serials--never to be referred to as soaps--she discovers she likes working, and through her friendship with an actress who stars in the series and a man who writes them, comes face to face with the blacklist which is destroying careers and wrecking lives. Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what she knows is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light years away and strangely immediate.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison's Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe's house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe's terrible secret explodes into the present.

Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison's unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote island off of Scotland to "clear" the last remaining inhabitant, who has no intention of leaving--an unforgettable tale of resilience, change, and hope.

John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted.

Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff and is found, unconscious and badly injured, by Ivar who takes him home and tends to his wounds. The two men do not speak a common language, but as John builds a dictionary of Ivar's world, they learn to communicate and, as Ivar sees himself for the first time in decades reflected through the eyes of another person, they build a fragile, unusual connection.

Unfolding in the 1840s in the final stages of the infamous Scottish Clearances--which saw whole communities of the rural poor driven off the land in a relentless program of forced evictions--this singular, beautiful, deeply surprising novel explores the differences and connections between us, the way history shapes our deepest convictions, and how the human spirit can survive despite all odds. Moving and unpredictable, sensitive and spellbinding, Clear is a profound and pleasurable read.

"The Queen's Gambit meets The Alice Network in this epic, action-packed novel of family, loss, and one woman's journey to save all she holds dear--including freedom itself." --Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars

From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday--over a million copies sold--comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.

As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan's Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she's the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.

Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn't foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one's past.

Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight--on the battlefields and within ourselves--and the courage found in unexpected places.

Three women uncover the secrets of a Georgia plantation that embodies the intertwined histories of Indigenous and enslaved Black communities--the fascinating debut novel, inspired by a true story, of the National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of All That She Carried, now featuring a new introduction and discussion guide.

"The Cherokee Rose is a mic drop--an instant classic. An invitation to listen to the urgent, sweet choruses of past and present."--Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST

Conducting research for her weekly history column, Jinx, a free-spirited Muscogee (Creek) historian, travels to Hold House, a Georgia plantation originally owned by Cherokee chief James Hold, to uncover the mystery of what happened to a tribal member who stayed behind after Indian removal, when Native Americans were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands in the nineteenth century.

At Hold House, she meets Ruth, a magazine writer visiting on assignment, and Cheyenne, a Southern Black debutante seeking to purchase the estate. Hovering above them all is the spirit of Mary Ann Battis, the young Indigenous woman who remained in Georgia more than a century earlier. When they discover a diary left on the property that reveals even more about the house's dark history, the three women's connections to the place grow deeper. Over a long holiday weekend, Cheyenne is forced to reconsider the property's rightful ownership, Jinx reexamines assumptions about her tribe's racial history, and Ruth confronts her own family's past traumas before surprising herself by falling into a new romance.

Imbued with a nuanced understanding of history, The Cherokee Rose brings the past to life as Jinx, Ruth, and Cheyenne unravel mysteries with powerful consequences for them all.

A New York Times best historical novel of the year, Victoria Mas's The Mad Women's Ball is a feminist literary thriller, adapted as a major film for Amazon Prime.

"In this darkly delightful Gothic treasure, Mas explores grief, trauma, and sisterhood behind the walls of Paris's infamous Salpêtrière hospital." --Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

The Salpêtrière Asylum: Paris, 1885. Dr. Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad and cast out from society. But the truth is much more complicated--these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, wayward daughters, or girls born from adulterous relationships. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is the Lenten ball--the Mad Women's Ball--when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpêtrière dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.

Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugenie has a secret: she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous, banned work that all of Paris is talking about, The Book of Spirits, Eugenie is determined to escape from the asylum--and the bonds of her gender--and seek out those who will believe in her. And for that she will need Genevieve' help . . .

The epic story of war and medicine from the award-winning author of North Woods and The Piano Tuner is "a dream of a novel...part mystery, part war story, part romance" (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See).

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient, and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

"The Winter Soldier brims with improbable narrative pleasures...These pages crackle with excitement... A spectacular success." --Anthony Marra, New York Times Book Review

Activity book meets adventure in this series that is Choose Your Own Adventure meets I Survived meets doodle book! Doodle, decide, and demolish your way out of history's greatest events--the perfect book for fun and educational summer reading!

Reader, beware! Once you open this book, there is no turning back. You will have three chances to survive the Titanic's fateful voyage. Decide which path to take first.

Passenger: Exploring the ship is fun! Just don't get caught on the wrong deck when there's an iceberg ahead!

Crew Member: You work for a family in first class. Can you persuade them to save you along with their beloved dog?

Stowaway: You snuck onto this ship. Can you draw your way onto a lifeboat?

In the Escape This Book! series, YOU are the star of history! Doodle your way through adventures as you decide the best path for survival. Don't be afraid to rip or fold a page. . . . Your escape may depend on it!

The Boxers & Saints Boxed Set from Gene Luen Yang, one of the greatest comics storytellers alive, brings all his formidable talents to bear in this astonishing work.

In two volumes, Boxers & Saints tells two parallel stories. The first is of Little Bao, a Chinese peasant boy whose village is abused and plundered by Westerners claiming the role of missionaries. Little Bao, inspired by visions of the Chinese gods, joins a violent uprising against the Western interlopers. Against all odds, their grass-roots rebellion is successful.

But in the second volume, Yang lays out the opposite side of the conflict. A girl whose village has no place for her is taken in by Christian missionaries and finds, for the first time, a home with them. As the Boxer Rebellion gains momentum, Vibiana must decide whether to abandon her Christian friends or to commit herself fully to Christianity.

Boxers & Saints is one of the most ambitious graphic novels First Second has ever published. It offers a penetrating insight into not only one of the most controversial episodes of modern Chinese history, but into the very core of our human nature. Gene Luen Yang is rightly called a master of the comics form, and this book will cement that reputation.

This boxed set includes the trade paperback Boxers as well as the trade paperback Saints, packaged together in one slipcase.

A New York Times bestseller
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature
A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013

A tale of high adventure and survival!

In the early twentieth century, Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi Sugimoto searches the wilderness of Hokkaido for a hoard of hidden gold. With only a cryptic map and a native Ainu girl to help him, Saichi must also deal with every murderous cutthroat, bandit and rogue who knows about the treasure!

Lieutenant Tsurumi's men begin their all-out assault on the Goryokaku Fortress under the cover of naval bombardment. Hijikata still has some tricks up his sleeve and an old cannon provides needed support. But now, getting Asirpa and the deed for the Ainu land out of the fortress and to safety is the goal. In this battle, scores will be settled and old enemies will come face-to-face. Although often at odds, Hijikata and Sugimoto will find themselves fighting together, each with their own understanding of the meaning of Bushido...

Twelve-year-old Paulina is delivering bread to her new friend Fabia's home when the air begins to fill with smoke and ash. Mount Vesuvius is erupting! Fabia's father leaves to help fellow Pompeii residents evacuate, telling the girls to make their way to the port where they can board boats to escape. But Paulina cannot leave her family behind. The two girls make their way through the city, helping others where they can. Will they escape the volcano disaster and be reunited with their loved ones? Part of the Girls Survive Graphic Novel series, Paulina and the Disaster at Pompeii brings a defining historical even to life.

The second book in New York Times bestselling author Cathy Maxwell's humorous and heartwarming series The Gambler's Daughters, in which three aristocratic Irish sisters are determined to make their ways in Regency London...only to learn the path to making a brilliant society marriage isn't easy--especially when Love gets in the way. Here, a disaster in a storm throws headstrong sister Elise into the company, and arms, of a rake on the run.

Elise Lanscarr is furious--her very own sister has married the man Elise had marked for herself. Feeling betrayed, she flees London, determined to return to the one place where everything was once as it should be: her family home in Ireland. But when her stagecoach crashes in a storm, she finds herself cast adrift in the wilds with no one to help but a rough-looking, albeit handsome, stranger--one who has obviously never been informed of the "proper" rules of society.

Christopher Fitzhugh-Cox, the missing Duke of Winderton, has fled all responsibility, preferring the persona of the devil-may-care rake "Kit." He proudly lives hand-to-mouth, rubbing shoulders with commoners and thieves alike. But while he values his freedom, he's never been one to leave a lady in trouble--even one as opinionated, albeit intriguing, as Elise.

But this night of booming thunder and flashing lightning is just the beginning of an unexpected, often dangerous, adventure. And two disillusioned souls who have been caught up in their own webs of expectations and disappointments are about to learn that life always holds surprises, and gifts. And all it asks in return is that they risk everything for Love . . .

The Eisner-nominated webcomic in glorious print! Don't miss this swashbuckling graphic novel about daring exploration and adventure.

Ludovica Bonnaire, a pampered Victorian noble, dreams of adventure. Spurred by her desire to learn more about the world outside her sheltered existence, she steals her brother's identity (along with his ship) and heads out on a journey to find love, excitement, and enough material to write a book about her favorite aquatic creatures, sea sponges. Before long, she realizes life at sea isn't as simple as the romantic novels made it seem...and there are many sinister things lurking in the depths below.