Collection: Historical Fiction

Otohiko Kaga's Marshland is an epic novel on a Tolstoyan scale, running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan. At forty-nine, Atsuo Yukimori is a humble auto mechanic living an almost penitentially quiet life in Tokyo, where his coworkers know something of his military record but nothing of his postwar past as a petty criminal. Out of curiosity he accompanies his nephew to a demonstration at a nearby university, and is gradually drawn into a friendship, then a romance, with Wakako Ikéhata, the brilliant but mentally unstable daughter of a university professor. As some of the student radical groups turn to violence and terrorism, Atsuo and Wakako find themselves framed for the lethal bombing of a Tokyo train.

During their long imprisonment the novel becomes a Kafkaesque procedural, revealing the corrupt intricacies of the police and judicial system of Japan. At the end of their hard pilgrimage to exoneration, Atsuo and Wakako are finally able to return to his original hometown, Nemuro, on the eastern-most peninsula of Hokkaido island. Here is the marshland of the title, a remote and virtually unspoiled region of Japan where Kaga sets a large number of extraordinarily beautiful pastoral scenes.

Marshland is a revelation of modern Japanese history and culture, a major novel from the hand of a master well-known in his own country, though only the second to be translated into English: the wealth of Kaga's work in fiction remains to be discovered by the Anglophone world.

Inspired by a true story, two teens kidnapped by an African warlord find salvation through love in a powerful and healing historical novel from the #1 bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky and The Last Green Valley.

Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord's Resistance Army.

In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence's upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she's pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony's war.

At the lowest points of their lives, certain they'll never go home, Anthony and Florence meet by chance, fall in love, and begin to dream of surviving their captivity. They devote their lives to helping their fellow child soldiers escape bondage and return to their families and redemption by following the stars.

By turns tender, shocking, moving, desperate, and ultimately triumphant, Florence and Anthony's story is an epic drama of humanity, a life-affirming tale, and an experience readers will never forget.

Featuring an afterword by Anthony and Florence Opoka.

For fans of HBO's The Gilded Age, explore the dark side of the alluring world of America's 19th century elite in this gripping series of riveting mysteries...

In the summer of 1898, reporter Emma Cross investigates a shocking death among the bright lights of Newport's high society . . .

After a disappointing year as a society columnist for the Herald, Emma has returned to the salty air, glittering ocean vistas, and grand stately mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, more determined than ever to report on hard news.

But for now she's covering the social event of the season at Ochre Court, a coming-out ball designed to showcase Cleo Cooper-Smith, who will be on display as Cleopatra in an elaborate tableau vivant. But as the deb ascends to her place of honor, the ballroom is plunged into darkness. When the lights come back on, Cleo sits still on her throne, electrocuted to death.

Quickly establishing that the wiring was tampered with, Emma now has a murder to investigate. As Emma begins to discover this crime has unseen connections to a nefarious network, she puts her own life at risk to shine a light on the dark motives behind a merciless murder . . .

"Plenty of red herrings and an intimate look at the world of the wealthy and famous make for a rich broth of a mystery."
--Kirkus Reviews

Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse immerses readers in a small Vermont town in 1924 with this haunting and harrowing tale.

Witness joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!Leanora Sutter. Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves...These characters are among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe, especially the two youngest, twelve-year-old Leanora, an African American girl, and six-year-old Esther, who is Jewish.In this story of a community on the brink of disaster, told through the haunting and impassioned voices of its inhabitants, Newbery Award winner Karen Hesse takes readers into the hearts and minds of those who bear witness.

The bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls returns with a brilliant novel of love and art, of grief and memory, of confronting the past and facing the future.

In 1955, Vivien Lowry is facing the greatest challenge of her life. Her latest play, the only female-authored play on the London stage that season, has opened in the West End to rapturous applause from the audience. The reviewers, however, are not as impressed as the playgoers and their savage notices not only shut down the play but ruin Lowry's last chance for a dramatic career. With her future in London not looking bright, at the suggestion of her friend, Peggy Guggenheim, Vivien takes a job in as a script doctor on a major film shooting in Rome's Cinecitta Studios. There she finds a vibrant movie making scene filled with rising stars, acclaimed directors, and famous actors in a country that is torn between its past and its potentially bright future, between the liberation of the post-war cinema and the restrictions of the Catholic Church that permeates the very soul of Italy.

As Vivien tries to forge a new future for herself, she also must face the long-buried truth of the recent World War and the mystery of what really happened to her deceased fiancé. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy, hope and renewal, filled with dazzling characters both real and imaginary, from the incomparable author who charmed the world with her novels The Jane Austen Society and Bloomsbury Girls.

National Book Award Winner

The red words painted on the trailer caused quite a buzz around town and before an hour was up, half of Antler was standing in line with two dollars clutched in hand to see the fattest boy in the world.

Toby Wilson is having the toughest summer of his life. It's the summer his mother leaves for good; the summer his best friend's brother returns from Vietnam in a coffin. And the summer that Zachary Beaver, the fattest boy in the world, arrives in their sleepy Texas town. While it's a summer filled with heartache of every kind, it's also a summer of new friendships gained and old friendships renewed. And it's Zachary Beaver who turns the town of Antler upside down and leaves everyone, especially Toby, changed forever.

With understated elegance, Kimberly Willis Holt tells a compelling coming-of-age story about a thirteen-year-old boy struggling to find himself in an imperfect world. At turns passionate and humorous, this extraordinary novel deals sensitively and candidly with obesity, war, and the true power of friendship.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town is the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. This title has Common Core connections.

Awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger - the highest honor in British crime writing

From the bestselling author of Winter in Madrid and Dominion comes the exciting and elegantly written first novel in the Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery series

Dissolution is an utterly riveting portrayal of Tudor England. The year is 1537, and the country is divided between those faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the king and the newly established Church of England. When a royal commissioner is brutally murdered in a monastery on the south coast of England, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's feared vicar general, summons fellow reformer Matthew Shardlake to lead the inquiry. Shardlake and his young protégé uncover evidence of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and treason, and when two other murders are revealed, they must move quickly to prevent the killer from striking again.

A "remarkable debut" (P. D. James), Dissolution introduces a thrilling historical series that is not to be missed by fans of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies.

For readers of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, and Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, Diane Smith's warmhearted and award-winning epistolary novel about a spunky young woman who joins a makeshift field study in Yellowstone National Park at the end of the nineteenth century

"I loved this book in a way that I haven't loved a book in some time." --James Welch, author of Fools Crow

In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartram--a spirited young woman with a love for botany--is invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The study's leader, a mild-mannered professor from Montana, assumes she is a man, and is less than pleased to discover the truth. Once the scientists overcome the shock of having a woman on their team, they forge ahead on a summer of adventure, forming an enlightening web of relationships as they move from Mammoth Hot Springs to a camp high in the backcountry. But as they make their way collecting amid Yellowstone's beauty, the group is splintered by differing views on science, nature, and economics.

Brimming with humor, excitement, and the romance of the Yellowstone landscape, Letters from Yellowstone is a love letter to the joys of scientific discovery and America's majestic natural beauty, as well as a thoughtful reflection on environmentalism, Native American displacement, and feminism at the dawn of a new century.

"[Erdrich] captures the passions, fears, myths, and doom of a living people, and she does so with an ease that leaves the reader breathless."--The New Yorker

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes an arresting, lyrical novel set in North Dakota at a time when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands.

Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance--yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender. The reader will experience shock and pleasure in encountering characters that are compelling and rich in their vigor, clarity, and indomitable vitality.

A unique wordless picture book about Palestine that will fill your imagination and tickle your senses with a hearty dose of Palestinian family, food, and fortitude.

To celebrate her birthday, all Amal wants is to bite into the sweetest slice of cheesy kunafa from Nablus Sweets, the best place in town. When her party ends with no kunafa in sight, she comes up with a plan. Will Amal be able to overcome all the obstacles that she must face in order to get her birthday kunafa?

A poignant picture book about a young Hmong girl born and raised in a refugee camp who imagines what lies beyond the bounds of its borders.

A young Hmong girl has never been outside the camp she lives in with her parents and thousands of other families. Most days, she spends her time playing with her cousins and pretending they can fly above the clouds and far away from here.

When her family's papers are finally approved, she's uncertain if she's ready to leave everything--and everyone--she's ever known behind. But on the day she leaves, her favorite aunt, Golden Flower, sees her off with the words, Your wings have arrived.

With poetic text by Kalia Kao Yang and stunning art by Khou Vue, Caged is about the power of imagination, resilience, and dreaming of freedom.

In a companion novel to her critically acclaimed Shame the Stars, Pura Belpré Award Winner Guadalupe García McCall tackles the hidden history of the United States and its first mass deportation that swept up hundreds of thousands of Mexican American citizens during the Great Depression.

In the heart of the Great Depression, Rancho Las Moras, like everywhere else in Texas, is gripped by the drought of the Dust Bowl, and resentment is building among white farmers against Mexican Americans. All around town, signs go up proclaiming "No Dogs or Mexicans" and "No Mexicans Allowed."

When Estrella organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos in their town of Monteseco, Texas, her whole family becomes a target of "repatriation" efforts to send Mexicans "back to Mexico" -- whether they were ever Mexican citizens or not. Dumped across the border and separated from half her family, Estrella must figure out a way to survive and care for her mother and baby brother. How can she reunite with her father and grandparents and convince her country of birth that she deserves to return home?

There are no easy answers in the first YA book to tackle this hidden history.

Voyageur is the French word for "traveler," but in the Great Lakes region during the seventeenth century it described those men who made their living trading furs and goods along water routes. Traveling by canoe, these voyageurs helped to establish north woods trading posts and settlements, opening up the West to future exploration. Young Jacques's father is such a voyageur. He works long hours in bitterly cold weather, absent from home for weeks at a time. As he awaits his father's return from a season of trading, Jacques dreams of the day he will hold the canoe paddle and join the ranks of voyageurs.Author Kathy-jo Wargin is known for her many stories celebrating Great Lakes lore and north woods history including the 2001 IRA Children's Choice Award winner, The Legend of the Loon. She lives with her family in Petoskey, Michigan. David Geister's body of work with Sleeping Bear Press continues to grow and includes The Legend of Minnesota, also written by Kathy-jo Wargin. He specializes in historic art and has a background in commercial art. David lives with his family in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Cue for Treason (1940) is a children's historical novel written by Geoffrey Trease, and is his best-known work. The novel is set in Elizabethan England at the end of the 16th century. Two young runaways become boy actors, at first on the road and later in London, where they are befriended by William Shakespeare. They become aware of a plot against Queen Elizabeth's life and attempt to prevent it.

A grandmother's love is forever in Star People, a picture book about remembrance and tradition from S. D. Nelson, award-winning author and member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

"A young Lakota Indian girl narrates the story of how she and her little brother, Young Wolf, survive a prairie fire." --School Library Journal

"A stirring, original story based on Lakota legend . . . The swirling images of the celestial dance beautifully reflect the story's celebration and awe of the natural world." --Booklist

Sister Girl and her brother, Young Wolf, wander away from their village and soon find themselves far out in the surrounding prairie. They sit down in the grass and watch the clouds passing above billow to form an eagle, horses, and other creatures.

We sat in the dry, sweet-smelling grass, watching the clouds drift overhead. Young Wolf pointed and said, "Sister Girl, that cloud looks like a buffalo's head!" We both laughed with amazement. "There's an eagle," I cried!

Suddenly, animals begin to race past the children on the ground--followed by a wall of fire! Fleeing along with the frightened beasts, Sister Girl and Young Wolf save themselves by tumbling into a shallow stream. The fire leaves behind ash and a barren, forbidding landscape. The children realize that they are hopelessly lost. Night is coming--how will they get home to their parents? And why are the evening stars dancing so?

Drawing upon traditional Lakota ledger book art, S. D. Nelson's illustrations bring to life a memorable new legend about the Star People.