In 1944, one of the most brutal battles of World War II is fought between Monte Cassino and a Benedicitne monastery, and Domenic and his family who live there become caught in the crossfire as they hide two escaped prisoners-of-war.
Young Adult (ages 14-18)
Material appropriate for young adults
Four Steps to Death
A million people were killed in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, one of the worst battles in history, and the intertwined stories of three people, each told in third person, offer a human-scale account of the cataclysm.
Katarina
During World War II in Slovakia, a young Jewish girl in hiding becomes a devout Catholic and is sustained by her belief that she will return home to her family as soon as the war ends.
The African Mask
Twelve-year-old Layo, a Yoruba girl living in the area of eleventh-century Africa which is now Nigeria, attempts to reject the man who has been chosen to be her husband.
Montmorency on the Rocks: Doctor, Aristocrat, Murderer?
In Victorian London, when Montmorency and his alter ego, Scarper, reunite with Dr. Farcett, the two cooperate to capture a bomber and become involved in solving the mystery of the poisoning of a village of Scottish children.
The Upstairs Room
A Dutch Jewish girl describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom of a farmer’s house during World War II. Continued by the author’s The journey back.
Habibi
When fourteen-year-old Liyanne Abboud and her family move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XII, Issue 1
The Endless Steppe: Growing Up In Siberia
During World War II, when she was eleven years old, the author and her family were arrested in Poland by the Russians as political enemies and exiled to Siberia. She recounts here the trials of the next five years spent on the harsh Asian steppe.
Infernal Devices
In the distant future, fifteen-year-old Wren steals the fabled Tin Book of Anchorage for the Lost Boys, setting off a sequence of events that leads her parents back into battle with old enemies and new. Book 3 of The hungry city chronicles.
The Maestro
Fleeing from his brutal father, fourteen-year-old Burl arrives at the remote cabin of an eccentric genius who in just one day changes the young man’s life forever.