“The Luxe” meets the ancient world in the extraordinary story of Cleopatra’s daughter. Selene has grown up in a palace on the Nile with her parents, Cleopatra and Mark Antony–the most brilliant, powerful rulers on earth. But the jealous Roman Emperor Octavianus wants Egypt for himself. When war finally comes, Selene faces the loss of all she’s ever loved. Forced to build a new life in Octavianus’s household in Rome, she finds herself torn between two young men and two possible destinies–until she reaches out to claim her own.
Historical Fiction
Historical Fiction genre
The Fire-Eaters
Despite observing his father’s illness, the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, and the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Burns and his family and friends still find reasons to rejoice in their lives and to have hope for the future.
The Kampung Boy
Lat recounts the life of Mat, a Muslim boy growing up in rural Malaysia in the 1950s: his adventures and mischief-making, fishing trips, religious study, and work on his family’s rubber plantation. Meanwhile, the traditional way of life in his village (or kampung>) is steadily disappearing, with tin mines and factory jobs gradually replacing family farms and rubber small-holders. When Mat leaves for boarding school, he can only hope that his familiar kampung will still be there when he returns.
Heart of a Samurai
In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.
This book has been included in WOW’s Language and Learning: Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Booklist. For our current list, visit our Booklist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.
Nzingha: Warrior Queen Of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595 (The Royal Diaries)
Presents the diary of 13-year-old Nzingha, a 16th-century West African princess who loves to hunt and hopes to lead her kingdom one day against the invasion of the Portuguese slave traders.
Anastasia’s Secret
“Will I never see you again either?” I asked, feeling as though I was about to jump off a high mountain peak and hope to land without hurting myself. That’s how impossible everything seemed at that moment, no matter what I did. “Perhaps we will meet again,” Sasha said, softening his voice. “But you must see that it does not matter. You have so much ahead of you. It’s your choice now. Choose the future! Choose life!” For Anastasia Romanov, life as the privileged daughter of Russia’s last tsar is about to be torn apart by the bloodshed of revolution. Ousted from the imperial palace when the Bolsheviks seize control of the government, Anastasia and her family are exiled to Siberia. But even while the rebels debate the family’s future with agonizing slowness and the threat to their lives grows more menacing, romance quietly blooms between Anastasia and Sasha, a sympathetic young guard she has known since childhood. But will the strength of their love be enough to save Anastasia from a violent death? Inspired by the mysteries that have long surrounded the last days of the Romanov family, Susanne Dunlap’s new novel is a haunting vision of the life—and love story—of Russia’s last princess.
The Voices Of Silence
Before she knows it, everything in thirteen-year-old Flora Popescu’s life has changed. Her parents, her best friend Alys, and the restricted life she has always known in their Bucharest tower block are distanced from her – and Daniel, the mysterious new boy at school, seems to be the cause. Flora likes him, but why can’t everybody else trust him too? She thinks of her father’s words: “People like us can’t afford the luxury of new friends.” Then, just as she is making sense of her divided loyalties, Flora discovers that only she alone can save her father’s life.
And Twelve Chinese Acrobats
Tired of his mischievous antics, the unpredictable, impetuous Lou is sent off to military school to learn some discipline, and after many years, he returns, not as a soldier, but rather as the manager of a troupe of Chinese acrobats.
Broken Memory
Hiding behind the old sofa, five-year-old Emma does not witness the murder of her mother, but she hears everything. And when the assassins finally leave, the young Tutsi girl somehow manages to stumble away from the scene, motivated only by the memory of her mother’s last words: “You must not die, Emma!” Taken in by an old Hutu woman, Mukecuru, Emma is still haunted by nightmares long after the war ends. When the country establishes gacaca courts to allow victims to face their tormenters in their villages, Emma is uneasy and afraid. But through her growing friendship with a young torture victim and the gentle encouragement of an old man charged with helping child survivors, Emma finds the courage to return to the house where her mother was killed and begin the journey to healing.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 3, Issue 4
The Red Heels
An itinerant shoemaker in colonial New England makes a pair of shoes for a beautiful young woman, although he fears the red heels are a sign that she is a witch.