Historical Fiction

Historical Fiction genre

Landing, The

Will Ben ever escape the Landing? The hardscrabble farm on the shores of Lake Muskoka can’t generate a living, so Ben’s Uncle Henry sells goods and gas to cottagers from the dock known as Cooks Landing. It had never been much of a living and since the Depression hit, it’s even less. Ben’s thinking a lot these days, and it’s making him miserable. He’s thinking about how unfair it is that his uncle only cares about work. He’s thinking about what he really wants to do: play the violin. These days, he’s lucky to snatch the odd bit of practice between chores, playing to the chickens in the henhouse. A new job fixing up the grand old cottage on nearby Pine Island seems at first to be just one more thing to keep Ben away from his violin. After he meets the island’s owner, Ben changes his mind. Ruth Chapman is a cultured and wealthy woman from New York who introduces Ben to an unfamiliar, liberating world. After Ben plays violin for Ruth and her admiring friends, it only makes him more desperate to flee. Then, during a stormy night on Lake Muskoka, everything changes.

Shylock’s Daughter

Sixteen-year-old Jessica, who longs to be free of the restrictions of her father and life in the Jewish ghetto of sixteen-century Venice, falls in love with a Christian aristocrat and must make choices which will affect her whole family. Inspired by Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice.

Puppet

The year is 1882. A young servant girl named Esther disappears from a small Hungarian village. Several Jewish men from the village of Tisza Eszvar face the ‘blood libel’ — the centuries-old belief that Jews murder Christian children for their blood. A fourteen-year-old Jewish boy named Morris Scharf becomes the star witness of corrupt authorities who coerce him into testifying against his fellow Jews, including his own father, at the trial.

This fictionalized account of one of the last blood libel trial in Europe is told through the eyes of Julie, a friend of the murdered Esther, and a servant at the jail where Morris is imprisoned. Julie is no stranger to suffering herself: abused by her alcoholic father and separated from her beloved baby sister, she is as bound up in the tragedy of the times as is Morris. The book is based upon a real court case that took place in Hungary in 1883. In Hungary today, the name Morris Scharf has become synonymous with “traitor.”

Mouton’s Impossible Dream

The year is 1783. On a cozy French farm, there lives a sheep with an impossible dream: She wants to fly. Mouton’s friend Canard the duck is sympathetic, but Cocorico the rooster insists that, without wings, Mouton will never take off. Still, Mouton is full of hope and determination—perhaps just enough to make her impossible dream come true.

The Battle for Duncragglin

Set in the time of William Wallace, this is historical fiction at its bloody best! One of history’s most turbulent times comes to vivid life in this thrilling new novel. Twelve-year-old Alex has been raised by his uncle since his parents disappeared on a trip to Scotland many years ago. He’s resigned to spending the summer in Scotland with yet another relative and finds himself on a farm near the ruined remnants of an ancient castle that is rumored to be haunted. Could it have a connection to his parents’ disappearance?With three newfound friends, Alex sets out to discover the secret of a sealed cave along the rugged coast that borders the farm. The secret is far more powerful than anything they could have imagined, and they are catapulted to the very brink of a hellish past — the bloody late 13th century when the great Scottish rebel, William Wallace, was fighting a guerilla-style military campaign. Full of high drama as well as humor, bloodshed, and great tenderness, this fine novel marks the arrival of a major voice in historical fiction.

Pirates!

In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family’s Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her slave friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure.

Little Brother

“Fleeing from the Khmer Rouge soldiers, Vithy becomes separated from his older brother, Mang, as they escape from Cambodia into Thailand. . . . As Vithy makes the dangerous journey, he comes to rely on his own wits and instincts. Historical novel, adventure, and character study, this book takes readers to another place and time”.–Booklist. American Bookseller Pick of the Lists; NCSS-CBC Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies; Bank Street Child Study Children’s Book Assn. Children’s Book of the Year.

The Book of Jude

In 1989, when fifteen-year-old Jude’s mother wins a Fulbright fellowship to study art in Czechoslovakia, the family postpones a planned move to Utah to join her, but the political situation and the move itself are too much for Jude, who is overwhelmed by a previously undiagnosed psychological disorder.

Cassandra’s Sister

Young Jane — or Jenny, as she is called — is a girl with a head full of questions. Surrounded by her busy parents and brothers, Jenny finds a place for her thoughts in the companionship of her older sister, Cassandra. Theirs is a country life full of balls and visits, at which conversation inevitably centers on one topic: marriage. But the arrival of their worldly-wise cousin Eliza disrupts Jenny’s world, bringing answers to some of her questions and providing a gem of an idea.