plague

Another Me

Seventeen-year-old Natan has a safe and happy life in fourteenth-century Strasbourg, France. He works with his father in his rag trade, helps his mother around the house, and studies the Torah at night with his young brother, Shmuli. He’s even feeling the first stirrings of love with Elena, the daughter of the master draper who is his father’s best customer. But something is rotten in the streets of Strasbourg. There is tension between the Jewish community and the rest of the citizens, and there is fear as the deadly plague sweeps through towns and cities nearby.

The Last Wild

In a world where animals no longer exist, twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes sometimes feels like he hardly exists either. Locked away in a home for troubled children, he’s told there’s something wrong with him. So when he meets a flock of talking pigeons and a bossy cockroach, Kester thinks he’s finally gone crazy. But the animals have something to say. And they need him. The pigeons fly Kester to a wild place where the last creatures in the land have survived. A wise stag needs Kester’s help, and together they must embark on a great journey, joined along the way by an overenthusiastic wolf cub, a military-trained cockroach, a mouse with a ritual for everything, and a stubborn girl named Polly. The animals saved Kester Jaynes. But can Kester save the animals?

Shadows Cast By Stars

To escape a government that needs antigens in aboriginal blood to stop a plague, sixteen-year-old Cassandra and her family flee to the Island, where she not only gets help in communicating with the spirit world, she learns she has been chosen to be their voice and instrument.

Breath

Elaborates on the tale of “The Pied Piper,” told from the point of view of a boy who is too ill to keep up when a piper spirits away the healthy children of a plague-ridden town after being cheated out of full payment for ridding Hamelein of rats.

An American Plague

plagueIt’s 1793, and there’s an invisible killer roaming the streets of Philadelphia. The city’s residents are fleeing in fear. This killer has a name–yellow fever–but everything else about it is a mystery. Its cause is unknown and there is no cure. This powerful dramatic account by award-winning author Jim Murphy traces the devastating course of the epidemic. An American Plague offers a fascinating glimpse into the conditions in American cities at the time of our nation’s birth while drawing thought-provoking parallels to modern-day epidemics.

A Parcel of Patterns (Plus)

parcel“A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.

So begins Mall Percival’s account of how her village of Eyam struggled against the plague. George Vicars dies on September 6, 1665, and by the end of October, twenty-five more townsfolk have been buried. As the deaths continue, the villagers, including Mall, begin to panic–helpless to fight off the disease. Uncertain as to how it is contracted and passed from one person to another, Mall forces herself to make a sacrifice that radically changes her life–she decides to stops seeing Thomas Torre, a man from another village, the man she hopes to marry. In June of 1966, at their minister’s urging, the entire village makes a pact to protect those who live in the surrounding countryside by staying within the boundaries of Eyam. Although Mall longs to see Thomas, she remains steadfast in her resolution, until one day Thomas runs into the center of Eyam, knowing that he will not be allowed to leave, yet fearing that Mall has died. Mall and Thomas marry, but their happiness is short-lived. Finally, in October of 1666, the pestilence subsides. Mall, overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, decides to write a chronicle of all she has witnessed in Eyam, hoping that it will set her free.

The White Witch

Accused of witchcraft, threatened by the Plague. The Great Plague has come to England, and no one is safe, least of all Gwendoline Riston. With fair skin and hair and a way with plants and animals, the villagers are calling her a witch and blaming her for the disease. A story of survival and self-discovery, this is historical fiction with a bit of suspense and even romance mixed in and is sure to captivate today’s reader.

The Shakespeare Stealer Series

The three novels in Gary Blackwood’s award-winning Shakespeare Stealer series are in one volume, which includes the complete texts of The Shakespeare Stealer, Shakespeare’s Scribe, and Shakespeare’s Spy. Each novel is about the adventures of an orphan named Widge who becomes an actor with Will Shakespeare’s acting troupe. He navigates intrigue, betrayal and romance in Elizabethan London.

Hunted

Brind, who was raised with Sir Edmund’s pack of hunting dogs, is the huntsman of Dowe Manor. Together with his best friend, the mastiff Glaive, and the rest of the pack, he protects Sir Edmund, Lady Beatrice, and their foster daughter, Aurélie. But suddenly a tragedy strikes, one that Brind cannot prevent. In a fit of grief, Sir Edmund throws Brind, Glaive, and Aurélie—and her puppy, Gabion—out of the manor. Everywhere they turn, the vicious and lethal Black Death closely follows, as though they are bringing it with them. Can they evade this invisible enemy, as well as the angry mobs, the rogue soldiers, and the other sinister figures now threatening them? Glaive and Gabion—born to hunt, not to be hunted—may be their only chance for survival. Plague-bringers or not, Brind and Aurélie will never stop fighting to keep themselves—and their small family—alive.

The Heir of Mistmantle

King Crispin and Queen Cedar have just had a baby daughter–Princess Catkin–and everyone on Mistmantle Island gathers for the joyful celebration of the Naming Ceremony.  But the day after, the princess suddenly disappears.  Urchin and all the brave captains are dispatched to bring back the princess, but come back empty-handed.  All clues point to Linty, an older squirrel who had gone mad with grief when two of her children had been culled during evil Husk’s reign.  The islanders fall further into crisis as a mysterious illness takes hold and begins to spread.