Young Adult Historical Fiction

A young dancer realizes her life long dream, if only for a while. At seventeen, Marta Selbryth leaves home for the first time to pursue her life-long dream: dancing with a professional ballet company. But no dream is ever easy. As soon as Marta steps off the bus in Billings, Montana, she discovers that her years of training have taught her to dance, but not to meet the relentless rigors of professional ballet—or of life on her own. Step into Marta’s world of thrilling stage lights and dark, silent shadows, where dancers push themselves beyond their limits to be the best. Where a jaded ...

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty's anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high. Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered.

Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship.

Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe it: she’s the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, “San Francisco’s Finest Department Store.” Every week, she rotates her three spruced-up Salvation Army outfits and Vaseline-shined pumps; still, she’s thrilled to walk those pumps through the employee entrance five days a week as she saves to buy something new.

She's only recently learned that she is the Ruby, the final member of the time-traveling Circle of Twelve, and since then nothing has been going right. She suspects the founder of the Circle, Count Saint-German, is up to something nefarious, but nobody will believe her. And she's just learned that her charming time-traveling partner, Gideon, has probably been using her all along.

Don't call this mermaid "little"—call her "captain," unless you want to walk the plank. Mary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn't love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she's a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she'll—poof!—turn into sea-foam. But instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them.

Célie’s life is over. She took her final breath trying to save the people she loves—including the powerful and enigmatic vampire king, Michal, who refused to let her go. When Célie wakes, she cannot walk in the sun; she can hear her friends’ heartbeats and she craves their blood. Michal has cursed her to the eternal existence of a vampire. But Célie isn’t the only dead roaming the earth. Her sister, Filippa, has returned as a shadow of her former self, and other revenants are rising from their graves intent on revenge.

The adventure of 12-year-old William Jones’ lifetime begins when he hears his father’s footsteps, pacing back and forth late at night across the floor of the bedroom beneath his own - even though his father is dead. To stop the restless pacing of his father’s ghost, William goes to London to find John Diamond, the son of the man his father cheated two decades earlier. In a strange, shadowy world of thieves, swindlers, and cutthroats, William tries to make amends for the sins of his father.

Stevie Bell solved the case of Truly Devious, and now she’s taking her detecting skills abroad when she becomes embroiled in a mystery from 1990s England. Another pulse-pounding and laugh-out-loud stand-alone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.

Six months have passed since Célie took her sacred vows and joined the ranks of the Chasseurs as their first huntswoman. With her fiancé, Jean Luc, as captain, she is determined to find her foothold in her new role and help protect Belterra. But whispers from her past still haunt her, and a new evil is rising—one that Célie herself must vanquish, unless she falls prey to the darkness.

Esta’s parents were murdered. Her life was stolen. And everything she knew about magic was a lie. She thought the Book of Mysteries held the key to freeing the Mageus from the Order’s grasp, but the danger within its pages was greater than she ever imagined. Now the Book’s furious power lives inside Harte. If he can’t control it, it will rip apart the world to get its revenge, and it will use Esta to do it. To bind the power, Esta and Harte must track down four elemental stones scattered across the continent. But the world outside the city is like nothing they expected.

Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom's borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution - send in Guinevere to be Arthur's wife...and his protector from those who want to see the young king's idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere's real name - and her true identity - is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.

When the War Came Here A gripping tale of courage, friendship, and resilience set against the backdrop of World War II in New Zealand. Its 1942 and thirteen-year-old Gloria's peaceful life in coastal New Zealand is upended when the realities of World War II arrive on her doorstep. As she discovers a Japanese reconnaissance force in her homeland, she is thrust into a world of uncertainty and fear. Managing to escape their clutches, when her best friend Elizabeth is captured, Gloria must summon unprecedented bravery to confront the dangers that lie ahead. Gloria encounters the complexities of...

1720. The Golden Age of Piracy.After setting out to look for his press-ganged father, fifteen-year old Dan Leake finds himself clinging to a barrel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. His luck changes when a passing ship saves him from a watery grave, but his joy is short-lived. He soon discovers that his rescuers are not what they seem.Dan is forced to join Calico Jack’s blood-thirsty crew, which includes Anne Bonny and Mary Read. He faces death on a daily basis as they career around the Caribbean lurching from one hair-raising adventure to another. At last he reaches Jamaica, where he ...

If you were one of King Henry VIII's six wives, who would you be? Would you be Anne Boleyn, who literally lost her head? Would you be the subject of rumor and scandal like Catherine Howard? Or would you get away and survive like Anna of Cleves? Meet them and Henry's other queens - each bound for divorce or death - in this epic and thrilling novel that reads like fantasy but really happened.

Ever since she was cursed by a faerie, Theodora Ettings has had no sense of fear or embarrassment—an unfortunate condition that leaves her prone to accidental scandal. Dora hopes to be a quiet, sensible wallflower during the London Season—but when Elias Wilder, the strange, handsome, and utterly ill-mannered Lord Sorcier, discovers her condition, she is instead drawn into peculiar and dangerous faerie affairs.

Anastasia “Nastya” Romanov was given a single mission: to smuggle an ancient spell into her suitcase on her way to exile in Siberia. It might be her family’s only salvation. But the leader of the Bolshevik army is after them, and he’s hunted Romanov before. Nastya’s only chances of saving herself and her family are either to release the spell and deal with the consequences, or to enlist help from Zash, a handsome soldier who doesn’t act like the average Bolshevik. Nastya has only dabbled in magic, but it doesn’t frighten her half as much as her growing attraction to Zash.

Discover a forbidden love story that defies the boundaries of time and tradition in the untamed American West. Shattered Dreams. A Promise Kept? 1910. Blackfoot, Idaho. Leo, a young man yearning for more than the life laid out for him, finds his world turned upside down by the arrival of Sean, a ruggedly handsome cowboy. Their connection is undeniable, a spark that ignites amidst the frontier's vast landscapes and rugged beauty. As their bond deepens, Leo and Sean must navigate the challenges of a society that refuses to accept their love. Secrets, prejudice, and the ever-present threat of ...

Tamora Pierce brings readers another Tortall adventure! Alianne is the teenage daughter of the famed Alanna, the first lady knight in Tortall. Young Aly follows in the quieter footsteps of her father, however, delighting in the art of spying. When she is captured and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Islands, it is this skill that makes a difference in a world filled with political intrigue, murderous conspiracy, and warring gods.

Cordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior trained since childhood to battle demons. When her father is accused of a terrible crime, she and her brother travel to London in hopes of preventing the family’s ruin. Cordelia’s mother wants to marry her off, but Cordelia is determined to be a hero rather than a bride. Soon Cordelia encounters childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of glittering ballrooms, secret assignations, and supernatural salons, where vampires and warlocks mingle with mermaids and magicians.