Young Adult Historical Fiction Book List

Looking for a good historical fiction? Check out this book list...




1) "A Great and Terrible Beauty" by Libba Bray

Had Gemma but known what occult horrors would await her, would she still have wanted to leave India? Sixteen-year-old Gemma is sent to her long-desired London when her mother commits suicide. In a terrifying vision, she sees her mother attacked by a vile supernatural force. Would revelation of her own strange mental powers cause more scandal than her mother’s outré death? A sexy but suspicious young man has followed Gemma from India, and cryptically warns her to muffle her visions. Such constraint seems the goal of Gemma’s proper finishing school as well. With corsets, deportment lessons, and rules, Spence Academy shapes prim young ladies. But the seemingly proper girls of Spence reveal various sexualities, passions, and hopes that strain the seams of their strict Victorian education. Mysterious continued visions, dark family secrets, and a long-lost diary thrust Gemma and her classmates back into the horrors that followed her from India. A Gothic touched by modern conceptions of adolescence, shivery with both passion and terror. (Fiction. YA)

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2) "Out of the Easy" by Ruta Sepetys

Step right onto the rough streets of the New Orleans French Quarter, circa 1950…

…and meet 17-year-old Josie Moraine, a feisty young woman whose mother, a prostitute in a Conti Street brothel, offers her nothing but scorn and abuse. From the tender age of 12, Josie has made her own way in the world, working in a local bookstore in exchange for a safe place to sleep and cleaning the brothel to earn money toward her planned escape from the Big Easy. Equal parts book smart and street smart, Josie’s dream is to attend Smith College, and she will go to extremes, even blackmail, in her desperation to be accepted. But just when her plans start to gain some traction, her mother strikes again, putting Josie in the middle of a murder investigation and saddling her with a mob debt. There are some meaningful messages here: that love can come from the unlikeliest of sources—the rough-and-tumble brothel madam is much more supportive of Josie than her mother ever was—and that we are all in control of our own destinies if only we choose to be. With a rich and realistic setting, a compelling and entertaining first-person narration, a colorful cast of memorable characters and an intriguing storyline, this is a surefire winner.

Immensely satisfying. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

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3) "Grave Mercy" by Robin LaFevers

Fiction and history coalesce in a rich, ripping tale of assassinations, political intrigue and religion in 15th-century Brittany.

When the pig farmer who paid three coins to wed Ismae sees the red scar across her back, he cracks her in the skull and hurls her into the root cellar until a priest can come “to burn you or drown you.” The scar shows that Ismae’s mother poisoned her in utero; Ismae’s survival of that poisoning proves her sire is Mortain, god of death. A hedge priest and herbwitch spirit Ismae to the convent of St. Mortain, where nuns teach her hundreds of ways to kill a man. “We are mere instruments of Mortain….His handmaidens, if you will. We do not decide who to kill or why or when. It is all determined by the god.” After Ismae’s first two assassinations, the abbess sends her to Brittany’s high court to ferret out treason against the duchess and to kill anyone Mortain marks, even if it’s someone Ismae trusts—or loves. Brittany fights to remain independent from France, war looms and suitors vie nefariously for the duchess’ hand. Ismae’s narrative voice is fluid and solid, her spying and killing skills impeccable. LaFevers’ ambitious tapestry includes poison and treason and murder, valor and honor and slow love, suspense and sexuality and mercy.

A page turner—with grace. (map, list of characters) (Historical thriller. 14 & up)

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4) "Pirates!" by Celia Rees

A rambling, romantic 18th-century tale features a teenaged British heiress who, along with her African half-sister, avoids Terrible Fate by becoming a pirate. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, Nancy finds herself hustled from comfortable Bristol to the family’s Jamaican sugar plantation, where she forms an alliance with Minerva, a strangely attractive body slave. Following the shocking discovery that her thoroughly vile brothers have sold her to cruel, swarthy ex-buccaneer Bartholome, Nancy stops the plantation’s vicious overseer from raping Minerva by blowing out his brains—whereupon both young women don men’s clothing and go to sea. Minerva and Nancy both demonstrate facility with fist, blade, and pistol as they survive storms, battle, attempted mutiny, leering suitors, and other hazards—climaxed by a confrontation with Bartholome, who pursues her relentlessly from the Caribbean to Madagascar. Minerva’s true identity comes out eventually, and in the end, both she and Nancy acquire suitable mates without losing their yen for adventure. An ambitious but fundamentally conventional tale, closer to Ann Rinaldi’s historical novels than the more rousing likes of Avi’s True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.(Fiction. YA)

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5) "Catherine, Called Birdy" by Karen Cushman

Unwillingly keeping a journal at the behest of her brother, a monk, Birdy (daughter of a 13th-century knight) makes a terse first entry--"I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say''--but is soon confiding her pranks and troubles in fascinating detail. Her marriage must suit her drunken father's financial needs, and though the 14-year-old scares off several suitors (she pretends to be mad, sets fire to the privy one is using, etc.), in the end she's "betrothed and betrayed.'' Meanwhile, she observes Edward I's England with keen curiosity and an open mind, paints a mural in her chamber, evades womanly tasks whenever possible, reports that--ladylike or no-- "I always have strong feelings and they are quite painful until I let them out,'' and chooses her own special profanity, "God's thumbs.'' At year's end she makes peace with her family and acquires, beyond hope, a possibly compatible betrothed (they have yet to meet). Birdy's frequent saint's day entries begin with pithy summaries of the saints' claims to fame; their dire deaths have a uniquely medieval tang, as do such oddities as St. Bridget turning bathwater into beer. Much else here is casually earthy--offstage bedding among villagers, home remedies, pissing out a fire--while death is commonplace. The period has rarely been presented for young people with such authenticity; the exotic details will intrigue readers while they relate more closely to Birdy's yen for independence and her sensibilities toward the downtrodden. Her tenacity and ebullient naivete are extraordinary; at once comic and thought-provoking, this first novel is a delight. Historical note. (Fiction. 12+)

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6) "Prisoner of Night and Fog" by Anne Blankman

In 1930s Munich, a young German girl learns to question her learned hatred for Jewish people.

Seventeen-year-old Gretchen Müller has grown up knowing Adolf Hitler as “Uncle Dolf,” the great National Socialist leader whose life her father had died saving in 1923. This bedrock truth is challenged when a Jewish reporter named Daniel Cohen reaches out to her suggesting that her father actually had been murdered by a fellow National Socialist party member. Together, they work to unravel the mystery of why her father was killed. Gretchen finds herself doubting everything she has been taught to hate and fear about Jews and ultimately must decide where her honor and loyalty lie. In her debut, Blankman weaves into Gretchen’s story the details of Hitler’s historically documented rise to power (and psychopathic nature), and her fictional characters talk and live among some of Nazi Germany’s most notorious figures. At times, the dialogue is unwieldy, and the historical details consume the narrative, which may cause some readers to become bored by slower sections of the story (though a sexually charged scene with Hitler himself will open their eyes wide). Here’s hoping the author will find a better balance between description and action in the proposed sequel, as the relationship between Gretchen and Daniel is what sets this apart.

An interesting perspective on a well-trod era. (author’s note, bibliography) (Historical fiction. 13-17)

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7) "Cinders & Sapphires" by Leila Rasheed

A thoroughly satisfying romp for Downton Abbey fans.

Lady Ada Averley, returning by steamboat to her British ancestral estate after a childhood in India, shares a furtive, passionate kiss with Ravi, an Indian revolutionary. At 16, Ada prefers books to ball gowns and dreads the byzantine formalities of the upcoming social season; she'd rather convince her father to let her attend Oxford than find a husband. But the family's name is imperiled by scandal, and Ada's loyalty demands that she play the game, even as Ravi dominates her thoughts. Ada's emerging social consciousness—she gamely struggles against the pervasive sexism, racism and classism of pre–World War I England—provides an intellectual backbone for what could easily have been just another high-society soap opera. Rasheed sidesteps sanctimony, however, by infusing the story with humor, vivid descriptions—a diamond hangs in a debutante's décolletage "as tempting as the fly on a fishing line"—and a surplus of intrigue above and below stairs, propelling the narrative toward the cliffhangers of the final pages.

Breathless readers will look forward to the next sudsy chapter in this planned series. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

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