historical fiction

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough In Renaissance Italy, Artemisia Gentileschi endures the subjugation of women that allows her father to take credit for her extraordinary paintings, rape and the ensuing trial, and torture, buoyed by her deceased mother’s stories of strong women of the Bible.

Mapping the Bones by Jane Yolen In Poland in the 1940s, the lives of twins Chaim and Gittel feel like a fairy tale torn apart as they must rely on each other to endure life in a ghetto and the horrors of a concentration camp where they lose everything but each other.

Hamilton and Peggy!: A Revolutionary Friendship by L.M. Elliott In the throes of the Revolutionary War, Peggy Schuyler finds herself a central figure amid Loyalists and Patriots, spies and traitors, friends and family. Among those friends, she develops a relationship with Alexander Hamilton, who becomes romantically involved with her sister, Eliza.

What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper Liberated from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in 1945, sixteen-year-old Gerta tries to make a new life for herself, aided by Lev, a fellow survivor, and Michah, who helps Jews reach Palestine.

Gunslinger Girl by Lyndsay Ely In a post-Second Civil War lawless West, sharpshooter Serendipity “Pity” Jones stars in, and lives at, the Theater Vespertine, but there is a dark cost to her freedom that Pity may not be willing to pay.

Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe Follows Dita Kraus from the age of fourteen, when she is put in charge of a few forbidden books at Auschwitz, through the end of World War II and beyond.