Classic Young Adult Historical Fiction
Explore timeless classic young adult historical fiction books that transport you to different eras. Discover must-read adult historical novels filled with adventure, romance, and rich historical detail.
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The Sherwood Ring
by Elizabeth Marie Pope
Peggy Grahame moves to New York State to live with Uncle Enos, and meets several ghosts, who relate to her the history of her uncle's ancestral home.
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I
by M.T. Anderson
Anderson’s imaginative and highly intelligent exploration of . . . the ambiguous history of America’s origins will leave readers impatient for the sequel. — The New York Times Book Review Young Octavian is being raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers — but it is only after he opens a forbidden door that learns the hideous nature of their experiments, and his own chilling role them. Set in Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson’s mesmerizing novel takes place at a time when Patriots battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.
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The Birchbark House
by Louise Erdrich
"[In this] story of a young Ojibwa girl, Omakayas, living on an island in Lake Superior around 1847, Louise Erdrich is reversing the narrative perspective used in most children's stories about nineteenth-century Native Americans. Instead of looking out at 'them' as dangers or curiosities, Erdrich, drawing on her family's history, wants to tell about 'us', from the inside. The Birchbark House establishes its own ground, in the vicinity of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House' books." --The New York Times Book Review
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The Lantern Bearers
by Rosemary Sutcliff
The last of the Roman army have set sail and left Britain for ever, abandoning it to civil war and the threat of a Saxon invasion. Aquila deserts his regiment to return to his family, but his home and all that he loves are destroyed. Years of hardship and fighting follow and in the end there is only one thing left in Aquila's life - his thirst for revenge . . . Rosemary Sutcliff's books about Roman Britain have won much acclaim and the first in the trilogy, The Eagle of the Ninth, has now sold over a million copies worldwide. The author writes with such passion and with such attention to detail that the Roman age is instantly brought to life and stays with the reader long after the last page has been turned.
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Outcast
by Rosemary Sutcliff
Sole survivor of a shipwreck as a baby, Beric is an outsider from the start. The village druid warns that he is cursed by the sea, and when death comes to the tribe, the fingers of blame point only in one direction. Cast out by the warriors, Beric must survive in the harsh roman world by himself, with death, danger and enemies always nearby . . .
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The Mark of the Horse Lord
by Rosemary Sutcliff
Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the now blind displaced King of the Scots, former gladiator and slave Phaedrus impersonates the Horse Lord to regain from the Picts the control of the Scottish kingdom.
