Historical fiction for a high school history class #2
Discover the best historical fiction books for high school history classes! Engage students with captivating novels that bring history to life. Perfect for educators and students alike.
Book
The Bridges at Toko-ri
by James Albert Michener
Young and innocent, they came to a place they had barely heard of, prepared for war. They were American fighter pilots, trained but frightened, facing an an enemy they couldn't understand, and waging a war they had to win....
Book
The Glory Field
by Walter Dean Myers
ALA best book for young adults, This is the true story of one family, captured, shackled and brought to this country from Africa.
Book
No Promises in the Wind
by Irene Hunt
Fifteen-year-old Josh struggles to survive and come to terms with inner conflicts in the desperate world of the 1932 Depression. By the author of the Newbery Award-winner, Up a Road Slowly. Reissue.
Book
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth. With The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.
Book
The Covenant
by James A. Michener
Volume 2 of 2; The story begins 1500 years ago. The Bushmen are facing a crisis. the beautiful lake, long the center of their lives, is drying up, and they must move across a hostile African desert to seek better conditions.
Book
The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane
The classic story of a sensitive boy under the strain of war moving from cowardice to courage.
Book
Kári's Saga
by Robert Jansson
Viking Iceland. The year 1000. Civil war looms as pagans and Christians struggle for mastery in the all-island legislature. Zealous King Olaf of Norway embargoes trade and threatens forcible conversion if Icelanders will not convert themselves. In his adventurous youth Kári Sigurdsson won fame, wealth and the nickname Kári the Warrior fighting for King Olaf in two invasions of England. Now a prosperous farmer in his native Iceland, he thinks he has killed enough. But he is embroiled in a vicious feud over an inheritance. With the aid of a young lawyer - his foster-brother - his chieftain's crippled daughter and a half-Irish slave-girl, both of whom love him, and a mysterious Welsh trader who is interested in more than trade, he tries to resolve his problems through Iceland's elaborate court system, but is thwarted at every turn by the treachery of his ambitious wife, the jealousy of his chieftain and the unremitting enmity of his adversary, all pagans. Inclining towards the Christians but bound by pagan ideas of honor, Kári is forced into a revenge killing that can only lead to outlawry and death - unless his allies can find a way out.
Book
The Source
by James Albert Michener
In this compelling novel, Michener sweeps readers back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago, to experience the entire colorful history of the JewsQfrom the lives of the early Hebrews to the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition to present-day Israel and the Middle-East conflict. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Book
Spy for the Night Riders
by Dave Jackson
Thrilling adventure stories introducing young readers (ages 8-2) to Christian heroes of the past.Karl Schumacher was fifteen when he came to the German city of Wittenberg in 520 seeking an education. He had been very fortunate that the esteemed university professor, Doctor Martin Luther, had taken him into his household as a servant. Luther's promise of tutoring Karl in exchange for his labor was the chance of a lifetime--until a poster on the church door declared his master a heretic!Karl is asked to travel with Doctor Luther to appear before the emperor's Imperial Council in the city of Worms. Will his life be at stake as well as Luther's? And who is the mysterious young lady who shadows their trip? Could she be a spy for Luther's enemy, Doctor Eck?Or might the night riders be secret supporters of Luther?With danger lurking on every side, who can Karl trust?
Book
To the Last Man
by Jeff Shaara
Jeff Shaara has enthralled readers with his New York Times bestselling novels set during the Civil War and the American Revolution. Now the acclaimed author turns to World War I, bringing to life the sweeping, emotional story of the war that devastated a generation and established America as a world power. Spring 1916: the horror of a stalemate on Europe’s western front. France and Great Britain are on one side of the barbed wire, a fierce German army is on the other. Shaara opens the window onto the otherworldly tableau of trench warfare as seen through the eyes of a typical British soldier who experiences the bizarre and the horrible–a “Tommy” whose innocent youth is cast into the hell of a terrifying war. In the skies, meanwhile, technology has provided a devastating new tool, the aeroplane, and with it a different kind of hero emerges–the flying ace. Soaring high above the chaos on the ground, these solitary knights duel in the splendor and terror of the skies, their courage and steel tested with every flight. As the conflict stretches into its third year, a neutral America is goaded into war, its reluctant president, Woodrow Wilson, finally accepting the repeated challenges to his stance of nonalignment. Yet the Americans are woefully unprepared and ill equipped to enter a war that has become worldwide in scope. The responsibility is placed on the shoulders of General John “Blackjack” Pershing, and by mid-1917 the first wave of the American Expeditionary Force arrives in Europe. Encouraged by the bold spirit and strength of the untested Americans, the world waits to see if the tide of war can finally be turned. From Blackjack Pershing to the Marine in the trenches, from the Red Baron to the American pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille, To the Last Man is written with the moving vividness and accuracy that characterizes all of Shaara’s work. This spellbinding new novel carries readers–the way only Shaara can–to the heart of one of the greatest conflicts in human history, and puts them face-to-face with the characters who made a lasting impact on the world.
Book
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
by Jane Smiley
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley recaptures an almost forgotten part of the American story and once again demonstrates her extraordinary range and brilliance in The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton Set in the 1850s, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice—the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Rousing . . . Action-packed . . . A gripping story about love, fortitude, and convictions that are worth fighting for.”—Los Angeles Times “Powerful . . . Smiley takes us back to Kansas in 1855, a place of rising passions and vast uncertainties. Narrated in the spirited, unsentimental voice of 20-year-old Lidie Newton, the novel is at once an ambitious examination of a turning point in history and the riveting story of one woman's journey into uncharted regions of place and self.”—Chicago Tribune “[A] grand tale of the moral and political upheavals igniting antebellum frontier life and a heroine so wonderfully fleshed and unforgettable you will think you are listening to her story instead of reading it. Smiley may have snared a Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres . . . but it is with Lydia (Lidie) Harkness Newton that she emphatically captures our hearts. . . . The key word in Smiley's title is Adventures, and Lydia's are crammed with breathless movement, danger, and tension; populated by terrifically entertaining characters and securely grounded in telling detail.”—The Miami Herald “Smiley brilliantly evokes mid-nineteenth century life. . . . Richly imagined and superbly written, Jane Smiley's new novel is an extraordinary accomplishment in an already distinguished career.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A sprawling epic . . . A garrulous, nights-by-the-hearth narrative not unlike those classics of the period it emulates. In following a rebellious young woman of 1855 into Kansas Territory and beyond, the novel is so persuasively authentic that it reads like a forgotten document from the days of Twain and Stowe.”—The Boston Sunday Globe
