Mystery of History Vol 2: Middle School Extra Reading
Enhance your middle school history lessons with 'Mystery of History Vol 2' extra reading list. Discover engaging books to deepen students' understanding of historical events and figures.
Book
The Flames of Rome
by Paul L. Maier
The splendor and pagan excesses of Roman society are confronted by the life-changing faith of Christianity in this historically accurate fiction work. Guaranteed fiction!
Book
Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow
by Allen French
Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented thing: he lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life. However, the life that is saved that night causes his own death and the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf's response to this injustice creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking tale difficult to put down.
Book
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
by Geraldine McCaughrean
This illustrated edition brings together all the Arabian Nights tales in an original retelling by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean.
Book
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain
Mark Twain's classic tale of Hank Morgan, a resident of 19th-century Hartford, Connecticut, who is inexplicably transported to the early medieval England of King Arthur.
Book
Son of Charlemagne
by Barbara Willard
The year is A.D. 781. King Charles of the Franks is crossing the Alps with his family and court on a journey to meet with Pope Hadrian. One frosty night he speaks to his young son Carl: When we come to Rome you will know that I am naming you my heir. One day you will rule over all my lands. . . . But the King already had an heir, Pepin the Hunchback, mockingly called Gobbo. Was he to be dispossessed? Yet Carl sees that Charlemagne is determined to do what he feels is best to serve God and Europe.
Book
If All The Swords In England
by Barbara Willard
Young Simon, recently and tragically orphaned, becomes a scribe in the following of the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket. The uncertainty of the tumultuous years leading to the infamous cathedral slaying is heightened by Simon's separation from his twin Edmund, who is in the service of King Henry II. With an expert pen Barbara Willard deftly recounts events leading to the bishop's martyrdom in 1170.
Book
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
From Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the best-selling, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, comes a brilliant, engaging, and eminently readable translation of Leo Tolstoy’s master epic. • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men. As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy vividly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature. Pevear and Volokhonsky have brought us this classic novel in a translation remarkable for its fidelity to Tolstoy’s style and cadence and for its energetic, accessible prose.
Book
The Adventures of Robin Hood
by Roger Lancelyn Green
Champion of the poor and oppressed, Robin Hood takes refuge with his Merrie Men in the vast Sherwood Forest, emerging time and again to outwit his enemies with daring and panache. Green's version of the classic tale brings sense, clarity and excitement to the myths, ballads and legends of Robin's adventures.
