Back Teen Books: Historical Fiction: Through WWII | Book List

SelectReads News
Simple News Pro
  Teen Books: Historical Fiction: Through WWII  
I'll Take Everything You Have

James Klise - Algonquin Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

From an Edgar Award-winning author, this historical noir novel follows the life-changing summer of sixteen-year-old Joe Garbe as he discovers queer community in 1930s Chicago and gets caught up in the city's crooked underbelly. In the summer of 1934, Joe Garbe arrives in Chicago with...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Kill Her Twice

Stacey Lee - G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Downstairs Girl comes a YA murder mystery noir set in 1930s Los Angeles's Chinatown.. "A captivating and crackling noir full of suspenseful twists. Readers will fall in love with the Chow sisters and their quest for the truth."...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Stateless

Elizabeth Wein - Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

From the beloved #1 bestselling author of Code Name Verity, this thrilling murder mystery set in 1937 Europe soars with intrigue, glamour, secrets, and betrayal. When Stella North is chosen to represent Britain in Europe's first air race for young people, she knows all too well how high...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Codex Black (Book One): A Fire Among Clouds

Camilo Moncada Lozano - IDW Publishing
Format: Paperback

Navigate through monsters, mysteries, and the will of the gods with two young extraordinary adventurers in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica as they search for a missing father.. Donají is a fearless Zapotec girl who, even though she's only fifteen, is heralded as a hero by her village....
Read More check catalog
 
 
Foul Lady Fortune

Chloe Gong - Margaret K. McElderry Books
Format: Hardcover

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends comes the first book in a captivating new duology following an ill-matched pair of spies posing as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders in 1930s Shanghai.It's 1931 in Shanghai,...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Davenports

Krystal Marquis - Dial Books
Format: Hardcover

The first in a breathless YA series set in 1910 Chicago, The Davenports offers a glimpse into a period of African American history often overlooked, while delivering a totally escapist, swoon-worthy readThe Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing...
Read More check catalog
 
 
A Million to One

Adiba Jaigirdar - HarperCollins
Format: Hardcover

Adiba Jaigirdar, author of one of Time's Best YA books of all time, gives Titanic an Ocean's 8 makeover in this nail-biting heist set onboard the infamous ship. Josefa is an unapologetic and charismatic thief, who loves the thrill of the chase. She has her eye on her biggest mark...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Rust in the Root

JUSTINA IRELAND - Balzer Bray
Format: Hardcover

The author of the visionary New York Times bestseller Dread Nation returns with another spellbinding historical fantasy set at the crossroads of race and power in America.It is 1937, and Laura Ann Langston lives in an America divided - between those who work the mystical arts and those...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Beneath the Wide Silk Sky

Emily Inouye Huey - Scholastic Press
Format: Hardcover

Stunning, devastating, poignant: debut author Emily Inouye Huey paints an intimate portrait of the racism faced by America's Japanese population during WWII. Perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys and Sharon Cameron.Sam Sakamoto doesn't have space in her life for dreams. With the recent...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Daughters of a Dead Empire

Carolyn Tara O'Neil - Roaring Brook Press
Format: Hardcover

Russia, 1918: With the execution of Tsar Nicholas, the empire crumbles and Russia is on the edge of civil war -- the poor are devouring the rich. Anna, a bourgeois girl, narrowly escaped the massacre of her entire family in Yekaterinburg. Desperate to get away from the Bolsheviks, she offers...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken

Nita Tyndall - HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover

"A heartbreaking and bittersweet novel about the need for queer joy even in the midst of the horrors of war. The ending had me in tears." - Malinda Lo, New York Times bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Last Night at the Telegraph ClubFor fans of Ruta Sepetys...
Read More check catalog
 
 
One for All: A Novel

Lillie Lainoff
Format: Hardcover

"There are no limits to the will -- and the strength -- of this unique female hero." -- Tamora Pierce, writer of the Song of the Lioness and the Protector of the Small quartetsOne for All is a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, in which a girl with a chronic illness...
Read More check catalog
 
 
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix

Bethany C. Morrow - Feiwel & Friends
Format: Hardcover

. As the American Civil War rages on, the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island is blossoming, a haven for the recently emancipated. Black people have begun building a community of their own, a refuge from the shadow of the "old life." It is where the March family has finally...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Anatomy: A Love Story

Dana Schwartz - Wednesday Books
Format: Book

Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry.Jack Currer is a resurrection man who's just trying to survive in a city where it's too easy to die.When the two of them have a chance encounter outside the Edinburgh Anatomist's Society, Hazel...

Read More check catalog
 
 
Between Shades of Gray: The Graphic Novel

Ruta Sepetys - Philomel Books
Format: Hardcover

A New York Times notable bookAn international bestsellerA Carnegie Medal nomineeA William C. Morris Award finalistA Golden Kite Award winnerJune, 1941. A knock comes at the door and the life of fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas changes forever. She's arrested by the Soviet secret police...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Perfect Place to Die

Bryce Moore - Sourcebooks Fire
Format: Paperback

"Fans of true-crime murder mysteries won't want to miss this one." -- BOOKLIST , STARRED ReviewStalking Jack the Ripper meets Devil in the White City in this terrifying historical fiction debut about one of the world's most notorious serial killers.In order to save her sister,...
Read More check catalog
 
 
This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II

Andrew Fukuda - Tor Teen
Format: Hardcover

For readers of The Librarian Of Auschwitz, This Light Between Us is a powerfully affecting story of World War II about the unlikeliest of pen pals -- a Japanese American boy and a French Jewish girl -- as they fight to maintain hope in a time of war."I remember visiting...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Reckless Kind

Carly Heath - Soho Teen
Format: Hardcover

It's 1904 on an island just west of Norway, and Asta Hedstrom doesn't want to marry her odious betrothed, Nils. But her mother believes she should be grateful for the possibility of any domestic future, given her single-sided deafness, unconventional appearance, and even stranger...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Before We Disappear

Shaun David Hutchinson - HarperTeen
Format: Book

Fifteen-year-old Jack and sixteen-year-old Wilhelm, assistants to--and captives of--rival magicians, fall in love against the backdrop of Seattle's 1908 world's fair, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

Read More check catalog
 
 
Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix

Aminah Mae Safi - Feiwel & Friends
Format: Hardcover

A ragtag band of misfits gets swept up in Holy Land politics in Travelers Along the Way by Aminah Mae Safi, a thrilling YA remix of the classic legend of Robin Hood.Jerusalem, 1192. The Third Crusade rages on. Rahma al-Hud loyally followed her elder sister Zeena into the war over the Holy...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The City Beautiful

Aden Polydoros - Inkyard Press; Original edition
Format: Hardcover

"The City Beautiful is the haunting, queer Jewish historical thriller of my darkest dreams." - Dahlia Adler, creator of LGBTQ Reads and editor of That Way Madness LiesDeath lurks around every corner in this unforgettable Jewish historical fantasy about a city, a boy, and the shadows...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Ironhead, or, Once a Young Lady

Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem - Levine Querido
Format: Hardcover

Eighteen-year-old Constance is not interested in marriage or in being a "young lady." But for a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s, that's just about all that's available to her. When her parents arrange her a marriage with a man more than twice her age, she's...
Read More check catalog
 
 
The Forest of Stolen Girls

June Hur - Feiwel & Friends
Format: Hardcover

Hwani's family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest near a gruesome crime scene. Years later, Detective Min -- Hwani's father -- learns that thirteen girls have recently disappeared from the same forest...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Saving Savannah

Tonya Bolden - Bloomsbury YA
Format: Hardcover

From acclaimed author Tonya Bolden comes the story of a teen girl becoming a woman on her own terms against the backdrop of widespread social change in the early 1900s.Savannah Riddle is lucky. As a daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington D.C., she attends one of the most...
Read More check catalog
 
 
A Sitting in St. James

Rita Williams-Garcia - Quill Tree Books
Format: Hardcover

A tour-de-force from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia, this story of an antebellum plantation - and the enduring legacies of slavery upon every person who lives there - is essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Angel of Greenwood

Randi Pink

Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Wilson is, on the surface, a town troublemaker, but is hiding that he is an avid reader and secret poet, never leaving home without his journal. A passionate follower of W.E.B. Du Bois, he believes that black people should rise up to claim the
Read More check catalog
 
 
We Are Not Free

Traci Chee - HMH Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

"All around me, my friends are talking, joking, laughing. Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us. We are not free. But we are not alone." From New York Times best-selling and acclaimed author Traci Chee comes We Are Not Free,...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Stage Dreams

Melanie Gillman
Format: Book

Read Morecheck catalog
 
 
Lizard in a Zoot Suit

Marco Finnegan
Format: Hardcover

Los Angeles, 1943. It's the era of the Zoot Suit Riots, and Flaca and Cuata have a problem. It's bigger than being grounded by their strict mother. It's bigger than tensions with the soldiers stationed nearby. And it's shaped like a five-foot-tall lizard. When a lost member...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Uprising

Margaret Peterson Haddix - Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Format: Hardcover

Around her the workers were screaming out prayers and curses.... She herself was sobbing tearlessly.... Her only prayer was still, "I dont want to die." Oh, please, God, dont let me die, she thought. Ive never even had a chance to live. Bella, newly arrived in New York from Italy,...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All: by M. T. Anderson, Candace Fleming, Stephanie Hemphill, Lisa Ann Sandell, Jennifer Donnelly, Linda Sue Park, Deborah Hopkinson

M T Anderson - Schwartz & Wade
Format: Hardcover

Perfect for anyone fascinated by the Royal Wedding, Netflix's The Crown, or Wolf Hall, this is a pitch-perfect reimagining of the romance and tragedy of Henry VIII and his six wives, told from multiple points of view by some of your favorite authors.If you were one of King...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Four-Four-Two

Dean Hughes - Atheneum Children'S Books
Format: Print book

From the author of Soldier Boys and Search and Destroy comes a thought-provoking, action-packed page-turner based on the little-known history of the Japanese Americans who fought with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II.Yuki Nakahara is an American. But it's the start...
Read More check catalog
 
 
Flygirl

Sherri L Smith - Speak
Format: Paperback

For fans of Unbroken and Ruta Sepetys.All Ida Mae Jones wants to do is fly. Her daddy was a pilot, and years after his death she feels closest to him when she's in the air. But as a young black woman in 1940s Louisiana, she knows the sky is off limits to her, until America enters...
Read More check catalog