Showing results for "James" in Historical Fiction

London, 1593. Sixteen-year-old Will Hughes is busy working on Shakespeare’s stage, stuffing his corsets with straw and pretending to be someone else. Offstage, he’s playing a part, too. The son of traitors, Will is desperate to keep his identity secret—or risk being killed in the bloody queen’s imperial schemes. All he wants is to lay low until he earns enough coin to return to his family.

Roland Inness desperately needs meat for his starving family, but he takes the wrong deer on the wrong nobleman's land. Worse yet, he uses his longbow, a weapon outlawed and suppressed by the Norman overlords of England. Now they are coming for him. With one shot the 14 year old peasant boy is launched on a desperate flight that takes him from the mountains of Derbyshire to the wild frontier of Wales and on to the court of Richard the Lionheart.

Having found his place as a squire to a Norman knight, Roland Inness sets off with his master, Sir Roger de Laval, and fellow squire on a perilous mission to the Holy Land. King Richard has sworn to take Jerusalem from Saladin and orders Sir Roger to assess the military situation. Joining them is the Templar Knight Tuck as they contend with Moors, Berbers and a Sicilian usurper before reaching the battlefields in the east. There, Roland sees the ugly face of war and tests his mettle.

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life. Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

Magic is fading from Wales—choked off by King Offa’s Dyke, the enemy earthworks that spans the entire border. Even the dragons have disappeared. And now an attack is imminent. Prince Taliesin would love to watch magic die. Prince Dafydd fears it, and the throne. But when their father promises the crown to whichever son can destroy the dyke and restore magic to Wales, the brothers are forced into an uneasy rivalry.

This astonishing novel from three-time National Book Award finalist Rita Williams-Garcia about the interwoven lives of those bound to a plantation in antebellum America is an epic masterwork—empathetic, brutal, and entirely human—and essential reading for both teens and adults grappling with the long history of American racism.

In the summer of 1934, Joe Garbe arrives in Chicago with one goal: Earn enough money to get out of debt and save the family farm. Joe’s cousin sets him up with a hotel job, then proposes a sketchy scheme to make a lot more money fast. While running his con, Joe finds himself splitting time between Eddie, a handsome flirt on a delivery truck, and Raymond, a carefree rich kid who shows Joe the eye-opening queer life around every corner of the big city. Joe’s exposure to the surface of criminal Chicago pulls him into something darker than he could have imagined.

The Revolutionary War comes alive in this contemporary classic for young adults, a stirring, probing tale full of action and suspense, putting readers right into the heart of the war for independence.

Will Braddock doesn’t want some old judge dictating his future. The newly orphaned fourteen-year-old embarks upon a quest to determine his own destiny. He heads west to find his uncle, a surveyor on the first transcontinental railroad. He has to convince his only living relative not to sign the judge’s papers sentencing him to a blacksmith apprenticeship.

Particular Promising Billionaire Businesswoman tells the captivating story of Olivia Johnson, a young and ambitious woman who defies all odds to rise to the top of the business world. From humble beginnings, Olivia faced numerous obstacles and challenges along her journey, but her unwavering determination and relentless work ethics propelled her towards success. As Olivia navigates the cutthroat corporate world, she encounters both allies and adversaries, learning valuable lessons about trust, resilience, and the importance of staying true to oneself.

Despite Germany’s stranglehold on the French, Benjamin Cohen, an introverted but musically talented adolescent, alters the course of his life when he defies his father to study the 55-bell carillon in the Catholic cathedral. Can Benjamin’s budding mastery of the carillon and his love affair with the troubled novitiate nun Marie-Noëlle give him le courage he needs to perform the one act that can save his people from Nazi arrest and earn back the respect from his father he craves? Or will it doom them all?

Journey with Jim through An Ambition to Belong, the second book of master novelist Jim Sniechowski’s Leaving Home trilogy. This is an astute and insightful psychological journey into the inner life of Jim, an adolescent in the midst of trying to forge his own identity....

Indian Territory, 1881. Brody Martin, at 15, has survived a gunpowder explosion, a bear attack, a panther attack, and more than one attempt on his life. But now, he is wanted in Fort Smith for a crime he did not (exactly) commit, and bounty hunters are on his trail. In an effort to elude them, he finds a crack in the face of a ridge and slips into a cavern known as the Devil's Den, trapped by the men who would like to redeem the price on his head - dead or alive.

It's 1881, and 15-year-old Brody Martin has taken refuge in Indian territory from the Miller clan. The Millers are accusing him of horse-thieving and murder, and they don't care who they hurt to find him. Brody is hired on by Joseph, a Cherokee Indian, to help run his trap lines in the wilderness. Just as he starts to feel safe, he stumbles across a dying man and finds out there are worse things than being separated from his family and wanted for murder.

The crops have failed and his family is starving, so 14-year-old Brody slips out into the early morning darkness, desperate to find food in the foothills of the Devil's Backbone. A terrible accident, a rescue by a delusional ex-slave, and a journey to find his family has Brody growing into a man...and also wanted for murder.

A vivid portrayal of the Civil War, and a look at the reasons behind the conflict. Johnny Heller, 14, convinces his mother to let him join a wagon train carrying food to Confederate soldiers. Along the way he’s captured by Blue Coats, and a black Union soldier insists that Johnny teach him to read. Brought up to believe that black people are inferior, Johnny deliberately tricks him. But as they get to know each other an uneasy alliance develops, followed by a friendship that surprises them both.

As the young Frank Myers grows up in the schools and on the streets of Washington, D.C., his path crosses that of the uncle he never met through the memories of his uncle's friends, especially at the Veterans Outreach Center. Frank has his own friends, especially Eric, so he doesn't focus too much on his uncle. But, it's other Vietnam vets who may save Frank from the problems youth of the late 1980s find in DC, problems Eric seems drawn to.