Collection: Historical Fiction

Opposites attract and sparks fly when the vivacious Arabella falls for a baron who lives under the shadow of a scandalous family secret.

1815, London

Arabella Latham is a free spirit who longs to feel the spark of true love, but few men can match her passion for Shakespeare or her zest for life. Though her prospects seem slim, Arabella knows she can always count on the handsome but stoic Lord Henry Northcott, dubbed "The Brooding Baron" by the ton, to be willing to engage in intelligent conversation and even share a congenial dance with her at almost every ball. His quiet demeanor is the opposite of her vivacious personality, and she finds herself drawn to him, despite their differences.

Lord Northcott has quietly admired Arabella for years, grateful that his friendship with her brother has allowed him to share in her company and even begin to secretly imagine a life together with her. But he knows he cannot pursue a romantic relationship with any woman--let alone someone as bright and beautiful as Arabella--because of the shadow that an old family scandal has cast over his life. He has vowed to preserve what is left of his family's reputation by holding himself above reproach apart from society and focusing the majority of his efforts at Parliament.

But Arabella is determined to show Lord Northcott that life is meant to be enjoyed, and she sets out to see what is behind the walls the Brooding Baron has built around himself. Could the spark of true love be enough to drive away the shadows holding Henry back?

"A mix of prose and colorful comic panels make for a fast-moving story, affirming the power of kindness and empathy."?Kirkus Reviews, review of The Good Guys Agency: Kind Like Fred Rogers

Welcome to the fifth book in the Good Guys Agency series! Boys need better role models, and in the Good Guys Agency series--friends Lucky, Rudy, and Red--take matters into their own hands!

In volume five, we find our heroic pals tracking down legendary Katherine Johnson in order to find out what brain power really is and how to harness it as a superpower! Firing up the Kid Cruiser, the Good Guys Agency finds themselves back in time, learning how Katherine uses her brain as a living computer at NASA! Ms. Johnson teaches them all about the Apollo Space Missions and even let's them help out with the math that saves the day.

Time travel adventures, historic heroes, comic book panels, laughs, jokes, and more deliver a winning combination of fun, education, and values to inspire a new generation of honorable people--this time with math! Perfect for fans of Captain Underpants and Dog Man!

Historical fiction at its finest! A sweet and sensitive, accessible middle grade novel in verse, following an unlikely friendship in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

Aurelia, the daughter of a once-flourishing plantation, must till the land herself to keep herself alive. Libby, a freed slave, is working her way north to live a better life. Together they form an unlikely bond of friendship and help each other find common ground and reach their goals through unexpected ways. Smart and relatable, this novel in verse cuts to the heart of young emotions, while illuminating what love and division look like through a child's eyes.

Excerpts from the This Opening Sky:

Aurelia

My hands are no longer the hands of a young lady.

I drop my hoe and unwrap my bandaged fingers.

They are torn,

blistered and bleeding.

Nails, once perfectly manicured, now dirty and broken.

The hands of a field worker.

Libby

I must find someone who will barter

some eggs

or a loaf of bread

or a piece of meat for a day's work.

Trouble is, most plantations are either abandoned

or already have too many mouths to feed.

Groo the Wanderer is back and stupider than ever . . . which is pretty stupid. In this, his latest misadventure, he tries to figure out the dumb way human beings attempt to co-exist with animals on this planet.

And if we can't figure out how to do that, what chance does the guy with cheese dip for brains have? From the hilarious mind and skillful pen of Sergio Aragonés, with scripts by Mark Evanier, colors by Carrie Strachan (Mad Magazine), and lettering by Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo)!

Collects Groo: In the Wild comics #1-#4.

"A remarkable novel" (The New York Times) about America's first female soldier, Deborah Sampson Gannett, who ran away from home in 1782, successfully disguised herself as a man, and fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War.At a time when rigid societal norms seemed absolute, Deborah Sampson risked everything in search of something better. Revolutionary, Alex Myers's richly imagined and carefully researched debut novel, tells the story of a fierce-tempered young woman turned celebrated solider and the remarkable courage, hope, fear, and heartbreak that shaped her odyssey during the birth of a nation. After years of indentured servitude in a sleepy Massachusetts town, Deborah chafes under the oppression of colonial society and cannot always hide her discontent. When a sudden crisis forces her hand, she decides to escape the only way she can, rejecting her place in the community in favor of the perilous unknown. Cutting her hair, binding her chest, and donning men's clothes stolen from a neighbor, Deborah sheds her name and her home, beginning her identity-shaking transformation into the imaginary "Robert Shurtliff"--a desperate and dangerous masquerade that grows more serious when "Robert" joins the Continental Army. What follows is a journey through America's War of Independence like no other--an unlikely march through cold winters across bloody battlefields, the nightmare of combat and the cruelty of betrayal, the elation of true love and the tragedy of heartbreak. As The Boston Globe raves, "Revolutionary succeeds on a number of levels, as a great historical-military adventure story, as an exploration of gender identity, and as a page-turning description of the fascinating life of the revolutionary Deborah Sampson."

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Sunday Times (UK) * The Guardian (UK) * The Washington Independent Review of Books * Sydney Morning Herald * The Los Angeles Public Library * The Irish Independent * Real Simple *

Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize

"Carys Davies is a deft, audacious visionary." --Téa Obreht

When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in the salty Kentucky mud, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania farm to see for himself if the rumors are true: that the giant monsters are still alive and roam the uncharted wilderness beyond the Mississippi River. Promising to write and to return in two years, he leaves behind his only daughter, Bess, to the tender mercies of his taciturn sister and heads west.

With only a barnyard full of miserable animals and her dead mother's gold ring to call her own, Bess, unprotected and approaching womanhood, fills lonely days tracing her father's route on maps at the subscription library and waiting for his letters to arrive. Bellman, meanwhile, wanders farther and farther from home, across harsh and alien landscapes, in reckless pursuit of the unknown.

From Frank O'Connor Award winner Carys Davies, West is a spellbinding and timeless epic-in-miniature, an eerie parable of the American frontier and an electric monument to possibility.

Your Legacy Begins: First Words to Empower is an uplifting board book adapted from author Schele Williamsand illustratorTonya Engel's award-winning picture book Your Legacy: A Bold Reclaiming of Our Enslaved History that celebrates African American children's heritage and the legacy of their ancestors.

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and receive your ancestors.
They are a part of YOU.

Now reimagined for a younger audience, this board book speaks directly to African American children, introducing empowering vocabulary while inspiring little ones to walk tall and do great things.

With a joyous feel and vibrant art, Your Legacy Begins: First Words to Empower reminds little ones that their ancestors passed down the best of themselves--gifts like determination, courage, dignity, and love. That is your legacy!

A riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman
who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation, and found freedom in the air.

For fans of Hidden Figures, The Great Circle, and I Was Amelia Earhart, A Pair of Wings is an epic novel about pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, whose story has waited 100 years to be told. A few years after the Wright Brothers' first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew right over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie wasn't afraid. Without even thinking, she spread her arms out and pretended she was flying. She knew there was freedom in those wings.

The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the great migration, moving to Chicago as a single woman. While working as a manicurist in the White Sox barbershop, she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men, Robert Abbott, the publisher of The Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, Chicago's first Black banker. Abbott becomes her mentor and chronicles her adventures, while the good-looking gun-toting Binga becomes her lover. Her first love, though, remains the airplane.

But in 1920, no one in the U.S. will train a Black woman to fly, so 26- year-old Bessie learns to speak French and bets it all on an epic journey to Europe as she begins a quest to defy the odds and gravity itself. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie is molded by battle-hardened French and German combat pilots, who teach her death-defying stunts. Bessie's signature majestic loops, spiky barrel rolls, and hairpin turns, just like her hardscrabble journey, are spellbinding.

While she finds there is no prejudice in the air, Bessie must wrestle with many challenges: She nearly dies in a plane crash, one of her brothers seems to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and as she grapples with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds is the air means she must otherwise fly solo.

With tenderness and verve, Carole Hopson imagines the breathtaking moxie that led Bessie Coleman to strap up knee-high boots and don a self-designed flight suit to become "Queen Bess" of the sky.

Fourteen-year-old Hannah is an orphan living with her cruel aunt Phoebe in Salem, Massachusetts. Hannah recently lost her mother, and now her only comfort is her horse, Promise. But when her money-hungry aunt sells the horse and then indentures Hannah to the Boston family of a British general, Hannah vows to retrieve Promise at all costs, and join the fight for freedom.

In Boston, as disagreements between the Whigs and the Tories run high and Americans prepare for revolution, not only does Hannah begin secret meetings with the Sons of Liberty disguised as a boy, but she is also reunited with Promise. Together with her beloved horse, Hannah takes a bold step to join the fight for freedom and sets off on a dangerous mission. Will she and Promise succeed?

Madeleine Roux's next season in Regency England follows a rebellious writer and the man who risks everything to publish her.

In a world where women are expected to be demure and dainty, Margaret Arden would much rather be passionate and daring like the characters in her novel. The idyllic life at Mosely Cottage with her two younger sisters and mother is fine, but Margaret knows there's so much more to achieve. After a particularly brutal rejection letter from a renowned publisher, Margaret fears the worst; She'll amount to nothing more than what society expects of her. That's until her cousin's glamorous wedding masquerade brings her out of her stupor and onto a collision course with scandal, notoriety, and even love.

Captain Bridger Dryden is starting over after years of bloody action fighting for his country. Now home and struggling with all he's seen and experienced; Bridger is turning to his love of books as a new partner at Dockarty & Dryden publishing. So when he journeys to Pressmore Estate for the wedding of his dearest friend, and stumbles upon loose pages of an astonishing book, Bridger knows he must publish it. But upon meeting the author, Bridger is stunned to discover that he is in fact she, and his publisher has already rejected her.

While Bridger is keen to gain her trust and rescind the initial rejection, Margaret can't help but be skeptical of his intentions. He may be smart, witty, and handsome, but what does he have to gain from taking such a risk? Sparks fly between the two, just as the wedding of the season starts to descend into chaos when a masked dance leads to a case of mistaken identities. But undeniable chemistry has a way of defying such obstacles. . .

Louise Lloyd's time away in Paris is everything she was hoping it would be until a shocking murder turns her entire world upside down.

Louise Lloyd is finally living the quiet life she'd longed for, working in a parfumerie by day and spending time with her new friends every night at the Aquarius club in Paris. When a desperate mother asks for help locating her artist daughter, Louise initially refuses to keep her hard-won but fragile peace intact. But the woman comes with a letter of introduction from an old friend in Harlem, and Louise realizes she has no choice but to do what she can to find the missing young woman.

The woman's daughter, Iris Wright, is part of an elite social circle. Louise soon finds herself drawn into a world of privilege and ice-cold ambition--a young group of artists who will do anything to get ahead--but would they murder one of their own? With the help of some friends from home, Louise must untangle a web of lies, jealousy, and betrayal to find out what really happened to Iris while fighting to keep her new life from crashing down around her.

The anticipated sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller featuring escapist romance and a wealthy Black family in 1910s Chicago

Like the blazing Chicago sun, the drama is heating up for the Davenports and their social set. Before the summer of 1910 drops its last petal, the lives--and loves--of these four young women will change in ways they never could have imagined:

Newly engaged Ruby Tremaine is eagerly planning her wedding to the love of her life when a nasty rumor threatens her reputation and her marriage. Olivia Davenport has committed to the social justice cause and secretly hopes she'll be reunited with dashing lawyer Washington DeWight--until her parents decide she's to marry someone else. Amy-Rose Shepherd is making her lifelong wish of owning a salon come true, but when an incident forces her to return to Freeport Manor, she's back in the path of John Davenport, who still holds her heart. Helen Davenport is determined to get over her own heartbreak and bring the Davenport Carriage Company into the new century, even if it means teaming up with a thrill-seeking racecar driver who just loves to get under her skin.

Inspired by the real-life story of the Patterson family, More Than This is the second book in critically adored Davenports series, following four empowered and passionate young Black women as they navigate a rapidly changing society and discover the courage to steer their own paths in life--and love.

A vivid historical fiction account of the community activism behind San Diego's Chicano Park--home to the largest outdoor mural collection in the U.S.--and just one example of the Mexican American community's rich history of resistance and resilience.

Barrio Logan, one of San Diego's oldest Chicane neighborhoods, once brimmed with families and stretched all the way to the glorious San Diego Bay. But in the decades after WWII, the community lost their beach and bayfront to factories, junkyards, and an interstate that divided the neighborhood and forced around 5,000 people out of their homes. Then on April 22, 1970, residents discovered that the construction crew they believed was building a park--one the city had promised them years ago--was actually breaking ground for a police station. That's when they knew it was time to make their voices heard. Barrio Rising invites readers to join a courageous young activist and her neighbors in their successful twelve-day land occupation and beyond, when Barrio Logan banned together and built the colorful park that would become the corazón of San Diego's Chicane community.

In July 1969, the world witnessed an awe-inspiring historical achievement when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. For the young protagonist of this lyrical and hopeful picture book, that landing is something that inspires her to make one giant step toward all of the possibilities that life has to offer.

Caldecott Honor-winning painter Jerry Pinkney and the poetic Dianna Hutts Aston create a moving tribute to the historic Apollo 11 Mission, just in time to commemorate its upcoming fortieth anniversary.

A brilliant new translation of a classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art

The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects--"the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one of those rare books that persuade us to see our entire civilization in a new light, its guide is the French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, who knew the secrets of the ancien régime and all that came after, and was able to adapt the notion of "legitimacy" to the modern age. Roberto Calasso follows him through a vast gallery of scenes set immediately before and after the French Revolution, making occasional forays backward and forward in time, from Vedic India to the porticoes of the Palais-Royal and to the killing fields of Pol Pot, with appearances by Goethe and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Marx, Walter Benjamin and Chateaubriand. At the center stands the story of the ruin of Kasch, a legendary kingdom based on the ritual killing of the king and emblematic of the ruin of ancient and modern regimes.

Offered here in a new translation by Richard Dixon, The Ruin of Kasch is, as John Banville wrote, "a great fat jewel-box of a book, gleaming with obscure treasures."

Two eccentric orphans bring together a grumpy viscount and the free-spirited heroine who steals his heart in the first novel in Eloisa James's new Accidental Brides series, in which haughty aristocrats find themselves married to the wrong women.

He wants a nanny, not a bride...

Suddenly guardian to twins, Viscount Dominic Kelbourne is luckily betrothed to a suitable lady--until she elopes. With no time to woo, Dominic decides to marry his fiancée's unconventional sister. Torie isn't perfect, but their kisses are so passionate that society thinks he's actually chosen her.

She wants to marry for love...

Torie has never been able to make sense of words on a page, so she has turned her talents to art. She longs for a man who values her as she is... but marries for the sake of the twins. She doubts Dominic is capable of love, let alone respect, but as their heated debates turn into something more, Torie begins to imagine a life as a wife, not a nanny.

But when the arrogant viscount finds that his viscountess has stolen his heart, he'll have to give all he has to win her love.