"The Secret of the Rose"  by Sarah L. Thomson
When her father is imprisoned in 1592 England for being Catholic, fourteen-year-old Rosalind disguises herself as a boy and finds an ultimately dangerous job as servant to playwright Christopher Marlowe. 

"Blood on the River: James Town 1607"  by Elisa Carbo
Traveling to the New World in 1606 as the page to Captain John Smith, twelve-year-old orphan Samuel Collier settles in the new colony of James Town, where he must quickly learn to distinguish between friend and foe. 

"The Color of Fire"  by Ann Rinaldi
Someone is setting fires in New York City ... In 1741, America is at war with Catholic Spain. Phoebe watches as her town erupts into mass hysteria when the whites in New York City accuse the black slaves of planning an uprising. With people implicating each other at every turn, Phoebe has to decide if she's willing to save her friend Cuffee from execution, or if her own conscience and quest for freedom will be singed by her indiscretions. 

“The Lacemaker and the Princess” Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Eleven-year-old Isabelle, living with her lacemaker grandmother and mother near the palace of Versailles in 1788, becomes close friends with Marie Antoinette's daughter, Princess Therese, and finds their relationship complicated not only by their different social class but by the growing political unrest and resentment of the French people.

"Witness"  by Karen Hesse
A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town. 

"Out of the Dust"  by Karen Hesse
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression. 

“Black Duck” by Janet Taylor Lisle
Years afterwards, Ruben Hart tells the story of how, in 1929 Newport, Rhode Island, his
family and his best friend's family were caught up in the violent competition among
groups trying to control the local rum-smuggling trade. 


"Yellow Star"  by Jennifer Roy
From 1939, when Syvia is four and a half years old, to 1945 when she has just turned ten, a Jewish girl and her family struggle to survive in Poland's Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation. 

“Th“Way Down Deep” by Ruth White
In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is
happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the
arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby's past begins to unravel. 

 The Fire Eaters” by David Almond
Despite observing his father's illness and the suffering of the fire-eating Mr. McNulty, as
well as enduring abuse at school and the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bobby Burns
and his family and friends, living in England in 1962, still find reasons to rejoice in their
lives and to have hope for the future.   

“Way Down Deep” by Ruth White
In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is
happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the
arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby's past begins to unravel. 
 
 “Ophelia”  by Lisa Klein
In a story based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia tells of her life in the court at Elsinore,
her love for Prince Hamlet, and her escape from the violence in Denmark.