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Historical fiction not set during WWII - Extreme Reader 2025

Reading suggestions for anyone to enjoy that also work for the Extreme Reader 2025 challenge! Additional Category Information: • WWII took place between 1939 and 1945

30 items

  • Intertwining the stories of two Black students decades apart, this compelling and honest novel follows Kevin and Gibran as they navigate similar forms of insidious racism while discovering who they want to be instead of what society tells…
    BookNew York : Kokila, 2023. — YF ALLEN-A
  • In 1924 at the Angel Island Immigration Station, teen Chinese immigrant Soo Tai Go is awakened to the political realities of his new home as he waits to find out if he and his family will be allowed into the country.
    BookNew York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2024. — YF NG-F
  • In London, 1593, sixteen-year-old Will Hughes makes his living on Shakespeare's stage, but after the famous playwright Christopher Marlowe is murdered, he teams up with young Lord James Bloomsbury, and together the two hunt the elusive…
    BookNew York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2023. — YF COTTE-E
  • Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own, and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams. As the…
    BookNew York : Gallery Books, 2022. — F ALEXA-K
  • Two fifteen-year-old girls--one a slave and the other an indentured servant--escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.
    BookNew York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2006] — YF DRAPE-S
  • In a kingdom gripped by turmoil, privileged seventeen-year-old Iseul defies danger to rescue her sister Suyeon from the absolute power of tyrannical King Yeonsan, while Prince Daehyun, desperate to overthrow his despotic half-brother,…
    BookNew York : Feiwel and Friends, 2024. — YF HUR-J
  • It s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown…
    BookNew York : Doubleday, 2023. — F WHITE-C
  • When Shek Yeung sees a Portuguese sailor slay her husband, a feared pirate, she knows she must act swiftly or die. Instead of mourning, Shek Yeung launches a new plan: immediately marrying her husband's second-in-command, and agreeing to…
    BookNew York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. — F CHANG-R
  • 1890, Atlanta. By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel Caroline Payne, the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice…
    BookNew York, NY : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2019] — YF LEE-S
  • Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.
    BookNew York : St. Martin's Griffin, ©2013. — YF ROWEL-R
  • Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and…
    BookNew York : Flatiron Books, [2022] — F ZHANG-J
  • Sidney Morrison has skillfully written an epic novel of historical fiction based on the life and times of Fredrick Douglass
    Book[Portland, Oregon] : Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts, 2024. — F MORRI-S
  • A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.
    BookNew York : Doubleday, [2023] — F LAWHO-A
  • Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape…
    BookNew York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. — F GYASI-Y
  • Being the daughter of the village Capuwa, or demon-priest, Amara is used to keeping mostly to herself. Influenced by the new religious practices brought in by the British Colonizers, the villagers who once respected her father's craft have…
    BookNew York : Berkley, 2024. — F JAYAT-A
  • Lavinia, an orphaned seven-year-old white indentured servant, arrives in 1791 to work in the kitchen house at Tall Oaks, a Tidewater, Va., tobacco plantation owned by Capt. James Pyke. Belle, the captain's illegitimate half-white daughter…
    BookNew York : Touchstone Books, 2010. — F GRISS-K
  • Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. America in…
    BookNew York : Dutton Books, 2021. — YF LO-M
  • In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and…
    Book[New York] : Viking, [2021] — F TOWLE-A
  • Josefa is an unapologetic and charismatic thief, who loves the thrill of the chase. She has her eye on her biggest mark yet--the RMS Titanic, the most luxurious ship in the world. But she isn't interested in stealing from wealthy…
    BookNew York : Harper Teen, 2022. — YF JAIGI-A
  • Growing up in 1950s Detroit, Jo and Bethie Kaufman's roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who…
    BookNew York : Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2019. — F WEINE-J