Crispin : the cross of lead by Avi
In fourteenth-century England a nameless thirteen-year-old peasant boy, who thought he had little to lose, finds himself with even less. Accused of a crime he did not commit, he has been declared a “wolf’s head,” meaning that anyone can kill him on sight. “Asta’s son” learns from the village priest that his Christian name is Crispin and that his parents’ origins — and fates — might be more complex than he ever imagined. To remain alive the boy must flee his tiny village — the only world he’s ever known — taking with him his mother’s cross of lead.
Library Call Number: HIST F AVI
Empire of the sun by J.G. Ballard
Shanghai, 1941 — a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war…and the dawn of a blighted world. Ballard’s enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.
Library Call Number: HIST F BALL
The Boy who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Just as the Nazis are rising to power, Helmuth Hubner, a German schoolboy, is caught up in all the swashbuckling bravado of his time. The handsome stormtrooper uniforms, the shiny jackboots and armbands, the rousing patriotism – all serve to draw him into this bright new world of promise and hope. In the beginning his patriotism is unwavering. But every day the rights of people all over Germany are diminishing. The truth has been censored and danger lurks everywhere. Patriotism means denouncing others, love means hate, and speaking out means treason. How much longer can Helmuth keep silent?
Library Call Number: HIST F BART
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
Berlin 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whole life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.
Library Call Number: HIST F BOYN
Wolf blood by N.M Browne
A Celtic warrior girl escaping from a rival tribe runs straight into the path of two Roman foot soldiers. She disguises herself as a beggar and asks to share their fire. Using her gift as a seer, she discovers that one of the soldiers is not what he seems. Celtic blood courses through his veins, too, but there is something else. He is a shapeshifter, a Versipellum. He shares his soul with that of the wolf. The girl needs to reach the leader of her dead friend’s tribe, and the boy must escape the Romans before they discover his true nature. Their only chance of survival is to help each other. But what will happen when their powers are combined?
Library Call Number: HIST F BROW
Gatty’s tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland
In the year 1203, nine pilgrims set out on a pilgrimage. The journey – on foot, on horseback and by sea – is fraught with danger. Not all of them will come safely home. Among them is Gatty, whose whole life has been spent working in the fields. Bright, eager and resolute, she is at the heart of a huge, ambitious novel that sweeps across Europe to Jerusalem. All the pilgrims endure aches and pains, homesickness and terrible loss; they are prey to thieves and murderers; but it is Gatty, whose impulsiveness lands her in desperate trouble, who is transformed by the experience. With knuckle-biting drama, tremendous emotional highs and lows, and unforgettable characters, Kevin Crossley-Holland paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the world of the Middle Ages that answers the question so many readers have asked, of what happens to Gatty.
Library Call Number: HIST F CROSS
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. But when the Nazis invade, father and daughter flee with a dangerous secret. Werner is a German orphan, destined to labour in the same mine that claimed his father’s life, until he discovers a knack for engineering. His talent wins him a place at a brutal military academy, but his way out of obscurity is built on suffering. At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.
Library Call Number: HIST F DOER
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
An alluring tour de force: a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha. Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love, always elusive, is scorned as illusion. Sayuri’s story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house.
Library Call Number: HIST F GOLD
Roman invasion by Jim Eldridge
It’s AD 84 when Bran, a prince of the Carvetii tribe, is captured by the Romans. A legion of soldiers is marching east, to build a military road. It’s hostile country, and Bran is to go with them as a hostage to ensure the legion’s safety … but no one is safe in newly conquered Britain.
Library Call Number: HIST F ELDR
Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden
A story of heroism and adventure, of a boy who had to become a man too soon, of a family and a tribe who had to learn to win to survive. A man without a tribe was at great risk, so the young boy abandoned with his siblings on the harsh Mongolian plains had to struggle to avoid death. He survived both starvation and hostile attacks by learning remarkable leadership skills and gathering a group of outsiders like himself. Hunted and alone, he dreamed of uniting the tribes into one house, one nation. He became a great warrior. He would become father to his people. He would be Genghis Khan.
Library Call Number: HIST F IGGU
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo
As the enemy lurks in the darkness, Thomas struggles to stay awake through the night. He has lived through the terror of gas attacks and watched friends die by his side. But in the morning, Thomas will be forced to confront an even greater horror. As the minutes tick by, Thomas remembers his childhood spent deep in the countryside with his mother, his brothers, and Molly, the love of his life. But each minute that passes brings Thomas closer to something he can’t bear to to think about–the moment when the war and its horrific consequences will change his life forever.
Library Call Number: HIST F MORP
War horse by Michael Morpurgo
Joey is a warhorse, but he wasn’t always. Once, he was a farm horse and a gentle boy named Albert was his master. Then World War I came storming through and everything changed. Albert’s father sells Joey to the army where the beautiful, red-bay horse is trained to charge the enemy, drag heavy artillery, and carry wounded soldiers not much older than Albert from battlefields. Amongst the clamour of guns and slogging through the cold mud, Joey wonders if the war will ever end. And if it does, will he ever find Albert again?
Library Call Number: HIST F MORP
Feasting the Wolf by Susan Price
“People will call you an oathbreaker! If you don’t go, everyone will know you are a coward.” And so farm-boy Ketil joins his blood brother Ottar in swearing allegiance to the captain of Wave Strider a Viking raiding ship. The boys discover that day-to-day Viking life is less glamorous than they expect and Ketil’s resistance to the ill treatment and bullying opens a rift between the two.
Library Call Number: HIST F PRIC
The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman
- Tom Sherbourne is a young lighthouse keeper on a remote island off Western
- Australia, and lives there with his wife. One April morning a boat washes ashore
- carrying a dead man and an infant. Years later, Tom and his wife discover the
- consequences of the decision they made that day – as the baby’s real story unfolds.
Library Call Number: HIST F STED
The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusaḱ s ground breaking novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meagre existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist . It is a book. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbours during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.
Library Call Number: HIST F ZUZA
