Historical Fiction for Teen Guys

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Historical fiction
• Books for teen guys

The King’s Swift Rider
By Mollie Hunter
YA F HUNTER
Unwilling to fight but feeling a sense of duty, 16-year-old Martin joins Scotland’s army as a master of espionage.

Bloodline Rising
By Katy Moran
YA F MORAN
Cai, a thief, finds himself held captive on a trading ship bound for Britain--the home his father, a ruthless barbarian assassin.

The Named
By Marianne Curley
YA F CURLEY
As one of the Named, Ethan secretly protects history from an evil group that seeks to alter the past. He has to train his first apprentice, Isabel Becket, before history and their lives are changed forever.

Death Cloud
By Andy Lane
YA F LANE
When his father is suddenly posted to India and his mother mysteriously unwell, fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain.

Historical Fiction Mixed with Fantasy

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Fantasy
• Historical fiction
• Read-alikes for Rick Riordan
• Focus on plot, action and events

Nobody’s Princess
By Esther M. Friesner
YA F FRIESNER
Determined to fend for herself in a world where only men have real freedom, headstrong Helen, who will be called queen of Sparta and Helen of Troy one day, learns to fight, hunt, and ride horses while disguised as a boy, and goes on an adventure throughout the Mediterranean world.

Leviathan
By Scott Westerfeld
YA F WESTERFE Leviatha #1
In an alternate 1914 Europe, fifteen-year-old Austrian Prince Alek, on the run from the Clanker Powers who are attempting to take over the globe using mechanical machinery, forms an uneasy alliance with Deryn who, disguised as a boy to join the British Air Service, is learning to fly genetically-engineered beasts. (This one is science fiction, not fantasy.)

The Amulet of Samarkand
By Jonathan Stroud
YA F STROUD Bartimae #1
Nathaniel, a magician's apprentice, summons up the djinni Bartimaeus and instructs him to steal the Amulet of Samarkand from the powerful magician Simon Lovelace.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns
By Rae Carson
YA F CARSON
A fearful sixteen-year-old princess discovers her heroic destiny after being married off to the king of a neighboring country in turmoil and pursued by enemies seething with dark magic.

Airman
By Eoin Colfer
YA F COLFER
In the late nineteenth century, when Conor Broekhart discovers a conspiracy to overthrow the king, he is branded a traitor, imprisoned, and forced to mine for diamonds under brutal conditions while he plans a daring escape from Little Saltee prison by way of a flying machine that he must design, build, and, hardest of all, trust to carry him to safety.

Clean Fantasy Adventure for Teen Girls

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Fantasy
• Adventure
• Books for teen girls
• Clean reads

Singer of All Songs
By Kate Constable
YA F CONSTABL Chanters #1
Calwyn, a young priestess of ice magic, or "chantment," joins with other chanters who have different magical skills to fight a sorcerer who wants to claim all powers for his own.

Entwined
By Heather Dixon
YA F DIXON
Confined to their dreary castle while mourning their mother's death, Princess Azalea and her eleven sisters join The Keeper, who is trapped in a magic passageway, in a nightly dance that soon becomes nightmarish.

Dragon Slippers
By Jessica Day George
YA F GEORGE Dragon #1
Orphaned after a fever epidemic, Creel befriends a dragon and unknowingly inherits an object that can either save or destroy her kingdom

The Hourglass Door
By Lisa Mangum
YA F MANGUM Hourglass #1
Dante, a prisoner sent from fifteenth-century Italy into the present time as punishment, meets and falls in love with Abby, a high school senior who may be the only one who can save him.

Cinder
By Marissa Meyer
YA F MEYER Lunar #1
As plague ravages the overcrowded Earth, observed by a ruthless lunar people, Cinder, a gifted mechanic and cyborg, becomes involved with handsome Prince Kai and must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect the world in this futuristic take on the Cinderella story. (This is science fiction, but it’s also a fractured fairy tale, so it’s a blend of genres.)

Easy Reading Nonfiction

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Easy reading nonfiction
• A touch of humor
• Books that are applicable to daily life

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
By Po Bronson & Ashley Merriman
305.231 BRO
Award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science of child development have been overlooked.

The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove
By Cathy Erway
641.5973 ERW
In the city where dining is a sport, a gourmand swears off restaurants (even takeout ) for two years, rediscovering the economical, gastronomical joy of home cooking. Includes thirty original recipes.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
By Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
153.8 BAU
The authors review the latest research to report key findings on willpower and offer practical advice for increasing it.

Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
By Donovan Hohn
551.462 HOH
Whimsical curiosity begets a quixotic odyssey and troubling revelations about plastics polluting the seas in former high school teacher and journalist Hohn's charming account of what he learned searching for 28,800 rubber bath toys lost at sea in 1992.

Just My Type
By Simon Garfield
686.224 GAR
A romp through the history of fonts and the lives of the great typographers, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.

Historical Romances with Happy Endings

Try these books if you're looking for:

• Historical fiction
• Romance
• Happy endings
• Interesting female characters

The False Princess
By Eilis O'Neal
YA F O’NEAL
The narrator of this book has been raised in luxury--after all, she's a princess. However, one day, she is called in before the king and queen and informed that she is not the princess. The true princess was hidden away at birth after a prophecy that she might be murdered before her sixteenth birthday.

Captive Heart
By Michele Paige Holmes
ROMANCE HOLMES
Emma Madsen flees Boston for a teaching job out west in Colorado, but her life changes forever when bandits stop her train and one of them kidnaps her, saying he is looking for a teacher. There are many twists, turns, and surprises to keep you on your toes.

The Apothecary’s Daughter
By Julie Klassen
ROMANCE KLASSEN
Set in Regency England when society’s rules allowed women little advancement of the mind or spirit, Lilly Haswell tries to balance two worlds. A sensible, strong willed young woman, she has had much responsibility set on her shoulders watching over her mentally challenged little brother and assisting her father run his apothecary after her mother walked out of their lives. A dream come true comes in with an offer to go to London for a season.

Friends and Foe
By Sarah Eden
ROMANCE EDEN
Philip Jonquil, Earl of Lampton, has sent five years pretending to be the dandiest of dandies as a cover for his role tracking spies for the Foreign Office. He plays his part magnificently, and, at a traveler's inn, manages to offend Sorrel Kendrick, a young lady, when he insists that it's not fashionable for her to use a cane. Sorrel makes her opinion of him clear and when Philip manages to insult her yet again, war ensues between the two, but soon, each comes to find that the other might not be quite as he or she seems.