Recommended for gifted readers historical fiction

Recommended for Gifted Readers - Historical Fiction
(Originally Presented at Spring 2004 Beyond IQ
conference for gifted students)

(M) - Mature Readers; long book, may have sex, drinking, or drug use

Richard Adams: TRAVELLER - the Civil War as seen by Robert E. Lee's horse, which means he has a very different way of looking at things.

Adam Bagdasarian: FORGOTTEN FIRE - A spoiled Armenian boy of a well‑to‑do family discovers the worst and the best of humanity when Turkey sets out to commit genocide against millions of Armenians during World War I.

Michael Cadnum: SHIP OF FIRE - Thomas, who is studying medicine and alchemy, sails with Sir Francis Drake, who fought the Spanish and robbed their ships in the name of the English queen. The hero learns to decide for himself what's right and wrong, as he learns about medicine and war.

James Clavell: SHOGUN - the fictionalized story of an English ship's pilot who comes to Japan at one of the biggest turning points in its history, as one extraordinary man tries to unite the samurai kingdom under one ruler. The pilot Blackthorne slowly learns the ways and the language of the Japanese people, becoming a legend among them and a bane to the Catholic church. (M)

Chris Crowe: MISSISSIPPI TRIAL 1955 - white boy Hiram returns to his grandfather's Mississippi home as a teenager in time to be present for the murder of black Emmet Till and the trial of his white murderers, one of the most shocking events in the years that led up to the civil rights battles of the 1960s (the murderers were found "not guilty" because Till supposedly insulted a white woman).

Arthur Conan Doyle: THE VALLEY OF FEAR - Sherlock Holmes gets caught up in the events that follow one of the greatest criminal cases of the 1800s in the United States, the story of the undercover agent who infiltrated the Molly Maquires, an Irish labor group in the coal fields of Central Pennsylvania that was not afraid to use murder to gain its ends.

Esther Forbes: JOHNNY TREMAINE - all Johnny wants is to be a silversmith, until an accident leaves him with a crippled hand. Instead he goes to work for a printer, and becomes involved with the Boston Sons of Liberty, the Boston Tea Party, and men like Paul Revere, Joseph Warren, and Samuel Adams, in the months that lead up to the Revolutionary War.

Barbara Hambly: A FREE MAN OF COLOR - the first of a mystery series set in New Orleans in the 1830s, with a black hero who was trained in music and medicine in Paris, who solves crimes with a wide assortment of helpers, from the women who served as mistresses of white planters to the new American in charge of police work in the city, to the voodoo queens of the city. (M)

Robert Harris: POMPEII - in the Roman empire, a young aquarius, one of the engineers who keeps the aqueducts that supply the towns with water, discovers sulphur in the water supply south of the town of Pompeii, on the slopes of Mr. Vesuvius. While trying to track down the problem, he and thousands of others are caught in the great volcanic eruption that follows.

Deborah & Thomas Hooper: THE GHOST IN THE TOKAIDO INN - a mystery set in samurai Japan, about a young clerk and a judge who must discover a murderer's identity on Japan's most famous travel route.

Jeanette Ingold: THE GREAT BURN - about the mammoth forest fire that swept across Idaho and Montana in the early 1900s, as experienced by three people. The effects of that fire would change how this country dealt with forest fires for the next eighty years.

Jeanette Ingold: PICTURES, 1918 - about a girl who finds that a camera can help her to connect with and sort out the events around her as the U.S. enters WWI and the influenza of 1917 races over the world.

Harper Lee: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - told by 10-year-old Scout Finch, the story of her father's defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman in the South during the Great Depression, with vivid characters, black and white. It's also the story of a small town and the people in it, as seen through one girl's eyes.

Geraldine McCaughrean: THE KITE RIDER - (also available as a Full Cast Audio book): a young Chinese boy becomes a kite rider, strapped to a giant kite and flown in the air to spy the ground ahead of his masters as the Mongols invade China.

Eloise McGraw: MARA, DAUGHTER OF THE NILE - a blue-eyed slave girl who knows several languages gets caught up in plots that surround Egypt's only woman Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, and those who want to replace her with her neglected nephew, Thutmose, who is supposed to be Pharaoh. One of my favorite books ever.

Patricia McKissack: CLOTEE and COLOR ME DARK - Both part of the "Dear America" series. CLOTEE is the diary of a slave girl in the year she becomes free as the Civil War ends. COLOR ME DARK is about a family of blacks in 1919 who flee racial violence in the south to discover racial prejudice in Chicago.

Ellis Peters: A MORBID TASTE FOR BONES - the 1st Brother Cadfael mystery: set in England not long after the Norman conquest. Cadfael is an ex-Crusader, now a monk and herbalist, who has skills that make him a good detective. These books are a living picture of a time and a way of life, introducing us to nobles and thieves, lepers and merchants, abbots and sheriffs.

John Madox Roberts: S.P.Q.R. - First of a series of mysteries set in Rome during the time of Julius Caesar. The hero is Decius Metellus, who ends up often acting as a kind of detective, with the help of his slaves, who act as if they own him, his criminal friend Milo, and his sweetie, Caesar's niece. These are funny books with good mysteries; Decius doesn't respect anyone, including himself, which makes him very good at getting to the bottom of secrets.

Kenneth Roberts: A RABBLE IN ARMS - The story of Benedict Arnold's attack on Quebec during the Revolutionary War and his treatment by Congress, this book gives us some of the reasons Benedict Arnold betrayed the colonies. (M)

Elizabeth George Speare: THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND - Kit arrives in Puritan New England from Barbados to live with her Puritan aunt's family, only to find herself in trouble from the beginning, from the bright colors of her clothes to her friendship with an outcast Quaker woman. It takes a lot of work for Kit to learn respect for ways not her own and what she values for herself.

Judith Tarr: DAUGHTER OF ISIS - about Cleopatra and the fall of independent Egypt to Rome; QUEEN OF SWORDS: set in Jerusalem when it was held by the Crusaders; many other historical novels set in the classical world, the Crusades, and Byzantium. (M)

Leon Uris: MILA 18 - about one of the less-known aspects of World War II, the rebellion of the last Jews held captive in the Warsaw Ghetto, who held off the Nazi army for three weeks. Told from different people's points of view, including an Italian news correspondent, a Jewish scholar, a Polish cavalry officer, and others who discovers what happens to the Jews who are taken away on the trains. (M)

Alison Weir: THE CHILDREN OF HENRY VIII (nonfiction) - It's a vivid, lively picture of the children who came after Henry VIII: Edward VI, brilliant Jane Grey, the hounded princess who became Bloody Mary Tudor, and the Lady Elizabeth, eventually to become Elizabeth I. We learn a lot about the religious struggles of the time, the education, and the home lives of these kids, who were very different even while they had much in common.