October 14, 2025
Set against the backdrop of 1970s Singapore, Phineas Cricket’s third novel, aimed at young adults, focuses on a 13-year-old American boy who reluctantly agrees to espionage.
Mike Turner’s parents are missing. Mr. Turner, an American diplomat, worked for the Public Safety Division of USAID. Mrs. Turner accompanied her husband to Da Nang, Vietnam, leaving Mike […]
March 26, 2024
At the Mercy of the Sea, third in the Country for Castoffs series, follows three young teenagers growing up in the 17th century and facing life challenges in the New World.
The novel opens with a chance meeting between Etienne, a 12-year-old French immigrant; Abraham, a slightly younger boy struggling to win approval from his […]
July 10, 2023
Eric Westergard’s Soul Scepter is an ambitious, YA, historical adventure novel with science fiction elements.
Because of his father’s act of terrorism, Will Donovan has been bullied his whole life. When a paramilitary organization tries to kidnap Will’s uncle, a scientist examining a mysterious alien weapon, Will and his friends, along with the villains, are […]
April 25, 2022
This middle-grade historical novel opens in the early days of the American Civil War and largely follows the adventures and misadventures of a dog.
Late in 1861, a family of German immigrants in Chicago is in turmoil as the patriarch, Louis, prepares to join a Union regiment being assembled by the family of his wife […]
December 6, 2021
In Trae Stratton’s superb, young adult, fantasy/adventure novel, a teenager learns her true identity and embraces the magical powers of her birthright.
It’s 1885. Fourteen-year-old Casey Tamm lives with her adoptive father, Jonas, in the valley of Thunder Peak, a mysterious mountain in the Arizona Territory where anomalous weather and hauntings are legend.
Casey’s world […]
August 30, 2021
Twelfth Winter is an historical novel set in the late 1800s. The sequel to Summer of Two Worlds, it continues the story of Prairie Cub, a white boy raised by Native Americans.
In this installment, Prairie Cub, now age 12, is taken by white friends to a West Virginia town to live with the Tyler […]
July 12, 2021
Clochán is a historical novel set in Ireland in the years following the Irish Rebellion of 1798 during which the United Irishmen, with Catholic and Protestant support, engaged in a doomed insurgency against British rule and Irish loyalists.
The novel focuses on the coming-of-age of Kevin Neal, whose family members are slaughtered during a failed […]
May 24, 2021
In The King’s Broad Arrow, Sam Nevens, a 13-year-old from Maine, is unwittingly drawn into the central drama of the American Revolutionary War.
It’s 1775 and although Sam is happy helping at his father’s sawmill, he’s well aware of the rising revolutionary conflict. When he tries to stop British naval surveyors from cutting local trees […]
March 4, 2020
The third entry in Brian Meehl’s Blowback trilogy concludes the engaging time-traveling adventures of the Jongler-Jinks clan.
A magical cor anglais (a musical instrument also known as the English horn) has been in the Jongler family for generations. The horn can send people back in time, often against their will. Its latest victim is Octavia […]
February 3, 2020
In Jean Flahive’s delightful historical fiction work for young readers, a girl growing up in rural Maine witnesses monumental events of the early 20th century.
The book begins as 96-year-old Millie visits Maine’s Seashore Trolley Museum to witness the restoration of the renowned “Narcissus,” an electric trolley car that was part of the transport system […]