Traditional Westerns

Grey, Zane.

L'Amour, Louis.

Other authors and books they have published in the traditional western genre include:

Kirkpatrick, Jane.  ALL TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE.

Young southern Wisconsin wife Mazy Bacon is perfectly content with her life until her husband decides they must head west, and the journey connects her to eleven other women in a way they never would have dreamed; based on an actual 1852 Oregon Trail incident.

McMurtry, Larry.  LONESOME DOVE.

Two former Texas Rangers, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, leave their Texas ranch to lead a cattle drive to Montana, encountering outlaws, Native Americans, and ex-loves along the way.

Portis, Charles.  TRUE GRIT.

The story of a 14-year old girl who sets out to avenge her father's murder with the help of a crusty old cowboy.

Schaefer, Jack.  SHANE.

Shane rides into a Wyoming valley in 1889 and becomes involved in a feud between big cattle dealers and homesteaders.

Native Americans

Julie, a Native-American girl, befriends a wolf pack after becoming lost in the Alaskan wilderness.

Hudson, Jan.  SWEETGRASS.

A 15- year old Blackfoot girl comes of age as a smallpox epidemic decimates her people.

_________.  DAWN RIDER.

Kit Fox secretly learns how to ride a horse; a skill that will allow her to save her people.

O'Dell, Scott.  ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS.

A young girl is left alone on an island off the coast of California.

_________.  STREAMS TO THE RIVER, RIVER TO THE SEA.

Sacagawea's tale of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Colonial and Revolutionary Days

Jonathan joins with the Colonial rebels.

Blackwood, Gary.  YEAR OF THE HANGMAN.

It's 1777 - the rebellious American Colonies have been defeated by the British Redcoats, and General Washington is to be hanged.  Creighton Brown, a 17 year old Britisher is abducted and arrives in America to settle in the home of Benjamin Franklin.  Creighton is expected to spy for the British, but as he meets the patriots, hehe considers joining the rebels.

Chance, Megan.  Susannah Morrow.

Collier, James Lincoln, and Christopher Collier. MY BROTHER SAM IS DEAD.

Tim Meeder's thoughts and emotions are divided.  His older and much admired brother Sam has joined the American Revolutionary Army but his father remains a staunch supporter of the English King.

Fleischman, Paul. SATURNALIA.

In Massachusetts of the 1680's, William, a Narraganset boy, is apprenticed to a printer.

Forbes, Esther.  JOHNNY TREMAIN.

A classic.  The story of a young Boston apprentice during the year leading up to the Boston Tea Party.

Lasky, Kathryn.  BEYOND THE BURNING TIME.

The year is 1691, and Mary Chase is afraid.  The Salem villagers are accusing people of witchcraft!  Will they turn against Mary and her mother?

Rees, Celia.  WITCH CHILD.

After Mary's grandmother is hanged for being a witch, Mary escapes to America, but finds more persecution awaiting her there.  Mary finally must choose between the precarious safety of her disguise and her true nature - a secret she only shares within the pages of her journal.

Rinaldi, Ann.  CAST TWO SHADOWS.

In South Carolina in 1780, fourteen-year-old Caroline sees the Revolutionary War take a terrible toll among her family and friends and comes to understand the true nature of war.

_________.  THE FIFTH OF MARCH.

15 year old Rachel Marsh, an indentured servant in the home of John and Abigail Adams, is caught up in the colonists' unrest that eventually escalates into the (Boston) massacre of March 5, 1770.

________.  GIRL IN BLUE

To escape an abusive father and an arranged marriage, fourteen-year-old Sarah, dressed as a boy, leaves her Michigan home to enlist in the Union Army, and becomes a soldier on the battlefields of Virginia as well as a Union spy working in the house of Confederate sympathizer Rose O'Neal Greenhow in Washington, D.C.

_________.  TIME ENOUGH FOR DRUMS.

15-year old Jemima of Trenton, NJ, is a member of a family divided between American patriots and the Tories.  She is a patriot but what would happen if she were to fall in love with her Tory tutor?

Nineteenth Century

Rose Olshansky was 14 when she was married in New York City, only four years after emigrating from Russia.

Armstrong, Jennifer. STEAL AWAY.

An abolitionist northern girl sent to the South to live with relatives becomes friends with the slave given her and they "steal away."

Armstrong, William H. SOUNDER.

Angry and humiliated when his share-cropper father is arrested and jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy learns to read and grows in courage and understanding with the help of his devoted dog, Sounder.

Avi.  THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE.

In 1831, Charlotte Doyle, the only passenger aboard the Seahawk is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.

Cooper, J. California. FAMILY.

This unorthodox story follows an African American slave family from pre-Civil War through the next 100 years.

Ford, Jeffrey. The portrait of Mrs. Charbuque.

Portraitist Piero Piambo is one of the most popular artists in New York society, and can have his pick of any assignment, but his latest commission is bizarre enough to test both his talents and his sanity.  

Forman, James D. BECCA'S STORY.

Both of Becca's beaus enlist to fight in the Civil War.

Hobbs, Will.  Down the Yukon.

In the wake of Dawson City's Great Fire of 1899, sixteen-year-old Jason and his girlfriend Jamie canoe the Yukon River across Alaska in an epic race from Canada's Klondike to the new gold fields at Cape Nome.  

Holland, Isabelle. BEHIND THE LINES.

Why should Katie's brother fight for freedom of the slaves when their Irish countrymen are suffering from poverty and disease?  But when Katie meets Jimmy, she realizes that friendship can transcend race and class.  As the Irish slum explodes in violence -  the 1863 New York City Draft Riots begin - and Katie must help Jimmy escape.

Hunt, Irene.  ACROSS FIVE APRILS.

During the Civil War, young Jethro is left behind to care for the family farm while the men go off to the fight.

Lasky, Kathryn.  THE BONE WARS.

In the mid-1870's, young teenage scout Thad Longsworth, blood brother to the Sioux visionary Black Elk, finds his destiny linked with that of three rival teams of paleontologists searching for dinosaur bones, as the Great Plains Indians prepare to go to war against the white man.

Ledbetter, Suzann. A lady never trifles with thieves.

In 1870s Denver, a young detective/self-proclaimed "scientist" named Josephine Beckworth Sawyer blows up her tool shed with homemade nitroglycerine.  

Mitchell, Margaret. GONE WITH THE WIND.

This large-scale romance of the Civil War era life of Scarlet O'Hara has captivated female teen readers for generations.

Paterson, Katherine. LYDDIE.

Lyddie follows the path of many young women of the early nineteenth century and becomes a "factory girl."  She worked in a Lowell, MA, mill, enduring horrible conditions, in an attempt to save the family farm.

Paulsen, Gary.  NIGHTJOHN.

A man allows himself to be captured as a slave so he can teach the enslaved children to read.

Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club.

Rinaldi, Ann.  IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE.

Osceola and her family are affected by the Civil War as the first battle of Bull Run erupts on her stepfather's plantation.  He moves the family to the Appomatox Courthouse to get them away from the front lines, only to have the final battle also occur on his property.

________.  LAST SILK DRESS.

Susan contributes to the Confederate war effort by collecting silk dresses to make a balloon for spying on the Yankees.

________.  WOLF BY THE EARS.

Thomas Jefferson's daughter Harriet Hemmings must discover the importance of freedom.  When she turns twenty-one she will be released from slavery and removed from all she has ever known.

_________. Numbering all the bones.

"It is 1864, the Civil War is moving toward an end. President Lincoln has proclaimed his 'great measure, ' and Southern slaves are slowly gaining their freedom. But for thirteen-year-old Eulinda, a house slave on a Georgia plantation, it is the most difficult time of her life ...".  

Skurzynski, Gloria.  ROCKBUSTER.

This story describes the lives of Utah miners before the union came to power.  One 17 year old realizes that he must make decisions that will alter the course of many lives.

Taylor, Theodore. WALKING UP A RAINBOW.

Susan's inheritance is nearly 2,000 sheep and a huge debt.  She sets out to drive the sheep to California from Iowa in the 1880's.

Twentieth Century

In 1961, three teenagers from an American school in West Germany travel to Berlin to join a May Day rally, where they stumble into the middle of an international incident, forcing their parents to rescue them.  

In this story based on true events, sixteen-year-old Eva and her female friends become obsessed with a charismatic young man who comes to Corvallis, Oregon, in 1904, claiming to be a Christian prophet.  

Margaret Chambers returns to her hometown to teach in the small, one-room school building, but the God-fearing citizens are threatened by Margaret, and their plans to run her out of town take a dangerous turn.  

Life in their Pennsylvania hometown changes for Jubal Shoemaker and his family when his older brother witnesses to his Quaker beliefs by becoming a conscientious objector during World War II.  

Sheltering an escaped German prisoner of war is the beginning of some shattering experiences for a 12-year old Jewish girl in Arkansas.

Myers, Walter Dean. FALLEN ANGELS.

Ritchie should never have even been in the army but he ends up in the middle of the Vietnam War.

Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.  BLIZZARD'S WAKE.

Shutting herself off from the world after her mother's death four years ago,  Kate Sterling comes across the man who killed her mother when he was driving drunk.  Being released from prison and looking for forgiveness he finds himslef unavoidably snowbound with the Sterling family.  But will Kate be able to forgive and forget?

Paterson, Katherine. JACOB HAVE I LOVED.

Feeling deprived all her life of schooling, friends, her mother and even her name by her twin sister, Louise finally begins to find her identity in the midst of World War II.

Paulsen, Gary.  THE COOKCAMP.

A young boy is sent to stay with his grandmother, a cook for a Minnesota road building crew in 1944.

Qualey, Marsha.  COME IN FROM THE COLD.

In 1969, the Vietnam War protest movement brings together two Minnesota teens.

Rostkowski, Margaret I.  AFTER THE DANCING DAYS.

A forbidden friendship with a badly disfigured soldier in the aftermath of World War I, forces 14-year-old Annie to redefine the word "hero" and to question conventional ideas of patriotism.

Taylor, Mildred D. ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY.

A black family living in the South in the 1930's is faced with prejudice and discrimination which the children don't understand.

________.  LET THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN.

Four black children growing up in rural Mississippi during the Depression experience racial antagonisms and hard times, but learn from their parents the pride and self-respect they need to survive.

________.  ROAD TO MEMPHIS.

Sadistically teased by two white boys in 1940's rural Mississippi, a black youth severely injures one boy with a tire iron, and enlists Cassie's help in trying to flee the state.