Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Avi · 235 pages

As the only passenger, and the only female, on a transatlantic voyage in 1832, thirteen-year-old Charlotte finds herself caught between a murderous captain and a mutinous crew.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Elizabeth George Speare · 249 pages

Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives' stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is

The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages

From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lisa See · 269 pages

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misundersta

Bread Givers: A Novel

Anzia Yezierska · 297 pages

A young Jewish girl from New York's Lower East Side rebels against the tyranny and chauvinism of her immigrant father, determined to assert her freedom and independence.

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

Alison Goodman · 576 pages

Sixteen-year-old Eon has a dream, and a mission. For years, he's been studying sword-work and magic, toward one end. He and his master hope that he will be chosen as a Dragoneye-an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune. But Eon has a dangerous secret. He is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been masquerading as a twelve-year-old boy. Females are forbidden t

The Boston Girl

Anita Diamant · 322 pages

A story "about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's in

The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

Cameron Dokey

Daughter of Venice

Donna Jo Napoli · 274 pages

In 1592, Donata is a noble girl living in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Girls of her class receive no education and rarely leave the palazzo. In a noble family, only one daughter and one son will be allowed to marry; Donata, like all younger daughters, will be sent to a convent. Donata longs to be tutored like her brothers and to see the Venice she has glimpsed only on the map. What is the world b

One Crazy Summer

Rita Williams-Garcia · 232 pages

Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the pas

Lady Knight

Tamora Pierce · 429 pages

Kel has finally achieved her lifelong dream of being a knight. But it's not turning out as she imagined at all. She is torn between a duty she has sworn to uphold and a quest that she feels could turn the tide of war. . . ."Unrelentingly realistic in its depiction of the horrors of war . . . Pierce provides exquisite details of the weaponry, topography, and culture of her world, and her control of

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver · 596 pages

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of on

Spring Pearl: The Last Flower

Laurence Yep · 218 pages

Called boyish by her new family for being able to read and write, twelve-year-old, orphaned Spring Pearl's "odd ways" help save the family during the 1857 Opium War in Canton, China.

Caleb's Crossing

Geraldine Brooks · 369 pages

Growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans, Bethia Mayfield yearns for an education that is closed to her due to her gender. As soon as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observes its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret friendship

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Jacqueline Kelly · 340 pages

Calpurnia Virginia Tate is eleven years old in 1899 when she wonders why the yellow grasshoppers in her Texas backyard are so much bigger than the green ones.With a little help from her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist, she figures out that the green grasshoppers are easier to see against the yellow grass, so they are eaten before they can get any larger. As Callie explores

Tipping the Velvet

Sarah Waters · 480 pages

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h

The Chosen

Chaim Potok · 284 pages

It's about two jewish boys from different jewish sects with very differing doctrine. The kids meet in the unlikely circumstance of a baseball game, and a terrible accident, that leads them to be lifelong friends

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

Daughter of Fortune

Isabel Allende · 416 pages

"Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaiso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquin Andiera, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen pre

The Sweet Far Thing

Libba Bray · 633 pages

IT HAS BEEN A YEAR OF CHANGE since Gemma Doyle arrived at the foreboding Spence Academy. Her mother murdered, her father alaudanum addict, Gemma has relied on an unsuspected strength and has discovered an ability to travel to an enchanted world called the realms, where dark magic runs wild. Despite certain peril, Gemma has bound the magic to herself and forged unlikely new alliances. Now, as Gemma

Lucky Broken Girl

Ruth Behar · 243 pages

In 1960s New York, fifth-grader Ruthie, a Cuban-Jewish immigrant, must rely on books, art, her family, and friends in her multicultural neighborhood when an accident puts her in a body cast.

Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters

Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages

A los cuarenta años, Madame Wu, esposa de un miembro de una de las dinastías de terratenientes más consideradas de China, abandona voluntariamente la vida matrimonial y busca una concubina para su marido. Su decisión cambia la vida de todos los que la rodean... A las puertas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la familia se enfrenta a la encrucijada entre tradición, comunismo y pensamiento occidental, c

To Shape a Dragon's Breath

Moniquill Blackgoose · 511 pages

Climbing the Stairs

Padma Venkatraman · 256 pages