What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorWild Boy
Rob Lloyd Jones · 295 pages
Wild Boy becomes a sideshow freak. Isolated from other children and abused by the cruel master who bought him, Wild Boy becomes an avid observer, developing Sherlock Holmes-like deductive skills. Although he is tormented and insulted, kicked and spat at, his quick mind takes in everything he sees. When a murder occurs at the fair, Wild Boy is accused. Can he use his powers of deduction to save him
Vampire Blood Trilogy
Darren Shan · 512 pages
Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta
Aglaja Veteranyi · 200 pages
A nomadic family of circus performers, refugees from Romania, travels through Europe and Africa by caravan. The mother's death-defying act causes constant anxiety for her two daughters, who voice their fears through a grisly communal fairy tale about a child being cooked alive in polenta, but their real life is no less of a dark fable, and one that seems just as unlikely to have a happy ending.
The Palace of Curiosities
Rosie Garland · 352 pages
"Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps... and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn't cry - she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, and the mudlarks search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But, how has h
Beholding Bee
Kimberly Newton Fusco · 336 pages
In 1942, when life turns sour at the carnival that has always been her home, eleven-year-old Bee takes her dog, Peabody, and piglet, Cordelia, and sets out to find a real home, aided by two women only Bee and her pets can see.
The Diamond Thief
Sharon Gosling · 305 pages
No one performs on the circus trapeze like 16-year-old Rémy Brunel. But Rémy also leads another life, prowling through the backstreets of Victorian London as a jewel thief. When she is forced to steal one of the world's most valuable diamonds, she uncovers a world of treachery and fiendish plots.
Sugar
Jewell Parker Rhodes · 272 pages
In 1870, Reconstruction brings big changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where spunky ten-year-old Sugar has always lived, including her friendship with Billy, the son of her former master, and the arrival of workmen from China. In the 1870s, Reconstruction brings big changes to the Louisiana sugar plantation where spunky ten-year-old Sugar has always lived, including her growing friendship w
Orphans of the Carnival
Carol Birch · 380 pages
From the Booker short-listed author of Jamrach's Menagerie comes the extraordinary, moving, and unsettling tale of a woman, branded a freak from birth, who becomes an international sensation but longs for genuine human connection London had the best freaks, always had. The Egyptian Hall, the Promenade of Wonders, the Siamese twins, pinheads, midgets, cannibals, giants, living skeletons, the fat, t
The Wouldbegoods
E. Nesbit · 212 pages
After being sent to the country "to learn to be good", the Bastable children and their two friends form the Society of the Wouldbegoods, but continue to become involved in adventures.
The Hunchback Assignments
Arthur Slade
A gripping new series combines Steampunk, spying, and a fantastic Victorian London.The mysterious Mr. Socrates rescues Modo, a child in a traveling freak show. Modo is a hunchback with an amazing ability to transform his appearance, and Mr. Socrates raises him in isolation as an agent for the Permanent Association, a spy agency behind Brittania's efforts to rule the empire. At 14, Modo is left on
The Romeo And Juliet Code
Phoebe Stone
During World War II, eleven-year-old Felicity is sent from London to Bottlebay, Maine, to live with her grandmother, aunt, uncle, and a reclusive boy who helps her decode mysterious letters that contain the truth about her missing parents.
Little Audrey
Ruth White · 145 pages
In 1948, eleven-year-old Audrey lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia, where her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses.
Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, the Great Migration North
Patricia C. McKissack · 220 pages
An ordinary girl living extraordinary events. Her family, Love, characterizes her comfortable, secure world in Bradford Corners, TN. Until Uncle Pace is murdered by the KKK. The Author gradually exposes the prejudice & segregation existing even though slavery has been abolished over 50 years. All discover, how whites live on one side of the only road, & Colored live on the other. We recognize t
Glory Be
Augusta Scattergood · 205 pages
In the summer of 1964 as she is about to turn twelve, Glory's town of Hanging Moss, Mississippi, is beset by racial tension when town leaders close her beloved public pool rather than desegregating it.
Circus Galacticus
Deva Fagan · 304 pages
Trix's life in boarding school as an orphan charity case has been hard, but when an alluring young Ringmaster invites her, a gymnast, to join Circus Galacticus she gainss an entire universe of deadly enemies and potential friends, along with a chance to unravel secrets of her own past.
Song of the Trees
Mildred D. Taylor · 48 pages
During the Depression, a rural black family deeply attached to the forest on their land tries to save it from being cut down by an unscrupulous white man.
A Corner of the Universe
Ann M. Martin · 189 pages
The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town.
No Ordinary Day
Deborah Ellis
Valli is an orphan who lives on the streets of Kolkata, India. No matter how bad her life seems, there are people who are worse off than her - the lepers. And then, one day, she finds out that she also has leprosy. This is a powerful story about poverty, leprosy suffering and survival, but it's also about hope and compassion, and the power of each individual to make a difference.
The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel
Deborah Hopkinson · 249 pages
Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854. Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water and not poisonous air when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.
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
The Callender Papers
Cynthia Voigt · 214 pages
In nineteenth-century Massachusetts, orphan Jean, employed to sort out the family papers of a reclusive artist, becomes curious about the mysterious, long-ago death of his wife and the subsequent disappearance of their young child.
The Final Confession of Mabel Stark
Robert Hough · 430 pages