In the rural prairie life of the 1860s, 12 year-old Colleen sets off for help when her mother gives birth to a stillborn baby, telling everyone that the baby is just asleep. On her way to the midwife, Colleen encounters a sick woman in labor who dies just after making Colleen promise to take care of her newborn baby. Colleen switches the two babies and keeps the secret from her family until the baby's father turns up and makes trouble.  (M,J)

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have a habit of coming true, Gemma faces a chilly reception there. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls — and their foray into the spiritual world — lead to? Sequels: Rebel Angels and The Sweet Far Thing.  (S)

Eighteen-year-old William Dwinelle and Ben Pomeroy, his friend and traveling companion, are the odd men out among the party of fortune seekers traveling through the risky, little-used jungle route. William's quest is not gold; instead, he hopes to find the man who abandoned his friend Elizabeth. Surviving bandits, a cholera epidemic, and a harrowing ocean voyage to San Francisco, William encounters greed, murder, and revenge in gold rush-era California.  (J,S)

The year is 1878, and 13-year-old Eva has lost all the family she’s ever known. Eva feels like an orphan—but she’s not. Sadie Lewis, the woman who gave her up at birth, is alive and well in Denver. And Eva sets out to find her, carrying only an address on a slip of paper. But Denver holds more surprises than Eva can bear. When she reaches 518 Holladay Street, she discovers Sadie Lewis’s shocking secret — a secret that lands Eva in a house of ill repute, forced to dance with strangers for her keep. But Eva knows in her bones that she’s free — and that she’s got to escape.  (J,S)

Eleven-year-old Elijah is the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves just over the border from Detroit. When a former slave steals money from Elijah’s friend, who has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South, Elijah embarks on a dangerous journey to America in pursuit of the thief, and discovers firsthand the unimaginable horrors of the life his parents fled.  (M,J)

Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcibly evicted and separated with one sister accompanying their parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada, and the other staying behind with other family on the small island of Mingulay.  (M,J,S)

Life is hard for poor Irish potato farmers, but 12-year-old Nory Ryan and her family have always scraped by...until one morning, Nory wakes to the foul, rotting smell of diseased potatoes dying in the fields. And just like that, all their hopes for the harvest--for this year and next--are dashed. Hunger sets in quickly, and as her community falls apart, Nory scrambles to find food for her family. Meanwhile, the specter of America lurks, where, the word is, no one is ever hungry, and horses carry milk in huge cans down cobblestone streets.  (M)

In the 1830s, following her father's death, 15-year-old Emmaline Roke and her penniless family leave their English country village for a mill town, where things are just as difficult. Bad turns worse when her mother, injured in a mill accident, becomes addicted to laudanum and, desperate for drugs, sells Emmaline's little brother into service as a chimney sweep. To rescue him, Emmaline must go London, a quest she finds dangerous but also unexpectedly rewarding.  (J,S)

As an orphan of the Civil War in 1866, 16 year-old Emeline joins a group of girls heading by ship from Massachusetts to Washington State. Emeline reports in her diary of the journey's excitement, danger, and unwelcome surprise as she arrives in Seattle.  (M,J)

When gambling debts and greed enter into the Butler household, Pierce Butler decides to host the biggest slave auction in American history and breaks a promise by selling Emma, his most-valued slave and caretaker of his children--a decision that brings about unthinkable consequences.  (M,J)

A fictionalized look at the life of Joseph Jacobs, son of a slave, told in the form of letters that he might have written during his life in pre-Civil War North Carolina, on a whaling expedition, in New York, New England, and finally in California during the Gold Rush.  (M,J)

Fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is heading west on the Oregon Trail with his family by wagon train. When he receives a rifle for his birthday, he is thrilled that he is being treated like an adult. But Francis lags behind to practice shooting and is captured by Pawnees. It will take wild horses, hostile tribes, and a mysterious one-armed mountain man named Mr. Grimes to help Francis become the man who will be called Mr. Tucket.  (M,J)

Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read.  (M,J)

When ten-year-old Lyddie and her younger brother are hired out as servants to help pay off their family farm’s debts, Lyddie is determined to find a way to reunite her family and earn money to buy back the farm by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.  (J)

In 1861, Civil war is imminent and Tilly Pruitt's brother, Noah, is eager to go and fight on the side of the North. With her father long gone, Tilly, her sister, and their mother struggle to make ends meet and hold the dwindling Pruitt family together. When the mysterious Delphine arrives one a steamboat bound for St. Louis, Mrs. Pruitt agrees to take both her and her dark, silent traveling companion in as boarders. No one in town knows what to make of the two strangers, and so the rumors fly. Is Delphine's companion a slave? Could they be spies for the South? Are the Pruitts traitors?  (J,S)

Susan Chilmark vows to do something meaningful to support the Confederacy during the Civil War, so she and her best friend collect silk dresses from all the ladies of Richmond to make a balloon that will be used to spy on the Yankees. But the issues behind the war aren't as obvious as Susan thinks.  (S)

Abram knows only slavery, but from the moment he holds his baby cousin in his arms, he is determined to protect her from the harsh realities of life on the plantation. As she grows, however, Eliza cannot escape notice. Her fair skin and blue eyes invite the hatred of the master's daughters, and the young slave's fate seems all but assured. Abram knows that freedom appears impossible, but somewhere - through the scorching heat and the overseer's whip - lies hope.  (M)

As the Civil War breaks out, India, a young Southern girl, summons her sharp intelligence and the courage she didn’t know she had to survive the war that threatens to destroy her family, her Virginia home, and the only life she has ever known. A timeless heroine of inspiring drive and bravery, India holds on to her dream of forging a career in science, unheard-of for a woman, in the face of battle, starvation, and tragic loss.  (M,J)