2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Historical Fiction

Red stars: The Case of Viktor and Nadya's Notebooks

Twins Viktor and Nadya are twelve years old when Hitler's Germany declares war on the Soviet Union. With little notice, the city's children are evacuated on trains that are meant to take them to safety. Shockingly, Viktor and Nadya are separated, and disaster befalls them both. As the terrible conflict rages, each embarks on a desperate race across snow and ice, struggling through the destruction in an effort to be reunited.

The Huntress: A Novel

 

Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only Nina's bravery and cunning will keep her alive.

All He Knew

In 1939 six-year-old Henry, who is deaf, is taken from his family and placed in a home for the feeble-minded where, years later, his friends include a conscientious objector serving there during World War II. Includes historical notes.

Tidelands

During England's seventeenth-century civil war, Alinor, a woman without a husband and skilled with herbs, helps a young man on the run and unwittingly brings disaster into the heart of her life.

Inland: A Novel

 

An unexpected relationship between a frontierswoman riding out the Arizona Territory drought of 1893 and a former outlaw, who has the ability to see ghosts, inspires an epic journey across the West.

She Would Be King

Wayétu Moore's powerful debut novel,She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia's early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him.