This is a cool retelling of the Illiad from the teen’s point of view. Xanthe and Marpessa are sister servants in the palace of Hector, ruler of Troy. Xanthe is nanny to Hector and Andromache’s royal baby, and Marpessa is beautiful Helen’s (“the face that sailed a thousand ships”) personal assistant. Xanthe also works in the “Blood Room,” the place where all the Trojan soliders are brought when they’re wounded. It’s there that Xanthe falls for hottie solider Alastar as he recovers from battle. Gods and goddesses also drift through the story, usually causing trouble. Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, sees Xanthe mooning over Alastar, and, because she’s bored with all the war stuff, decides to make both Xanthe and Marpessa fall for Alastar, but make him love only Marpessa. Meanwhile, the crippled stablehand who both sisters are friends with only has eyes for Xanthe, but she can only see Alastar. And least you think this sounds too romantical, outside the sieged city walls, the Trojan war between the Trojans and the Greeks over Helen’s “kidnapping” (she actually went willingly from her Greek husband so that she could knock the boots with Paris, the gorgeous, although shallow Trojan warrior) continues, with Greek warrior Achilles is slaying people left and right while the god of war, Ares, strides up and down the battlefield, admiring his handiwork. Sexy, bloody, and just downright absorbing, you don’t need to read the original Illiad to understand this hip interpretation. (Trust me, I never read the Illiad, either!)<

Donata is tired of being talked down to by her big brothers. In 1592 Venice, girls, even those of the upper class, aren’t allowed to study anything other than music or needlework, can’t go outside unescorted, and must always be quiet unless spoken to. The only way outgoing Donata learns anything is by quizzing her brothers about it. But she knows even they are carefully selecting what they can and can’t tell her. So she decides to take matters into her own hands. With the help of her identical twin, Laura, Donata scores some beggar boy clothes, ties up her hair and heads out into Venice on her own, dressed as boy. (I know, that whole “girl dressing as a boy” plot has been done to death, but this in this story it works well) There, she gets beat up by another alley-rat kid, and makes friends with Noe, a young scholar from the Jewish ghetto. But once Donata discovers the real Venice, she knows she can never go back to being a quiet, dutiful daughter. How can she convince her parents to let her get an education like her brothers, without telling them about her double life? The best part of this book is the intricate historical detail. Napoli carefully describes the architecture of Venice, it’s complicated system of canals, and most importantly, the many, many rules that governed it’s Renaissance women. When I closed the cover, I couldn’t believe that I was still sitting in my apartment in Queens instead of a swaying gondola. (And please dismiss the childish cover on this book–it’s really much older than it looks!)

It’s hard to believe, but many writers have taken one of the most fascinating periods of history–the Salem Witch Trials–and made it kinda dry and dusty. You know what I mean–books like Witch of Blackbird Pond or Witch’s Children. They always have an innocent girl at the center, accused of witchcraft, but she comes out okay because she really is a good, God-fearing gal, blah, blah, blah. What’s the fun and fear in that? Now Brit author Rees knows how to stir up the cauldron a little–her story is about a girl who’s a REAL witch, the last of her kind in a long line of pagans who follow the Old Religion and worship nature. Mary Nuttall helplessly watches her own grandmother hung as a witch before a beautiful and mysterious benefactor whisks her off to the New World with a batch of Puritans. There, Mary thinks she will be free to be her witchy self, but she finds these pilgrims are even more Puritanical that the ones she left behind in merry old England. Now, she’s gotta watch her back as all the town elders start shooting black looks her way just because she happens to knows how to read and heal the sick. Can Mary keep these pinch-faced Puritans in the dark? Or will her secret identity be revealed? Written in diary form, this is one witch story that will keep you riveted.

Twelve year old African American Leonora Sutter is running scared. Even though she and her father have dealt with racism before (after all, this is 1924, before Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement) she is terrified of what will happen to them now that the Klu Klux Klan has come to their small Vermont town. Who among the townspeople can she trust not to don white hoods after dark? Will Constable Johnson help her family if there is trouble, or is he one of THEM? On which side is general store owner Harvey Pettibone? Or Mrs. Sara Chickering, the lady farmer who avoids Leonora, but has a little Jewish girl staying with her? The tension builds as Leonora tries to decide who to put her faith in during these dangerous times. Witness is written entirely in free-verse poetry, each poem being the inner thoughts of eleven different characters (including Leonora, Harvey and Sara) about how they feel about the KKK setting up shop in their town. Everyone thinks they know which side is right and which side is wrong, but when a furtive gunman opens fire on Sara Chickering’s house, each person must painfully reevaluate their position. Besides being a wonderfully deep examination of racism and identity, Witness is also a great history mystery. Note the clues each character drops to help you figure out who the guilty shooter is.

Sixteen year old Mattie Cook yearns for some greater excitement than the dubious thrill of washing countless mugs in her family’s Philadelphia coffee shop. But she learns the hard way to be careful what you wish for when the whole city falls victim to yellow fever in the summer of 1793. Left all alone when members of her family are torn from her by illness or death, Mattie has to fend for herself in a city gone crazy, as opportunistic looters break into homes that have been abandoned and yellow-eyed corpses pile up in the streets. It’s only when Mattie meets up with Eliza, her mother’s free black friend, that she is able to deal with what has happened to her family and decide to take charge of her fate by helping others worse off than herself. Full of adrenaline charged action and lots of gruesome disease detail (blood vomiting and gravediggers hauling dead bodies through the streets) Fever is a fascinating medical thriller that reads like a historical Hot Zone! By the way, this book is based on a REAL epidemic that wiped out 10% of Philadelphia’s population in just three months.

Based on true events, Donna Jo Napoli tells a different kind of Holocaust story that fans of Anne Frank may not have encountered before. Roberto is an Italian boy sick to death of WWII scrimping and pinching. So when a couple of his guy friends suggest taking in a rare American movie, Roberto goes, even though he knows if his mom finds out he’s in for it. Unfortunately, German soldiers have picked this Venetian movie theatre to raid for free labor. They take all the able bodied boys in the audience, load them up on a train, and without even a goodbye or explanation, take them all far away from their homes to toil in German work camps. Already cold, hungry, and afraid for his life, Roberto has one other little thing to worry about–his friend Samule. See, Samule is Jewish, but the German guards who took them don’t know that. Because to get into the forbidden movie theatre, Samule took off the yellow star that identified him as a Jew. Now, the two of them struggle to stay alive, keep Samule’s secret and hope against hope that they’ll make it home safely. Brutal and compelling, this is an amazing story of strength and friendship with lots of harsh landscape living thrown in. Get ready to cry buckets.

Waaaay back in Viking era Norway, teenage Ran has just about had it with her selfish mother. Ran’s dad is dead, and Ran’s mom has decided to take up with her old flame, Vigut, your average burning and pillaging evil Viking warlord. So Ran is forced to leave her beloved granny Amma and travel with Vigut and her mom to their new digs a few moons away. Too bad for Ran that en route mom dies, and nasty Vigut gets it into his pea brain that Ran is somehow responsible for putting an evil spell on her old lady. So now Ran is on the run (hee hee! love that word play!) from Vigut and his murderous band of Viking dudes. Lucky for her that she meets up with Toki, blind bard who also happens to be a hottie. They hook up typical Viking style (due to the short life expectancies of these guys, they had to get together and have babies fast and young, before they were snuffed out by disease, cold weather, or wolves) and cross over into Iceland, where they hope to be safe from Vigut. But Vi is on his way–Ran can feel it. Will she ever be able to escape his vicious Viking wrath? Be prepared to sit down with this one and read it straight through–it’s under 200 pages and so action-packed you won’t be able to put it down for a second.

In the 15th century, young Irish monk (and hunk) Brendan has been sent by the Catholic church to a lonely missionary outpost in Greenland, where he and his colleagues are expected to turn the native people onto Christ and away from their wicked ways. But things don’t turn out so well when the monks can’t really make a go of igloo living and start dropping like frozen flies. Brendan is the last one left alive, and he’s slipping fast. Enter Navarana, a Inuit shaman babe who sweeps in and saves Brendan’s life, even though that means one more mouth to feed in her already starving village. A village elder, wiser that both of them because he can see that opposites attract even when it comes to shamans and priests, sends them off on a mission together to find food, even though they act like they can’t stand each other. Chances are good that they’re gonna hook up, but what about the hungry villagers they left behind? Will they be able to stop quarrelling/kissing long enough to complete their mission? I’m making this book sound sillier than it is–Mette Newth is actually one of my favorite authors because she writes so beautifully and lyrically without the Harlequin cheese factor. Plus, it’s a great examination of religious beliefs and why we believe what we do. Your teacher will love it! (and so will you).