Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1980s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

1984 By: Orwell, George – Portrays life in a future time when a totalitarian government watches over all citizens and directs all activities.

1Q84 By: Murakami, Haruki – An ode to George Orwell’s “1984” told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer.

American Psycho By: Ellis, Bret Easton – In a black satire of the eighties, a decade of naked greed and unparalleled callousness, a successful Wall Street yuppie cannot get enough of anything–including murder.

Brick Lane By: Ali, Monica – Presents the story of two Bangladeshi sisters, one who chooses her destiny by opting for a “love marriage” and one who lets destiny dictate her future when she is married off to an older man and moves with him to a small, claustrophobic London flat.

The Eyre Affair By: Fforde, Jasper – In a world where one can literally get lost in literature, Thursday Next, a Special Operative in literary detection, tries to stop the world’s Third Most Wanted criminal from kidnapping characters, including Jane Eyre, from works of literature.

Flyy Girl By: Tyree, Omar – A year in the life of Tracy Ellison, a 16-year-old black girl, showing her evolution from a promiscuous manipulator of boys to a responsible young woman thanks to, among other things, the teachings of Louis Farrakhan. The setting is a middle-class black suburb of Philadelphia.

The Inheritance of Loss By: Desai, Kiran – In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai.

Killing Time By: Howard, Linda – Twenty years after a time capsule is buried under the front lawn of a small-town courthouse, the capsule is dug up and its contents stolen, an event that coincides with the murders of the contributors to the time capsule.

The Line of Beauty By: Hollinghurst, Alan – Moving into the attic room in the Notting Hill home of the wealthy, politically connected Fedden family in 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest becomes caught up in the rising fortunes of this glamorous family and finds his own life forever altered by his association during the boom years of the 1980s.

The Marriage Plot By: Eugenides, Jeffrey – Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she enrolls in a semiotics course and falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Morten, a time which is complicated by the resurfacing of man who is obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil By: Berendt, John – In charming, beautiful, and wealthy old-South Savannah, Georgia, the local bad boy is shot dead inside of the opulent mansion of a gay antiques dealer, and a gripping trial follows.

No Country for Old Men By: McCarthy, Cormac – Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.

Push By: Sapphire – A courageous and determined young teacher opens up a new world of hope and redemption for sixteen-year-old Precious Jones, an abused young African American girl living in Harlem who was raped and left pregnant by her father.

See How they Run By: Patterson, James – A long-germinating plot for revenge, first conceived in the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, erupts in full force during the 1980 Olympics in Moscow when a group of terrorists delivers a shocking ultimatum.

True to the Game: a Teri Woods Fable By: Woods, Teri – Gena, a street-smart Philadelphian, finds her life turned upside down by a whirlwind romance with Quadir, a wealthy man who can give her whatever she wants but whose connections with a powerful drug cartel could threaten both their lives.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Bog Child By: Dowd, Siobhan – In 1981, the height of Ireland’s “Troubles,” eighteen-year-old Fergus is distracted from his upcoming A-level exams by his imprisoned brother’s hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for Sinn Fein, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog.

The Chicken Dance By: Couvillon, Jacques – When eleven-year-old Don Schmidt wins a chicken-judging contest in his small town of Horse Island, Louisiana and goes from outcast to instant celebrity, even his neglectful mother occasionally takes notice of him and eventually he discovers some shocking family secrets.

Everything Beautiful in the World By: Levchuk, Lisa – Toward the end of the disco era, seventeen-year-old Edna refuses to visit her mother, who is in a New York City hospital undergoing cancer treatment, and barely speaks to her father, who finally puts her in psychotherapy, while her crush on an art teacher turns into a full-blown affair.

A Girl named Disaster By: Farmer, Nancy – While journeying to Zimbabwe from Mozambique, eleven-year-old Nhamo struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits.

Here Comes the Garbage Barge! By: Winter, Jonah – In the spring of 1987, the town of Islip, New York, with no place for its 3,168 tons of garbage, loads it on a barge that sets out on a 162-day journey along the east coast, around the Gulf of Mexico, down to Belize, and back again, in search of a place willing to accept and dispose of its very smelly cargo.

Kensuke’s Kingdom By: Morpurgo, Michael – When Michael is swept off his family’s yacht, he washes up on a desert island, where he struggles to survive–until he finds he is not alone.

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story By: Park, Linda Sue – When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

Night of the Twisters By: Ruckman, Ivy – A fictional account of the night freakish and devastating tornadoes hit Grand Island, Nebraska, as experienced by a twelve-year-old, his family, and friends.

Paper Covers Rock By: Hubbard, Jenny – In 1982 Buncombe County, North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Alex Stromm writes of the aftermath of the accidental drowning of a friend, as his English teacher reaches out to him while he and a fellow boarding school student try to cover things up.

Pepperland By: Delaney, Mark – Sixteen-year-old Star is angry that her mother has died and nothing seems to make her feel better. It is not until Star finds an unsent letter addressed to John Lennon and a broken-down vintage Gibson guitar that she begins to find a way out of her grief and maybe even a way to take care of some unfinished business left by her mother.

A Stone in My Hand By: Clinton, Cathryn – Eleven-year-old Malaak and her family are touched by the violence in Gaza between Jews and Palestinians when first her father disappears and then her older brother is drawn to the Islamic Jihad.

The Summer I Learned to Fly By: Reinhardt, Dana – Drew (13) is a bit of a loner. She has a pet rat, a treasured book of lists from her dead father, and an encyclopedic knowledge of cheese from working at her mother’s gourmet cheese shop. Drew meets a strange boy named Emmett in the alley behind the shop while searching for her escaped pet. Emmett surprises Drew with his knowledge of rats and the two become friends. Emmett confides his dream of finding a legendary spring with healing powers, and Drew betrays her mother’s trust by running away with Emmett in search of the magic waters. Set in California in the 1980s, this quiet novel touches on themes of friendship, love, and sacrifice.

Watchmen By: Moore, Alan – Exceptional graphic artwork brings to life the story of the Watchmen as they race against time to find a killer, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Zayda Was a Cowboy By: Nislick, June – When a Jewish grandfather comes to live with his son’s family, he relates his experiences fleeing Eastern Europe for America, his adventures as a cowboy, and his assimilation into American culture.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1970s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

After This By: McDermott, Alice – A portrait of an American family during the middle decades of the twentieth century evokes the social, spiritual, and political turmoil of the era as seen through the experiences of a middle-class couple and their children.

Big Stone Gap By: Trigiani, Adriana – The 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of a small Virginia village discovers a skeleton in her family’s formerly tidy closet that completely unravels her quiet, conventional life.

Breakfast of Champions: or, Goodbye Blue Monday! By: Vonnegut, Kurt – The author questions the condition of modern man in this novel depicting a science fiction writer’s struggle to find peace and sanity in the world.

The Bright Forever By: Martin, Lee – The disappearance of nine-year-old Katie Mackey, the daughter of the most affluent family in a small Indiana town, while riding her bicycle to town to return some library books, has profound repercussions for her entire family.

Divisadero By: Ondaatje, Michael – Fleeing the violence that destroyed her family and separated her from her sister Claire and Coop, an enigmatic young man who lives with them, Anna finds refuge in an isolated house in south-central France, while she struggles to reconcile the past and present.

A Gathering of Old Men By: Gaines, Ernest J. – The murder of a white Cajun farmer named Boutan unleashes a fury of buried hatred and defiance, as Sheriff Mapes tries to identify the killer–a white overseer and a group of Black farmers all claim responsibility–and prevent revenge.

Her Father’s House By: Plain, Belva – Decades after her father kidnapped her from his ex-wife’s home to save her from an unstable environment, a young woman struggles to come to terms with her father’s criminal action and the deception that forms the foundation of her entire life.

The Historian By: Kostova, Elizabeth – Discovering a medieval book and a cache of letters, a motherless American girl becomes the latest in a series of historians, including her late father, who investigate the possible surviving legacy of Vlad the Impaler.

I Am Legend By: Matheson, Richard – A lone human survivor in a world that is overrun by vampires, Robert Neville leads a desperate life in which he must barricade himself in his home every night and hunt down the starving undead by day.

The Kite Runner By: Hosseini, Khaled – Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant’s son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.

The Last Juror By: Grisham, John – Convicted of the murder of a young mother in a 1970 trial that ended with his threat to seek revenge against the jurors, Danny Padgitt is paroled after nine years in prison and returns to the scene of the trial in Ford County, Mississippi.

Let the Great World Spin By: McCann, Colum – A rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Lord of Misrule By: Gordon, Jaimy – At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hotwalkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive. Equal parts Nathanael West, Damon Runyon and Eudora Welty, Lord of Misrule follows five characters, scarred and lonely dreamers in the American grain, through a year and four races at Indian Mount Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia– from dust jacket.

Once a Runner By: Parker, John L., Jr. – Distance runner Quenton Cassidy is suspended from the track team for his involvement in an athlete protest and risks his future prospects to train on a monastic retreat with an Olympic medalist.

Paradise By: Morrison, Toni – Tells the story of Ruby, Oklahoma, an all Black town settled by a dozen families in the 1890s when they were turned away from other communities. But now it’s the 1970s and the men of the town blame the women and the women’s shelter for the change in their community’s character.

Restless By: Boyd, William – When someone tries to kill her three decades after being trained as a spy, Sally Gilmartin reveals the truth about her past to her daughter, Ruth, a young single mother with a growing problem with alcohol, who is given the task of finding the man who recruited Sally for the secret service.

Vinegar Hill By: Ansay, A. Manette – In 1972, Ellen Grier, her husband, and their two children return to Holly’s Field, Wisconsin. There they must live with her in-laws, in a loveless house where everyday cruelty threatens to destroy her spirit.

The Virgin Suicides By: Eugenides, Jeffrey – The narrator and his friends piece together the events that led up to suicides of the Lisbon girls, brainy Therese, fastidious Mary, ascetic Bonnie, libertine Lux, and saintly Cecilia.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! By: Flagg, Fannie – TV anchorwoman Dena Nordstrom, the pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.

White Teeth By: Smith, Zadie – Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families–the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire–as they make their way in modern England.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Accidents of Nature By: Johnson, Harriet McBryde – Having always prided herself on blending in with “normal” people despite her cerebral palsy, seventeen-year-old Jean begins to question her role in the world while attending a summer camp for children with disabilities.

Brothers, Boyfriends, & Other Criminal Minds By: Lurie, April – While living on the same block as several members of the Mafia does have the advantage of a lower crime rate, fourteen-year-old April and her brother find there are times when it is also a major disadvantage.

Dreams of Significant Girls By: García , Cristina – This story of three girls who spend summers in an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland begins in 1971. The three girls from very different backgrounds form a bond as they spend the summer as roommates and the school year apart. Shirin is a pampered Iranian, Ingrid is a sexually adventurous German-Canadian with a talent for photography, and Vivien is a Cuban-Jewish New Yorker with a flair for the culinary arts. The boarding school setting provides an intriguing background for this coming of age story celebrating the power of female friendships.

Eva Underground By: Mackall, Dandi Daley – The year 1978 has been a pretty good one for Eva Lott. She has a terrific best friend, she’s dating the best-looking guy in school, and she just made the varsity swim team. So when her widowed dad says it’s time for them to move, she’s not exactly thrilled. And when he tells her that he intends to move to Communist Poland to help with a radical underground movement . . . Well, it’s all downhill from there.

Feathers By: Woodson, Jacqueline – When a new, white student nicknamed “The Jesus Boy” joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie’s growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.

Flutter: the Story of Four Sisters and an Incredible Journey By: Moulton, Erin E. – Nine-and-a-half-year-old Maple and her older sister, Dawn, must work together to face treacherous terrain, wild animals, and poachers as they trek through Vermont’s Green Mountains seeking a miracle for their prematurely-born sister.

Half Brother By: Oppel, Kenneth – For 13 years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home his new baby brother Zan–an eight-day-old chimpanzee.

Hard Ball: a Billy Baggs Novel By: Weaver, Will – A fourteen-year-old Minnesota farm boy has to figure out how to get along with the arch-rival in his love life and on the baseball diamond, and both boys must learn how to deal with the unfair expectations of their fathers.

I Rode the Red Horse: Secretariat’s Belmont Race By: Libby, Barbara – Tells the story of Secretariat’s victory in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, the last of the three races in the Triple Crown, from the point of view of the winning jockey, Ron Turcotte.

Inside Out and Back Again By: Lai, Thanhha – No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama. For all the ten years of her life, HÀ has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by . . . and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. HÀ and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, HÀ discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.

The Liberation of Gabriel King By: Going, K. L. – In Georgia during the summer of 1976, Gabriel, a white boy who is being bullied, and Frita, an African American girl who is facing prejudice, decide to overcome their many fears together as they enter fifth grade.

Life History of a Star By: Easton, Kelly – For more than a year, fourteen-year-old Kristin uses her diary to record her confused thoughts about the physical changes brought on by adolescence and the emotional strain on her family of living with the “ghost” of her beloved older brother who was physically and mentally destroyed while serving in Vietnam.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers By: Gerstein, Mordicai – A lyrical evocation of Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers.

Night of the Howling Dogs By: Salisbury, Graham – In 1975, eleven Boy Scouts, their leaders, and some new friends camping at Halape, Hawaii, find their survival skills put to the test when a massive earthquake strikes, followed by a tsunami.

Revolution is Not a Dinner Party By: Compestine, Ying Chang – Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists’ Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, homes of appliances deemed “bourgeois,” and people of laughter.

Tales of the Madman Underground: an Historical Romance, 1973 By: Barnes, John – In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be “normal,” despite his chaotic home life with his volatile, alcoholic mother and the deep loyalty and affection he has for his friends in the therapy group dubbed the Madman Underground.

When You Reach Me By: Stead, Rebecca – As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1980s television game show, “The $20,000 Pyramid,” a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town By: Holt, Kimberly Willis – During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

Wild Girls By: Murphy, Pat – When thirteen-year-old Joan moves to California in 1972, she becomes friends with Sarah, who is timid at school but an imaginative leader when they play in the woods. After winning a writing contest together, they are recruited for an exclusive summer writing class that gives them new insights into themselves and others.

Wonderstruck By: Selznick, Brian – Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben’s story is told in words; Rose’s in pictures.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1960s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

American Pastoral By: Roth, Philip – A former athletic star, devoted family man, and owner of a thriving glove factory, Seymour “Swede” Levov finds his life coming apart during the social disorder of the 1960s, when his beloved daughter turns revolutionary terrorist out to destroy her father’s world.

Bad Boy Brawly Brown: an Easy Rawlins Mystery By: Mosley, Walter – Set in 1964, Easy is on a mission to lure Brawley Brown back to his mother. But not only is Brawley bad, he’s big and not so easily swayed, especially since joining the Urban Revolutionary Party, a political group wary of strangers. Add to that a cache of stolen guns, secret government investigators, a payroll heist, several murders, problems with his son, and everybody lying about everything, plus his own crushing guilt over the apparent death of his best friend, and you’ve got Easy behind the eight ball once again.

Hearts in Atlantis By: King, Stephen – Composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the Sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

The Help By: Stockett, Kathryn – Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend, and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project.

I’ll Never Get out of This World Alive By: Earle, Steve – Wracked by guilt and addiction ten years after administering a fatal morphine overdose to Hank Williams, Doc Ebersole performs illegal medical services in the red-light district of San Antonio before meeting a young Mexican immigrant who seems to heal others with her touch.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century. 1969 By: Moore, Alan – Features the adventures of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen set in a dark version of swinging London, as Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, and Lando deal with the possible return of Haddo and the moon-child cult.

Matterhorn: a Novel of the Vietnam War By: Marlantes, Karl – Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood, confronting external obstacles as well as racial tension, competing ambitions, and underhanded officers.

Nora, Nora By: Siddons, Anne Rivers – A young woman with a troubled past comes to visit her cousin and widowed uncle for the summer, and stuns the residents of their small Georgia town.

Replay By: Grimwood, Ken – Through a bizarre cycle of dying and coming back to life again and again, Jeff Winston receives six chances to change his life, correct previous mistakes, and find the happiness that has long eluded him.

The Secret Life of Bees By: Kidd, Sue Monk – After her “stand-in mother,” a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.

Songs in Ordinary Time By: Morris, Mary McGarry – A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man.

South of Broad By: Conroy, Pat – After his brother’s suicide, Leopold Bloom King struggles along with the rest of his family in Charleston, South Carolina, until he begins to gather an intimate circle of friends, whose ties endure for two decades until a final, unexpected test of friendship.

The Stones of Summer By: Mossman, Dow – This stream-of-consciousness novel is the story of Dawes Williams, who grows up in Iowa and enters the world of the ’60s as a hell-raising counterculture figure. In the process, he grows as a writer.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being By: Kundera, Milan – After the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a married surgeon, Tomas, becomes a window washer while trying to reconcile himself to decisions that he and his wife must make about their relationship.

Valley of the Dolls By: Susann, Jacqueline – Three women seek escape as they learn about the bitterness, corruption, and falsehoods of the show-business world.

While I was Gone By: Miller, Sue – Having moved on with her life after a friend was brutally murdered, Jo Becker is now married with a grown family, but when an old housemate moves into the neighborhood, Jo rekindles a relationship that takes her back to the past and threatens her future.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Bliss By: Myracle, Lauren – When Bliss’s hippie parents leave the commune and dump her at the home of her aloof grandmother in a tony Atlanta neighborhood, it’s like being set down on an alien planet. The only guide naïve Bliss has to her new environment is what she’s seen on The Andy Griffith Show. But Mayberry is poor preparation for Crestview Academy, an elite school where the tensions of the present and the dark secrets of the past threaten to simmer into violence. Openhearted, naïve Bliss is happy to be friends with anyone. That’s not the way it has ever worked at Crestview, and soon Bliss is at the center of a struggle for power between three girls—two living and one long dead.

Blue Skin of the Sea: a Novel in Stories By: Salisbury, Graham – Growing up in Hawaii between 1953 and 1966, Sonny tries to come to terms with his feelings for his fisher father and the vast sea that dominates his life.

A Corner of the Universe By: Martin, Ann M. – The summer Hattie turns 12, her predictable smalltown life is turned on end when her uncle Adam returns home for the first time in over ten years. Hattie has never met him, never known about him. He’s been institutionalized; his condition invovles schizophrenia and autism. Hattie, a shy girl who prefers the company of adults, takes immediately to her excitable uncle, even when the rest of the family — her parents and grandparents — have trouble dealing with his intense way of seeing the world.

Countdown By: Wiles, Deborah – It’s 1962, and it seems everyone is living in fear. Twelve-year-old Franny Chapman lives with her family in Washington, DC, during the days surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis. Amidst the pervasive threat of nuclear war, Franny must face the tension between herself and her younger brother, figure out where she fits in with her family, and look beyond outward appearances. For Franny, as for all Americans, it’s going to be a formative year.

Criss Cross By: Perkins, Lynne Rae – Teenagers in a small town in the 1960s experience new thoughts and feelings, question their identities, connect, and disconnect as they search for the meaning of life and love.

Dancing in Cadillac Light By: Holt, Kimberly Willis – In 1968, eleven-year-old Jaynell’s life in the town of Moon, Texas, is enlivened when her eccentric Grandpap comes to live with her family.

Dead End in Norvelt By: Gantos, Jack – In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

Glory Be By: Scattergood, Augusta – 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.

Here Today By: Martin, Ann M. – In 1963, when her flamboyant mother abandons the family to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, eleven-year-old Ellie Dingman takes charge of her younger siblings, while also trying to deal with her outcast status in school and frightening acts of prejudice toward the “misfits” that live on her street.

Letters from Wolfie By: Sherlock, Patti – Certain that he is doing the right thing by donating his dog, Wolfie, to the Army’s scout program in Vietnam, thirteen-year-old Mark begins to have second thoughts when the Army refuses to say when and if Wolfie will ever return.

My Mother the Cheerleader By: Sharenow, Rob – Thirteen-year-old Louise uncovers secrets about her family and her neighborhood during the violent protests over school desegregation in 1960 New Orleans.

Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me By: Marino, Nan – Tamara dreams of the day when ten-year-old Muscle Man McGinty’s constant lies catch up to him, but when an incredible event takes place in the summer of 1969, her outlook on life is altered in the most surprising way.

One Crazy Summer By: Williams-Garcia, Rita – In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Shooting the Moon By: Dowell, Frances O’Roark – When twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter’s brother joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam, Jamie is plum thrilled. She can’t wait to get letters from the front lines describing the excitement of real-life combat: the sound of helicopters, the smell of gunpowder, the exhilaration of being right in the thick of it. After all, they’ve both dreamed of following in the footsteps of their father, the Colonel. But TJ’s first letter isn’t a letter at all. It’s a roll of undeveloped film, the first of many. What Jamie sees when she develops TJ’s photographs reveals a whole new side of the war. Slowly the shine begins to fade off of Army life – and the Colonel. How can someone she’s worshipped her entire life be just as helpless to save her brother as she is?

The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963 By: Curtis, Christopher Paul – The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Wednesday Wars By: Schmidt, Gary D. – During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker’s classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1950s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

11/22/63 By: King, Stephen – On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? The author’s new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination.

Brooklyn By: Toibin, Colm – Leaving her home in post-World War II Ireland to work as a bookkeeper in Brooklyn, Eilis Lacey discovers a new romance in America with a charming blond Italian man before devastating news threatens her happiness.

Cutting for Stone By: Verghese, A. – Marion and Shiva Stone, twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.

Gilead By: Robinson, Marilynne – As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets.

In Cold Blood: a True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences By: Capote, Truman – An account of the senseless murder of a Kansas farm family and the search for the killers.

On the Road By: Kerouac, Jack – On the Road is a thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac’s real life friends, lover, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac’s alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest level of American thought and culture.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest By: Kesey, Ken – McMurphy, a criminal who feigns insanity, is admitted to a mental hospital where he challenges the autocratic authority of the head nurse.

A Painted House By: Grisham, John – Racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder are seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy in a 1950s Southern cotton-farming community.

The Poisonwood Bible By: Kingsolver, Barbara – The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary–Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters–begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives forever transformed over the course of three decades by the political and social upheaval of Africa.

A Prayer for Owen Meany By: Irving, John – Owen Meany hits a foul ball while playing baseball in the summer of 1953 that kills his best friend’s mother, an accident that Owen is sure is the result of divine intervention.

The Rum Diary: the Long Lost Novel By: Thompson, Hunter S. – The irreverent writer’s long lost novel, written before his nonfiction became popular, chronicles a journalist’s enthusiastic, drunken foray through 1950s San Juan.

She’s Come Undone By: Lamb, Wally – Overweight and sensitive Dolores Price grows from painful childhood, through excruciating adolescence, to lonely adulthood, experiencing the heartache of being a misfit in a confusing world.

Shutter Island By: Lehane, Dennis – U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island’s Ashcliffe Hospital in search of an escaped mental patient, but uncover true wickedness as Ashcliffe’s mysterious patient treatments propel them to the brink of insanity.

Song of Solomon By: Morrison, Toni – Macon Dead, Jr., called Milkman, son of the richest Negro in town, moves from childhood into early manhood, searching, among the disparate, mysterious members of his family, for his life and reality.

Stones from the River By: Hegi, Ursula – Trudi, a dwarf librarian, tells about the lives of people in the small German town of Burgdorf from World War I and into the 1950s.

A Walk to Remember By: Sparks, Nicholas – A nostalgic look back at the 1950s in a story of first love set in a small North Carolina town.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

Bone by Bone by Bone By: Johnston, Tony – In 1950s Tennessee, ten-year-old David’s racist father refuses to let him associate with his best friend Malcolm, an African American boy.

The Boys of San Joaquin By: Smith, D. James – In a small California town in 1951, twelve-year-old Paolo and his deaf cousin Billy get caught up in a search for money missing from the church collection, leading them to complicated discoveries about themselves, other family members, and townspeople they thought they knew.

Fire from the Rock By: Draper, Sharon M. – In 1957, Sylvia Patterson’s life–that of a normal African American teenager–is disrupted by the impending integration of Little Rock’s Central High when she is selected to be one of the first black students to attend the previously all white school.

Keeping Score By: Park, Linda Sue – In Brooklyn in 1951, a die-hard Giants fan teaches nine-year-old Maggie, who is a “Bums” (Dodgers) fan, how to use a technique to keep score of a baseball game which creates a special friendship between them.

Kira-kira By Kadohata, Cynthia – Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill.

The Lions of Little Rock By: Levine, Kristin – In 1958 Little Rock, Arkansas, painfully shy twelve-year-old Marlee sees her city and family divided over school integration, but her friendship with Liz, a new student, helps her find her voice and fight against racism.

Mississippi Trial, 1955 By: Crowe, Chris – In Mississippi in 1955, a sixteen-year-old finds himself at odds with his grandfather over issues surrounding the kidnapping and murder of a fourteen-year-old African American from Chicago.

My Louisiana Sky By: Holt, Kimberly Willis – Growing up in Saitter, Louisiana, in the 1950’s, twelve-year-old Tiger Ann struggles with her feelings about her stern, but loving grandmother, her mentally slow parents, and her good friend and neighbor, Jesse.

Penny from Heaven By: Holm, Jennifer – As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father’s death.

Stitches By: Small, David – In this memoir, David Small tells the story of his boyhood in the 1950s. Believing that science can fix everything, his radiologist father subjected David to numerous x-rays for various childhood ailments, resulting in cancer that was untreated for years. At age 14, unaware that he had throat cancer and was expected to die, David awoke from an operation left him nearly mute. Beautifully told from a child’s perspective, this pen and ink graphic novel is both dark and delightful.

Strings Attached By: Blundell, Judy – Kit Corrigan, seventeen, leaves her home in Providence, Rhode Island, hoping to find fame and fortune on Broadway. It’s 1950, and Billy, Kit’s ex-boyfriend, has joined the army, but his mob-connected father offers Kit a Manhattan apartment and a nightclub job if she agrees to keep him informed about Billy and his friends. Soon Kit is way over her head, caught in a web of intrigue, love, betrayal, and murder.

Tunes for Bears to Dance To By: Cormier, Robert – Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family’s problems by watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend, he comes to know true evil.

Way Down Deep By: White, Ruth – In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby’s past begins to unravel.

When Grandmama Sings By: Mitchell, Margaree King – An eight-year-old girl accompanies her grandmother on a singing tour of the segregated South, both of them knowing that Grandmama’s songs have the power to bring people together.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1940s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

ADULT FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (SOME MAY BE SUITABLE FOR TEENS OR EVEN CHILDREN. PLEASE ASK A LIBRARIAN FOR HELP WITH DETERMINING AGE SUITABILITY) 

The Black Dahlia By: Ellroy, James – Bucky Bleichert, ex-prize fighter and policeman, investigates when a young woman’s mutilated body appears in a vacant Los Angeles lot.

Bless Me, Ultima By: Anaya, Rudolfo A. – A young New Mexico boy comes of age.

The Blind Assassin By: Atwood, Margaret – A multi-layered story of the death of a woman’s sister and husband in the 1940s, with a novel-within-a-novel as a background.

The Colorado Kid By: King, Stephen – A rookie newspaperwoman learns the true meaning of mystery when she investigates a twenty-five-year-old unsolved and very strange case involving a dead man found on an island off the coast of Maine.

Cryptonomicon By: Stephenson, Neal – More than fifty years after Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse and Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe are assigned to Detachment 2702, a secret cryptographic mission, their grandchildren–Randy and Amy–join forces to create a “data haven” in the South Pacific, only to uncover a massive conspiracy with roots in Detachment 2702.

The Godfather By: Puzo, Mario – Don Vito Corleone controls a major mafia family in the 1940s, but when one of his sons is murdered, he fights to dominate all of the other families as well.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet By: Ford, Jamie – When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered during renovations at a Seattle hotel, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.

A Lesson Before Dying By: Gaines, Ernest J. – A young illiterate African American man witnesses two black robbers kill a white store owner in Louisana in the late 1940s, and he is the one convicted.

Ordinary Heroes By: Turow, Scott – Stewart Dubinsky plunges into the mystery of his family’s secret history when he discovers his deceased father’s wartime letters to his former fiancee, revealing his court-martial and imprisonment during World World II.

Outlander By: Gabaldon, Diana – Hurtled back through time more than two hundred years to Scotland in 1743, Claire Randall finds herself caught in the midst of an unfamiliar world torn apart by violence, pestilence, and revolution and haunted by her growing feelings for James Fraser, a young soldier.

The Power of One By: Courtenay, Bryce – Follows Peekay, a white British boy in South Africa during World War II, between the ages of five and eleven, as he survives an abusive boarding school and goes on to succeed in life and the boxing ring, with help from a chicken, a boxer, a pianist, black African prisoners, and many others.

Sons of Fortune By: Archer, Jeffrey – In the late 1940s, twin boys are separated at birth, Nat going home with his middle-class parents, and Fletcher to be raised by a wealthy couple, but their lives come together when they both run for governor of Connecticut.

Wish You Well By: Baldacci, David – A coming-of-age story set in New York City and the mountains of Virginia in the 1940s. Lou and Oz Cardinal leave New York with their mother and head to live on their great-grandmother’s farm.

CHILDREN & TEEN FICTION AND NON-FICTION BOOKS (ADULTS CAN LIKE THESE TOO!)

The Art of Keeping Cool By Lisle, Janet Taylor – In 1942, Robert and his cousin Elliot uncover long-hidden family secrets while staying in their grandparents’ Rhode Island town, where they also become involved with a German artist who is suspected of being a spy.

Green Glass Sea By Klages, Ellen – It’s 1943 and 10-year-old budding inventor Dewey Kerrigan sets off with her father to do secret war work in New Mexico. As the adults work on “the gadget,” the kids at Los Alamos are often left to their own devices. When the atomic bomb tests are finally successful, both children and adults grapple with the ethical implications as they realize how “the gadget” will be used.

House of the Red Fish By Salisbury, Graham – A year after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the arrest of Tomi’s father and grandfather, Tomi and his friends, battling anti-Japanese-American sentiment in Hawaii and try to find a way to salvage his father’s sunken fishing boat.

The Loud Silence of Francine Green By Cushman, Karen – Francine Green doesn’t speak up much, and who can blame her? Her parents aren’t interested in her opinions, the nuns at school punish girls who ask too many questions, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities is blacklisting people who express unpopular ideas. There’s safety in silence. But when outspoken, passionate Sophie Bowman transfers into Francine’s class at All Saints School for Girls, Francine finds herself thinking about things that never concerned her before free speech, the atom bomb, the existence of God, the way people treat each other.

My Chocolate Year: a novel with 12 recipes By Herman, Charlotte – In 1945 Chicago, as her Jewish family anxiously awaits news of relatives left behind in Europe, ten-year-old Dorrie learns new recipes in the hope of winning a baking competition at school.

Play Ball, Jackie! By Krensky, Stephen and Morse, Joe – It’s 1947, and 10-year-old Matty Romano is going to his first baseball game with his father to see the Brooklyn Dodgers, his favorite team. It’s also the first day for Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player in the major leagues. The crowd is divided between those who are outraged and those who just want to see good baseball players, no matter what their color.

Players in Pigtails By Corey, Shana – Katie Casey, a fictional character, helps start the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which gave women the opportunity to play professional baseball while America was involved in World War II.

Slap Your Sides By Kerr, M. E. – Life in their Pennsylvania hometown changes for Jubal Shoemaker and his family when his older brother witnesses to his Quaker beliefs by becoming a conscientious objector during World War II.

Ten Cents a Dance By Fletcher, Christine – With her mother ill, it’s up to fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski to support her family. But in the 1940s, the only opportunities open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago’s poor Yards is a job in one of the meat packing plants. Through a chance meeting with a local tough, Ruby lands a job as a taxi dancer and soon becomes an expert in the art of “fishing”: working her patrons for meals, cash, clothes, even jewelry. Drawn ever deeper into the world of dance halls, jazz, and the mob, Ruby gradually realizes that the only one who can save her is herself. A mesmerizing look into a little known world and era.

Weedflower By Kadohata, Cynthia – After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.

Worlds Afire By Janeczko, Paul B. – One summer afternoon in 1944, hundreds of circus lovers crowded under the big top in Hartford, Connecticut, breathlessly waiting for the show to begin. Minutes later, the event took a horrifying turn when a fire broke out and spread rapidly through the tent, claiming the lives of 167 souls and injuring some 500 more. Sixty years later, Paul B. Janeczko recalls that tragic event by bringing to life some unforgettable voices — from circus performers to seasoned fans, from firefighters and nurses to the little girl known as Little Miss 1565, a child whose body was never claimed.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1930s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Some descriptions were taken from the catalog, others from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

Adult Fiction and Non-Fiction Books (Some may be suitable for teens or even children. Please ask a librarian for help with determining age suitability) 

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg —Mrs. Threadgoode’s tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life.

Kate Vaiden by Reynolds Price —Now in her mid-fifties, Kate Vaiden recalls her early life growing up, after the violent death of her parents, an orphan in small towns in North Carolina and Virginia in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver —The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds — Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s — and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century’s most tumultuous events.

The Legend of Bagger Vance By Steven Pressfield – African American Bagger Vance, middle-aged caddy to war hero and former golf champion Rannulph Junah in 1931, explains to Junah how golf resembles life, and Junah’s game improves.

Maus: a Survivor’s Tale By Art Spiegelman – The author-illustrator traces his father’s imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp through a series of disarming and unusual cartoons arranged to tell the story as a novel.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden — Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s.

Native Son by Richard Wright —Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright’s novel is just as powerful today as when it was written — in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what it means to be black in America.

The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley — For fans of The House at Riverton and Rebecca–a debut spanning from the 1930s to the present day, from a magnificent estate in war-torn England to Thailand, this sweeping novel tells the tale of a concert pianist, Julia, and the prominent Crawford family whose shocking secrets are revealed, leading to devastating consequences for generations to come.

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See — Forced to leave Shanghai when their father sells them to California suitors, sisters May and Pearl struggle to adapt to life in 1930s Los Angeles while still bound to old customs, as they face discrimination and confront a life-altering secret.

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway — In an attempt to keep his family above water, Harry Morgan runs contraband rum shipments between Cuba and Key West during the 1930s, in a humorous tale that also follows an unlikely love affair.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — Scout’s father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town during the 1930s. The great American novel.

Water for Elephants By Sara Gruen – Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.

A Week from Sunday by Dorothy Garlock — Set in 1930s Louisiana, a young woman makes a new life for herself after she runs away from home.

Children & Teen Fiction and Non-Fiction Books (Adults can like these too!)

Al Capone Does My Shirts By Gennifer Choldenko – A twelve-year-old boy named Moose moves to Alcatraz Island in 1935 when guards’ families were housed there, and has to contend with his extraordinary new environment in addition to life with his autistic sister.

Bird in a Box By Andrea Davis Pinkney – In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome.

The Book Thief By Marcus Zusak – Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel–a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Bud, Not Buddy By Christopher Paul Curtis – Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father–the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

Ghost-Girl: a Blue Ridge Mountain Story By Delia Ray – Eleven-year-old April is delighted when President and Mrs. Hoover build a school near her Madison County, Virginia, home but her family’s poverty, grief over the accidental death of her brother, and other problems may mean that April can never learn to read from the wonderful teacher, Miss Vest.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret : a novel in words and pictures By Brian Selznick – When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

Macaroni Boy By Katherine Ayers – In Pittsburgh in 1933, sixth-grader Mike Costa notices a connection between several strange occurrences, but the only way he can find out the truth about what’s happening is to be nice to the class bully. Includes historical facts.

My Heart Will Not Sit Down By Mara Rockliff – In 1931 Cameroon, young Kedi is upset to learn that children in her American teacher’s village of New York are going hungry because of the Great Depression, and she asks her mother, neighbors, and even the headman for money to help.

Out of the Dust By Karen Hesse – In a series of poems, fourteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family’s wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry By Mildred D. Taylor – A Black family living in the South during the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don’t understand.

Turtle in Paradise By Jennifer R. Holm – Turtle, eleven, knows that life isn’t like the happy Hollywood movies her mother adores. It’s 1935 and jobs are scarce, so when her mother gets a job as a live-in housekeeper with a woman who doesn’t like children, Turtle heads off without complaint to stay with relatives she’s never met in Key West, Florida. Turtle’s dreamy mother insists that Turtle is going to live in paradise, but down-to-earth Turtle doesn’t expect much. Eventually Turtle warms to her eccentric relatives and begins to see the natural beauty hidden under the trash.

A Year Down Yonder By Richard Peck – During the hard times of 1937, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice is sent to live with her feisty, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois and comes to a better understanding of this fearsome woman.

Your Eyes in Stars By M. E. Kerr – In their small New York town, two teenaged girls become friends while helping each other make sense of their families, neighbors, and selves as they approach adulthood in the years preceding World War II.

Here you’ll find a list of books that are either set in the 1920s or were written during this time. This list is broken down by age but there are many books that can be enjoyed by some or all of the age groups. This list is just a sample of the thousands of books that we can access through the county-wide system. Descriptions were taken from our Literature database; Novelist (click to access from home.)

Click on Titles to be taken to the Catalog

Adult Fiction and Non-Fiction Books (Some may be suitable for teens or even children. Please ask a librarian for help with determining age suitability) 

The Color Purple By: Alice Walker – Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s.

The Good Earth By: Pearl S. Buck – Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant, rises from poverty to become a rich landowner with the aid of his patient wife in the 1920s.

The Great Gatsby By: F. Scott Fitzgerald – In 1925, The Great Gatsby was published and hailed as an artistic and material success for its young author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is considered a vastly more mature and artistically masterful treatment of Fitzgerald’s early themes, which examine the results of the Jazz Age generation’s adherence to false material values. In nine chapters, Fitzgeralds presents the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, as related in first-person narrative by Nick Carraway.

The Hours By: Michael Cunningham – The spirit of Virginia Woolf permeates the lives of several American readers as evidenced in this trio of tales about the author Woolf, a New Yorker planning a party to honour a writer, and a young mother reading Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

The House By: Danielle Steel – A workaholic attorney, Sarah Anderson finds her life transformed by an inheritance from an elderly client and by a magnificent mansion, built in the 1920s by a wealthy Frenchman, a legacy that leads Sarah to architect Jeff Parker.

Middlesex By: Jeffrey Eugenides – Calliope’s friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparent’s desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

New World Coming By: Nathan Miller – Miller characterizes the 1920s as a decade full of drinking, dancing, hedonism, and crime. Miller first concentrates on the writer who captured the decade’s insouciance and ennui in The Great Gatsby, periodically revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s self-destructive slide, then returning to recount the period’s social and economic trends. Blacks moved north, women began voting, factories hummed, farms stagnated, stocks inflated, and speakeasies proliferated.

The Sun Also Rises By: Ernest Hemingway – The story of a group of Americans and English on a sojourn from Paris to Paloma, evokes in poignant detail, life among the expatriates on Paris’s Left Bank, during the 1920s and conveys in brutally realistic descriptions the power and danger of bullfighting in Spain.

Tinkers By: Paul Harding – On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby’s thoughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve.

Teen Fiction and Non-Fiction Books (Just because it says teens doesn’t mean adults won’t like them too!)

Harlem Stomp!: a cultural history of the Harlem Renaissance By: Laban Carrick Hill – Explores the literary, artistic, and intellectual creativity of the Harlem Renaissance and discusses the lives and work of Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and other notable figures of the era.

How it Happened in Peach Hill By: Marthe Jocelyn – When fifteen-year-old Annie Grey and her “clairvoyant” mother arrive in Peach Hill, New York, in 1924, each finds a reason for wanting to finally settle down, but to reach their goals they will have to do some serious lying and Annie will have to stand up for herself.

The Kat Who Walked in Beauty: the panoramic dailies of 1920 By: George Herriman – A companion to the complete Krazy Kat Sunday series collects rare and unique dailies from the 1910s and 1920s, many of which feature unrestricted layout and pictorial content, in a volume that also includes the first stand-alone Krazy & Ignatz strips and illustrations from the Krazy Kat Jazz pantomime ballet of 1922.

Operation Red Jericho By: Joshua Mowll – The posthumous papers of Rebecca MacKenzie document her adventures, along with her brother Doug, in 1920s China as the teenaged siblings are sent to live aboard their uncle’s ship where they become involved in the dangerous activities of a mysterious secret society called the Honourable Guild of Specialists.

The Star Fisher By: Laurence Yep – Fifteen-year-old Chinese-American Joan Lee and her family find the adjustment hard when they move from Ohio to West Virginia in the 1920s.

Vixen By: Jillian Larkin – In 1923 Chicago, seventeen-year-old Gloria Carmody rebels against her upcoming society wedding by visiting a speakeasy, while her Pennsylvania cousin, Clara, hides similar tastes and her best friend, Lorraine, makes plans of her own.

The Voice that Challenged a Nation By: Russell Freedman – An account of the life of a talented and determined artist who left her mark on musical and social history is drawn from Anderson’s own writings and other contemporary accounts.

White Lilacs By: Carolyn Meyer – In 1921 in Dillon, Texas, twelve-year-old Rose Lee sees trouble threatening her Black community when the Whites decide to take the land there for a park and forcibly relocate the Black families to an ugly stretch of territory outside the town.

WitnessBy: Karen Hesse – A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.

Children’s Fiction and Non-Fiction Books (Adults can like these too!)

The 1920s: Luck By: Dorothy Hoobler – In 1927 the Dixons move from rural Georgia to Chicago, where African Americans have more opportunities, and there Lorraine meets a famous movie actress and her little brother Marcus finds that his artistic talents are useful.

Dave at Night By: Gail Carson Levine – When orphaned Dave is sent to the Hebrew Home for Boys where he is treated cruelly, he sneaks out at night and is welcomed into the music- and culture-filled world of the Harlem Renaissance.

Egyptology: search for the tomb of Osiris, being the journal of Miss Emily Sands, November 1926 By: Emily Sands – Presents information on ancient Egypt in the form of a journal of a young woman who went missing on a trip to search for the tomb of the god Osiris in 1926.

Henry and the Kite Dragon By: Bruce Edward Hall – In New York City in the 1920s, the children from Chinatown go after the children from Little Italy for throwing rocks at the beautiful kites Grandfather Chin makes, not realizing that they have a reason for doing so.

The Little Match Girl By: Jerry Pinkney – An American child of the 1920s who sells matches is visited by some visions which bring some beauty to her brief, tragic life.

An Old-fashioned ABC Book By: Elizabeth Allen Ashton – An alphabet book celebrating the art of Jessie Willcox Smith, whose popular illustrations were featured on the covers of “Good Housekeeping” throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

This Land is your Land By: Woody Guthrie – This well-known folk song is accompanied by a tribute from folksinger Pete Seeger, the musical notation, and a biographical scrapbook with photographs.

Uncle Jed’s Barbershop By: Margaree King Mitchell – Despite serious obstacles and setbacks Sarah Jean’s Uncle Jed, the only Black barber in the county, pursues his dream of saving enough money to open his own barbershop.

Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze By: Elizabeth Foreman Lewis – In the 1920’s a Chinese youth from the country comes to Chungking with his mother where the bustling city offers adventure and his apprenticeship to a coppersmith brings good fortune.