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.