Kevin McGrath

Mazer, Harry. A Boy at War FIC/MAZ
While fishing with his friends off Honolulu on December 7, 1941, teenaged Adam is caught in the midst of the Japanese attack and through the chaos of the subsequent days tries to find his father, a naval officer who was serving on the U.S.S. Arizona when the bombs fell.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms FIC/HEM
By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway’s story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto — of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized — is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone does my shirts FIC/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.

Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. FIC/HELLER
Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn’t even met keep trying to kill him.

King, Stephen. 11/22/63. FIC/KING
On November 22, 1963, three shots changed the world. What if it never happened? Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely impossible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

Myers, Walter Dean Fallen Angels. FIC/MYERS
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

Spinelli, Jerry. Milkweed. FIC/SPINELLI
Set in Nazi-occupied Poland just before the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Spinelli’s first historical novel tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival though the eyes of a young orphan.

Hunt, Irene .No Promises in the wind. FIC/HUN
A fifteen-year-old boy struggles to survive and come to terms with inner conflicts in the desperate world of the Depression.

Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. FIC/HES
In a series of poems, fifteen-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.

Hughes, Dean. Soldier Boys. FIC/HUGHES
Two boys, one German and one American, are eager to join their respective armies during World War II, and their paths cross at the Battle of the Bulge.

Taylor, Theodore. The Bomb. FIC/TAY
In 1945, when the Americans liberate the Bikini Atoll from the Japanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize that in the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat.

Godbersen, Anna The luxe.      FIC/GODBERSEN
In Manhattan in 1899, five teens of different social classes lead dangerously scandalous lives, despite the strict rules of society and the best-laid plans of parents and others.

Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America. FIC/ROT
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the thirty-third president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and whose virulent anti-Semitic policies he appeared to accept without difficulty. What followed in America is the historical setting for this startling new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth, who recounts what it was like for his Newark family-and for a million such families all over the country-during the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every reason to expect the worst.

Yep, Laurence. The Star Fisher. FIC/YEP
Fifteen-year-old Joan Lee and her family find the adjustment hard when they move from Ohio to West Virginia in the 1920s.

Lee, Harper. To kill a mockingbird  FIC/LEE
The explosion of racial hate in an Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a black man accused of rape.