(3) YA Teenage Jane Austen protects her cousin Eliza and considers a suitor of her own while investigating threats of French espionage in this clever melding of sound biographical research and fictional murder-mystery. Just as the best of Austen's heroines do, MacColl's version of the famed author flaunts acerbic wit leavened with a compassion for the plight of women. Author's note appended. Reading list.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(4) 4-6 Hidden Histories series. After the U.S. Calvary raids Casita's Lipan Apache village, she and her brother are shipped off to the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where Native American children are forced to drop their "savage" ways. This engaging story evokes injustices against Native Americans, though some of the characters' relationships ring false. An author's note with photographs and further resources explains the story's real-life basis. Reading list, websites.

Reviewer: Kristy Pasquariello

(4) YA Abolitionists, a fugitive slave, irresponsible transcendentalists, and a murder combine in this fictionalized vision of what Louisa May Alcott's life might have looked like before she turned to writing as a profession. MacColl's tale captures the complex financial and philosophical realities of the Alcott family, but this blend of biographical and historical research and storytelling occasionally tends toward melodrama. Author's note. Reading list.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(3) YA MacColl slowly sketches the relationships among Emily, Charlotte, and Branwell Brontë, but her intriguingly gothic tale of secrets and crimes in Haworth, England, creates a cleverly imagined set of possibilities for what might have inspired the creation of Cathy, Heathcliff, Jane Eyre, and Mr. Rochester. The strong blend of research and imagination will appeal to established Brontë fans and inspire new ones.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac

(4) 4-6 Hidden Histories series. Outspoken twelve-year-old Rory, who lives in NYC's Catholic Foundling Hospital in 1904, vows to protect her sister, Violet. When Violet is placed with a family in racially divided Arizona Territory, Rory sneaks aboard the train headed west. Despite some lackluster dialogue and underdeveloped characters, Rory is a feisty and compelling protagonist in an action-packed story based on historical events.

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(2) YA Poet Emily Dickinson, fifteen, is the sleuth in this mystery set in 1845 Amherst, Massachusetts. When a young man turns up dead in her family's pond, Emily is determined to find out how he died. MacColl gracefully folds factual elements of Dickinson's life and work into the fiction, highlighting her youthful sociability and wit as well as her intelligence and curiosity.

Reviewer: Deirdre F. Baker | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2013

(4) 4-6 The story of early aviationist Beryl Markham's childhood in Kenya is interspersed with newspaper articles and diary entries detailing her pioneering 1936 trans-Atlantic flight. The fictionalized story is well researched; some heavy-handed dialogue and uncontextualized colonialism (along with a bratty-sounding protagonist) mar the offering. A useful author's note is appended. Reading list.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam

(4) YA Fascinating research about the press, social classes, and royal politics in the years before Victoria took the throne undergirds this tale about the isolated princess and a fictional maid, Liza, who helps her achieve independence. There's some awkwardness to the otherwise engaging narrative; for example, Victoria's passivity makes her annoyingly self-centered and Liza's accomplishments become melodramatically exaggerated. An author's note is appended. Reading list.

Reviewer: Megan Lynn Isaac