Curse of the Blue Tatoo

Curse of the Blue Tattoo

By Louis A Meyer

This fast-paced historical fiction is the second in the Bloody Jack series. In 1803, after being exposed as a girl and forced to leave her her ship, Jacky Farber finds herself attending school in Boston, where, instead of learning to be a lady, she battles her snobbish classmates and roams the city where she has many misadventures. This heroine is rowdy and brash and bucks the Boston society in which women have very few rights. This book can stand alone but the ending is left open for another sequel and will leave readers yearning for more. Easy but long.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

by M.T. Anderson

Set in pre-Revolutionary Boston, Octavian lives with his mother in pampered luxury. The reader slowly realizes that they are black and are part of an experiment to see if Africans have the same mental capacity as Caucasians. The Southern plantation owners who fund this research use it for their own ill-gotten gains; Octavian learns of his own chilling role. The novel is written from Octavian's point of view and in letters written by a soldier who befriends him. The issues of slavery and human rights, racism, free will, the causes of war, and one person's struggle to define himself are all examined in this book. Moderately difficult but worth the challenge.