A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers, & Other Badass Girls

Fifteen female authors including Andrea Cremer, Kekla Magoon, Marissa Meyer, and Elizabeth Wein deliver a delightful selection of historical tales set in North America and featuring strong-willed, capable women. In J. Anderson Coats’s harrowing “Mother Carey’s Table,” 16-year-old Joe dresses as a boy to accompany her father aboard a pirate ship. In Marie Lu’s “The Journey,” set in 1723, an Inuit teenager, Yakone, attempts a dangerous cross-country journey after her parents are murdered. Helen, an heiress in 19th-century Chicago, flees to the Wyoming frontier to escape a forced marriage in Beth Revis’s “Pearls.” And in Y.S. Lee’s “The Legendary Garrett Girls,” two sisters fight to protect the bar they run in 1898 Alaska. Other stories are set in Civil War–era Washington, D.C., Indiana during the Great Depression, post-WWII Los Angeles, and Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots. Historical figures like pilot Bessie Coleman, voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, and robber Bonnie Parker make cameos, while author notes help contextualize the stories. These energizing, adventurous, and occasionally somber tales will readily please fans of historical fiction. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (Mar.)