American Civil War Fiction

Abraham Lincoln delivered what is considered to be the most famous speech ever at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. There are five known copies of this speech in Lincoln’s handwriting, each with a slightly different text. John W Michaels reads from the Bliss copy which appears on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. In the background we hear the U.S. Army chorus performing the Battle hymn of the Republic.

More than 20,000 American Indians served in the Civil War, yet their stories have often been left out of the history books. In Deadly Aim, Sally M. Walker explores the extraordinary lives of Michigan’s Anishinaabe sharpshooters. These brave soldiers served with honor and heroism in the line of duty, despite enduring broken treaties, loss of tribal lands, and racism.

Nona “Peaches” Davenport, abandoned by the man she loved and betrayed by family, left her Natchez, Mississippi, home fifteen years ago and never looked back. She’s forged a promising future in Chicago as a professor of African American Studies. Nona even finds her once-closed heart persuaded by a new love. But that’s all shaken when her father’s death forces her to return to everything she’s tried to forget.

Susie King Taylor, born a slave in 1848, would learn to read at secret schools and go on to teach countless others to read and write. Follow the course of the Civil War in her own words as she remembers her work as a nurse and teacher with an Army troop of African-American soldiers.

On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys—as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself—have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.

No one knows where the term Underground Railroad came from - there were no trains or tracks, only "conductors" who helped escaping slaves to freedom. Including real stories about "passengers" on the "railroad", this audiobook chronicles slaves' close calls with bounty hunters, their exhausting struggles on the road, and what they sacrificed for freedom.

Based on the true story of the celebrated Nancy Hart Rifles, The Cotillion Brigade is a sweeping epic of the Civil War’s ravages on family and love, the resilient bonds of sisterhood amid devastation, and the miracle of reconciliation between bitter enemies. 1856. Sixteen-year-old Nannie Colquitt Hill makes her debut in the antebellum society of the Chattahoochee River plantations. A thousand miles to the north, a Wisconsin farm boy, Hugh LaGrange, joins an Abolitionist crusade to ban slavery in Bleeding Kansas.

An astonishing civil rights story from Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin. On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away. On August 9th, 244 men refused to go back to work until unsafe and unfair conditions at the docks were addressed. When the dust settled, fifty were charged with mutiny, facing decades in jail and even execution.

The incidents of the book are real ones, drawn in part from the writer's personal experiences and observations as a soldier of the Union during that war. He is also indebted to many comrades for reminiscences of battle and prison life. The perilous escape of Jed and Dick, from Andersonville down the Flint and Apalachicola Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico, is in substance the narrative of a comrade whom the writer knew at Andersonville, and afterwards met when the war had closed. The descriptions of the prison are especially truthful, for in them the author briefly tells what he saw.

In July 1883, just a few days after the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a group of editors at the Century magazine engaged in a lively argument: Which Civil War battle was the bloodiest battle of them all? One claimed it was Chickamauga, another Cold Harbor. The argument inspired a brainstorm: Why not let the magazine’s 125,000 readers in on the conversation by offering “a series of papers on some of the great battles of the war, to be written by officers in command on both sides.”

The Separately Together series is a three-volume work looking into the relationships of its characters during the American Civil War. Written by Charles Heaton Allen, a historian, this series is exciting and challenging. It has been described as "the most uniquely plotted and warmly character-driven of the many Civil War novels I've ever read, which includes many of them" by Col. William C. Moore. It is worthy of the attention of anyone captivated by the Civil War era.

“In this brief sketch of our great Southern hero, I have endeavored to portray, amid the blaze of his matchless military genius, the unchanging rectitude of his conduct, the stern will-power by which he conquered all difficulties, his firm belief in an overruling Providence, and his entire submission to the Divine Will. These traits of character were the cornerstones upon which he reared the edifice of his greatness, and upon which the young people of our day will do well to build."

On a balmy day in April 1863, Union Colonel Abel D. Streight, at the head of a brigade of federal infantry, set out on a 220-mile ride to destroy the Western and Atlantic railroad at Rome, Georgia. The most fascinating thing about the raid is that Streight's brigade of four infantry regiments, almost 1,800 soldiers, was mounted on mules, a huge problem in itself; few of his men had ever ridden a horse, let alone a mule.

Three Days in Hell, action-packed from start to finish, is the story of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson's Chickamauga as told through the eyes and words of one of his staff officers, Major Chester Rigby. The author takes you onto the battlefield as no one has done before. He plunges you right into the center of the action, which doesn't let up until the very end. It's a story of heroism, desperate deeds, and death and destruction on a scale the likes of which had never been seen before.

April, 1861. Jack Lark arrives in Boston as civil war storms across America. A hardened soldier, Jack has always gone where he was ordered to go - and killed the enemy he was ordered to kill. But when he becomes a sergeant for the Union army, he realises that this conflict between North and South is different. Men are choosing to fight - and die - for a cause they believe in. The people of Boston think it will take just one great battle. But with years of experience, Jack knows better.

1863, Louisiana. Jack may have left the battlefield behind, but his gun is never far from reach, especially on the long and lonely road to nowhere. Soon, his skill lands him a job, and a new purpose. Navy Colt in hand, Jack embarks on the dangerous task of escorting a valuable wagon train of cotton down through Texas to Mexico. Working for another man, let alone a man like the volatile Brannigan, isn't going to be easy. With the cargo under constant attack, and the Deep South's most infamous outlaws hot on their trail, Jack knows he is living on borrowed time.

Jack Lark, once the Scarlet Thief, has abandoned the rolling Virginian hills and is on the run with Rose, an escaped slave girl who is more than his match. Soon he will find his way into the uniform of the Confederate Army in an adventure that will culminate at the Battle of Shiloh - the bloodiest conflict in American history at its time.

Chickamauga: A Novel of the American Civil War is the story of a great battle of the Civil War and the people who fought it, many of them real and some of them the product of the author’s imagination. Chickamauga is a story of the heroism, selflessness, and frailty of the men whose deeds are etched forever on the fields and forests at Chickamauga, the River of Death. Chickamauga is the story of the generals who planned the grand strategies that would be played out by lesser but braver men.

From the critically acclaimed author of Bloodroot, a gripping, wondrously evocative novel of a family in turmoil, set against the backdrop of real-life historical event—the story of three days in the summer of 1936, as a government-built dam is about to flood an Appalachian town, and a little girl goes missing.

A young American civil war recruit overcomes initial fears and shame to become a hero on the battlefield.