Civil War Fiction

Johnny Madigan is orphaned, penniless, and just 16 years old. He tells a Union Army recruiting sergeant he is 18 and old enough to fight. But is he - or indeed any man - ready to be thrown into the horrors of the American Civil War? On the bloody field of the Battle of Fredericksburg, as thousands of young men in both blue and grey are brutally cut down, the boy becomes a man. And he is thrown into a man's battle.

Colorful, dramatic, blundering, and tragic - these are some of the adjectives that have been applied to the two-day engagement at Shiloh. This battle, which bears the biblical name meaning “place of peace,” was one of the bloodiest encounters of the Civil War. The Union colonel, whose words give the present book its title, foretold the losses when he told his men: “Fill your canteens Boys! Some of you will be in hell before night….” Fought in the early spring of 1862 on the west bank of the Mississippi state line, Shiloh was, up to that time, the biggest battle of American history.

Long relegated to a secondary position behind Gettysburg, Vicksburg has more recently earned consideration by historians as the truly decisive battle of the Civil War. Indeed, Vicksburg is fascinating on many levels. A focal point of both western armies, the Federal campaign of maneuver that finally isolated the Confederates in the city was masterful. The Navy’s contribution to the Federal victory was significant. The science of the fortifications and siege tactics are rich in detail.

Tangleroot was built by one of Noni’s ancestors, an enslaved man named Cuffee Fortune—who Dr. Castine believes was also the original founder of Stonepost College, and that the school was originally formed for Black students. Dr. Castine spends much of her time trying to piece together enough undeniable truth in order to change the name of the school in Cuffee’s honor—and to force the university to reckon with its own racist past.

Junior Thompson, son of a freed slave, and Webbie Henderson, son of a wealthy family, cross a forbidden boundary between their properties and forge an unlikely friendship in the years that culminate in the Civil War. Young as they are, both must become the men of their families when their fathers are called to battle. When the war comes to their hometown of Carlisle and nearby Gettysburg, will they survive?

From best-selling author Dennis McFarland comes an extraordinary Civil War novel: the journey of a nineteen-year-old private abandoned by his comrades in the Wilderness, struggling to regain his voice, his identity, and his place in a world - all utterly changed by what he has experienced on the battlefield. In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes, a pitcher for the famous Eckford Club, enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister, a schoolteacher, devastated and alone in their Brooklyn home.

At the close of the Civil War, weary veteran Malcolm Hopeton returns to his home in Western New York State to find his wife and hired man missing and his farm in disrepair. A double murder ensues, the repercussions of which ripple through a community with spiritual roots in the Second Great Awakening. Hopeton has gone from the horrors of war to those far worse, and arrayed around him are a host of other people struggling to make sense of his crime.

George Ward Nichols was born in Tremont, Maine, on 21st June, 1831. He worked as a journalist until the outbreak of the American Civil War and then joined the Union Army. He served under General William Sherman and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He published The Story of the Great March, essentially a journal he kept during that march in 1865 and it became an immediate best seller.

While attempting to join up with her lover Matt Jorgensen as he joins Confederate Calvary, Ginny McBride is hit by a musketball from a Union rifle. She develops amnesia, losing all memory as to who and where she is. Matt spends his military time trying to find her. When she returns to herself, she in turn tries to find Matt. It is a story that also engulfs the Western folklore of Jesse James, Cole Younger and his brothers and Belle (Starr) Shirley as they became legends.

Noted historian Robert Hendrickson has written more than 40 books and has earned critical acclaim for his meticulous historical research and highly accessible style. In The Road to Appomattox, by weaving together passages from diaries, military reports, and newspapers, Hendrickson creates a vivid, firsthand account of the final year of the Civil War.

It is 1864. Eighteen-year-old Meredith McBurnie from Nova Scotia, Canada, is working as a proofreader at a literary magazine in Portland, Maine. Her mother, however, has different plans for her daughter. Meredith's brother Liam has deserted the Union Army amidst the American Civil War. Her frantic mother demands that Meredith go and find him or return home to look after the family. Since childhood, Meredith and Liam have shared a special bond. Meredith is worried about her brother's well-being and fate as an army deserter.

A bad day off is better than a good day at work. At least that's what Seth thought until his dream vacation of visiting a civil war battleground came to life. Unfortunately, the dead soldiers that had been lying in peace had a hundred-year hunger to feed. Follow Seth and his family to see if they can escape the dead.

In 1850 in Massachusetts, Whittaker House stood as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It’s where two freedom seekers, Little Annie and Clementine, hid and perished. Whittaker House still stands, and Little Annie and Clementine still linger, their dreams of freedom unfulfilled. Now a fashionably distressed vacation rental in the Berkshires, Whittaker House draws seekers of another kind: Black women who only appear to be free.

“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."

In these stories, characters struggle with allegiances both political and personal, their attempts at independence coinciding with the region’s growing nationalist fervor. Exquisitely attuned to the nuances of familial and cultural history, and beautifully blending pastoral and historical sensibilities, Electrodomésticos is a stunning debut about place, language, and identity, from a promising new voice.

Robert E. Lee is remembered by history as a tragic figure, stoic and brave but distant and enigmatic. Using dozens of previously unpublished letters as departure points, Pryor produces a stunning personal account of Lee's military ability, his beliefs, and his time, shedding new light on every aspect of the complex and contradictory general's life story.

Wolf’s been promoted. He’s helped bring down one of the South’s greatest generals. Yet his country still has more to ask of him, and the costliest war in America’s history rages on. Sheridan’s cavalry raids west to destroy Confederate infrastructure and divert attention from Grant’s movement south of the killing fields of Cold Harbor. Yet Wade Hampton and his rebel forces have something else in store for the Union Cavalry Corps.

Autumn, 1864. Rebel bushwhackers have seized and looted a small town in Missouri. Wounded and left for dead by his half-brother, 17-year-old Owen Wainwright is captured and conscripted by the Confederate Army. As the troops' blacksmith, he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand: the savagery of General Selby's Iron Brigade, the massacres of Union troops, the bloody battles at Lexington, Westport, and Mine Creek. Against all odds, Owen survives with the help of an unlikely ally-a new friend in arms and the only person he trusts. But if fate is cruel, war can be crueler.

No one can talk to the dead...can they? Free man of color Benjamin January gets caught up in a strange, spiritual world that might lead to his own demise, as he hunts for a missing teenager in this gripping, atmospheric historical mystery. New Orleans, 1840. Freshly home from a dangerous journey, the last thing Benjamin January wants to do is leave his wife and young sons again. But when old friends Henri and Chloë Viellard ask for his help tracking down a missing girl in distant New York, he can’t say no.

Born into slavery, Dahlia never knew her mother - or what happened to her. When Dahlia’s father, the owner of Vesterville plantation, takes her to work in his home as a servant, she’s desperately lonely. Forced to leave behind her best friend, Bo, she lives in a world between black and white, belonging to neither. Ten years later, Dahlia meets Timothy Ross, an Englishman in need of a wife. Reinventing herself as Lily Dove, Dahlia allows Timothy to believe she’s white, with no family to speak of, and agrees to marry him.