Historical Fiction American Literature

In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected. The Quinns - all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers - live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules. Rozelle's children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are 12 years old so that they can help support her by going to work.

Here is Philip Roth’s masterpiece, featuring Nathan Zuckerman and the story of Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father’s glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede’s beautiful American luck deserts him.

The definitive volume in Jakes’s best-selling series finds the Kent family reaching to finally embrace its legacy - and its futureIn the final installment of the Kent Family Chronicles, the remaining Kents seek to fulfill Philip Kent’s original American dream. As Gideon Kent’s health deteriorates, he fears for the future of his family.

A collection of stories capturing what it means to be a cowboy.

Two retired Texas Rangers, Captains Woodrow Call and Augustus "Gus" McCrae, lead a cattle drive from the small town of Lonesome Dove to the unsettled Montana territories. On their grueling journey, they are joined by Joshua Deets, a Black scout and former Ranger, Jake Spoon, a fugitive, and Newt Dobbs, a 17-year-old boy who may have family ties to Call. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove will make listeners laugh and weep, dream and remember.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

Hugo Award winner Harry Turtledove is the master of alternate history. In American Front he envisions World War I as it may have been if fought on American soil. The United States and Germany clash with the Confederacy, France, and Britain as the machines of modern warfare litter the landscape with carnage. Meanwhile, oppressed southern blacks head toward a fateful confrontation.

Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control....

The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous, physical work, and the men take care of the children.

A collection of stories from the most famous Western author of all time! Desert Death-Song is a compilation of some of Louis L’Amour’s greatest stories, many of which might otherwise be difficult to find. Whether he was writing under his early pen name, Jim Mayo, or his own, L’Amour’s stories are unforgettable, touching on rough and rugged American ideals, and set in the untamable frontier of the Western United States.

In 1920, as veterans question the very nation they fought for, socialist Upton Sinclair challenges Teddy Roosevelt for the presidency. And in the defeated Confederacy, a fiery racist whips his followers into a frenzy.

For years, he's been an object of fear, fascination...and fantasy. But of all the wicked rumors that shadow the formidable Alexander Moncrieffe, Duke of Falconbridge, the ton knows one thing for certain: Only fools dare cross him. And when Ian Eversea does just that, Moncrieffe knows the perfect revenge: He'll seduce Ian's innocent sister, Genevieve - the only Eversea as yet untouched by scandal. First he'll capture her heart...and then he'll break it.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

A sweeping story that transports the listener from a tribal African village to a plantation in the Southern United States, from the teeming Halifax docks to the manor houses of London, The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female characters in recent Canadian fiction, one who cuts a swath through a world hostile to her colour and her sex.

Cree Indians and best-friends Xavier and Elijah enlist in the Canadian Army in 1915, eager to become heroes. Seasoned hunters, the men become expert snipers, but their horrifying experiences serving in World War I will leave devastating impressions on each man’s life.

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.