Historical Fiction American Literature

Football is the heartbeat of Brownwood, Texas. Now, the war has changed everything. Most of the Brownwood men over 18 and under 45 are off fighting, and in a small town, the possibilities are limited. Could this mean a season without football? But no one counted on Assistant Principal Tylene Wilson, who learned the game at her daddy’s knee. She knows more about it than most men, so she does the unthinkable, convincing the school to let her take on the job of coach.

Harper Fleming is done with being passed over. As a journalist for a Chicago newspaper, she’s been refused a shot at the sportswriter position she longs for. And her on again/off again relationship is going nowhere. Leaving both behind, she heads to Nashville, Tennessee, where she plans to interview her widowed grandfather, Bernard Fleming, for a book about his father Kelton Fleming’s time in the Negro Baseball Leagues. When Bernard reveals health issues within days of her arrival, Harper assumes responsibility for taking care of him.

The name still sends shivers down the spine and has the power to draw in young readers: Geronimo, the legendary Indian who inspired and fought for his people. But who was this man, really? Here is the riveting tale of the last Apache warrior - told by the author of the best-selling Little Britches.

Seven thousand years ago, major climatic change was ushering in a 3,500 year drought. For a small band of pioneers in what is now Wyoming and the Montana Mountains, it was a time of fire. As they struggled valiantly to keep their ancestors’ dreams alive in an unforgiving, drought-stricken land, a heroic young dreamer and a fearless woman warrior united to lead their people to a magnificent destiny.

The latest entry in the McCabe series. Johnny McCabe rides off to a cattle auction, and on the way has an encounter with an old enemy, and meets a legendary mountain man who is trying to protect two children who are being hunted. Meanwhile, Josh and Dusty and the men of the McCabe Ranch are conducting their spring roundup, and find themselves plunging head-first into a range war.

England 1819. Thomas Shield, a master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and the child’s sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Helplessly drawn to Frant’s beautiful, unhappy mother, Shield becomes entwined in their family’s affairs. When a brutal murder takes place in London’s seedy backstreets, all clues lead to the Frant family, and Shield is tangled in a web of lies, money, sex and death that threatens to tear his new life apart. Soon, it emerges that at the heart of these macabre events lies the strange American boy.

Billed as the Little Girl with the Big Voice, blues singer Lucille Arnetta Love always dreamed of life under the lights. From traveling family gospel band to lead singer in a riotous vaudeville troupe, Lucille is on the rise. But a devastating family secret, one that’s poised to shatter every dream she’s ever had, casts an inescapable shadow over Lucille’s career. Decades ago, a botched robbery ended in a suspicious death—and all signs point to Lucille’s own father as the culprit. It’s a secret that Lucille’s family is determined to keep buried—even from Lucille herself.

What if the last man in the world she could be prevailed upon to marry...is her husband? In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet tells the proud Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy that she wouldn't marry him if he were the last man in the world. But what if she never said the words? What if circumstances conspired to make her accept Darcy the first time he proposes?

In early 1968 the grisly on-the-job deaths of two African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, prompted an extended strike by that city's segregated force of trash collectors. Workers sought union protection, higher wages, improved safety, and the integration of their work force. Their work stoppage became a part of the larger civil rights movement and drew an impressive array of national movement leaders to Memphis, including, on more than one occasion, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King added his voice to the struggle in what became the final speech of his life.

When Lizzie McDuffie, maid to Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, boldly proclaimed herself FDR’s “Secretary-On-Colored-People’s-Affairs,” she became more than just a maid—she became the President’s eyes and ears into the Black community. After joining the White House to work alongside her husband, FDR’s personal valet, Lizzie managed to become completely indispensable to the Roosevelt family. Never shy about pointing out injustices, she advocated for the needs and rights of her fellow African Americans when those in the White House blocked access to the President.

Born into the Northern Paiute tribe of Nevada in 1844, Sarah Winnemucca straddled two cultures: the traditional life of her people, and the modern ways of her grandfather's white friends. Sarah was smart and good at languages, so she was able to link the worlds. As she became older, this made her a great leader. Sarah used condemning letters, fiery speeches, and her autobiography, Life Among the Piutes, to provide detailed accounts of her people's turmoil through years of starvation, unjust relocations, and violent attacks. In Paiute Princess, Deborah Kogan Ray offers a remarkable look at an underrepresented historical figure.

The American Colonies, 1765. As the Stamp Act dissent marks the first organized resistance to English rule, someone is kidnapping and killing members of the Iroquois Nation. Asked by an elder to investigate, Scottish exile Duncan McCallum soon uncovers a network of secret runners supporting the nascent “committees of correspondence", engaged in the political dissent fomenting across colonial borders. But as Duncan follows the trail further, it leads to his capture.

In 1825, in rural Pennsylvania, Emma Hale marries an itinerant treasure-digger, a man who has nothing but a peep-stone in his pocket and a conviction that he can speak directly to God. His name is Joseph Smith and in a few short years, he will found his own religion, gather zealous adherents by the tens of thousands, and fracture Emma’s life and faith.

They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.

The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.

The Trees is the story of an American family in the wilderness - a family that "followed the woods as some families follow the sea." The time is the end of the 18th century, the wilderness is the land west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio River. But principally, The Trees is the story of a girl named Sayward, eldest daughter of Worth and Jary Luckett, raised in the forest far from the rest of humankind, yet growing to realize that the way of the hunter must cede to the way of the tiller of soil.

Harry Camden came out of the wilderness unwillingly. It was a girl who attracted him. But Sparrow Roberts, a fight manager, used this romantic lure only to attract Harry into his own sphere, because he knew that Camden had a truly devastating punch.

Rebecca Tate never intended to cause a revolution with her notoriously popular Miss Darby novels, merely to earn enough to support herself and her ailing uncle. But now it seems every eligible debutante in London is emulating her spunky heroine and refusing to marry...ever! Still, Rebecca's enjoying her newfound success as Miss Darby's anonymous creator, and she's not about to let anyone interfere - not even the rakishly appealing Raphael Danvers.

Dusty McCabe fights for his life after he is taken down by a sniper, and Jack finds himself defending Judge Mack who has been accused of murder. It all seems to tie into the return of Hiram McCabe, Johnny's notorious nephew, and to the return of the greatest enemy the family has ever faced. The McCabes are a family that holds together no matter the hardship, but even for them, life may never be the same again.

They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs, but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. But their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence.