Civil War Fiction

1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not only her efforts but her love for William, a Black soldier and a brilliant musician.

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad's leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can't bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

Badger Kershaw was becoming a familiar figure on the frontier after the War between the States. Riding an Appaloosa with Lobo, his dog-wolf hybrid, often by his side, he was feared by most outlaws on the dodge on whom there was a bounty. It was not a savory profession, perhaps, but Kershaw was honest about what he did. Frontier lawmen for the most part were accustomed to dealing with Kershaw. When the fugitive was willing to surrender, Kershaw would bring in an outlaw alive, but it was not an option he encountered very often.

The War Between the States is synonymous with romance, tragedy, bravery, and lost causes. The terrible war nearly tore the nation apart. The United States survived, though at a terrible cost. Today, more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, people are still fascinated by this pivotal point in history. Writers, too, find this a fruitful period to investigate. In Civil War Fantastic, some of science fiction’s finest writers take us back to this turbulent time with their own special visions of what might have been.

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.

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical, and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence.

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.

"A Trail to the West": Riding under an alias, Bowdrie joins up with Queen’s ruthless gang to rescue the pretty niece of a powerful Texas judge. "Love and the Cactus Kid": Folks far and wide know that the Cactus Kid can handle a pistol with the best of them. But for all his skill and coolness under fire, there’s just one small weakness he can’t seem to overcome.... "Medicine Ground": The Cactus Kid is on his way to the spring dance to meet his best girl, Bess O’Neal. As the Kid ambles through the lonely mountain trail toward town, two men emerge from the darkness - Miguel and Lobo Fernandez, of the menacing Fernandez brothers.

Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army--and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever.

Already an international sensation and prize-winning best seller in France, an evocative coming-of-age story of a young boy, a lost childhood, and a shattered homeland. Burundi, 1992. For 10-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana, is something close to paradise. These are carefree days of laughter and adventure - sneaking Supermatch cigarettes and gorging on stolen mangoes - as he and his mischievous gang of friends transform their tiny cul-de-sac into their kingdom.

Antietam is the third book of eight spanning the Civil War and describing its effect on one southern family. The Brannon brothers answer the call to arms at different times, and the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it never had considered.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered. Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

Wild Swan, the horse farm Alexandria Falconer built up from nothing in the border state of Maryland, has been Alex's sanctuary through years of turmoil, and she has come of age in this land of opportunity. But the storm clouds of civil war are gathering, and Alex knows she has a choice to make to protect her family and maintain the precarious peace at Wild Swan.

Well past his prime, Robert Fallon now fights the battles of politics to save the country he cherishes from civil war. It is 1832, and the high tariffs that protect northern industry are crippling the South. President Andrew Jackson thinks force is the answer to the South's threats of secession. Robert must pay a final-hour visit to Washington, as an appeal to Jackson and Congress to pass a compromise tariff before the country is torn apart.

In all of Roman history there was never a more turbulent year than A.D. 69, the ill-omened "Year of the Three Emperors". By some miracle, the greatest historian of the age, Tacitus, was able to chronicle those momentous events in a work he called The History. In its pages are some of the most memorable events of Roman history described in some of the most intensely passionate prose ever devised.

Powerful, epic, and compelling, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen shines light on a nearly forgotten figure in history. Cathy Williams was born and lived a slave - until the Union army comes and destroys the only world she’s known. Separated from her family, she makes the impossible decision - to fight in the army disguised as a man with the Buffalo Soldiers. With courage and wit, Cathy must not only fight for her survival and freedom in the ultimate man’s world, but never give up on her mission to find her family, and the man she loves.

As racial injustice proliferates and lines are drawn, a civil war looms on the horizon. Charles Williams is a Los Angeles City police officer and a man of strong ethics and integrity. His longtime partner, Rick despite the occasional crass comment, has always seemed like a stand-up guy. However, shortly after unearthing Rick's true colors, Charles abruptly changes partners, igniting his colleagues' scrutiny.

Jennifer Chiaverini's New York Times best-selling Elm Creek Quilt novels, with their irresistible blend of storytelling magic and quilting lore, have captured the hearts of countless fans. In this moving novel about morality, freedom, and the power of human courage, Chiaverini whisks listeners back to antebellum America.

When Elizabeth Kaufman received the news of her husband's death at the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, she felt only relief. She determined that she would never be at the mercy of any man again, even if it meant she would never have a family of her own. Then Aaron Zook comes home with her brother when the war ends two years later.

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.