Military Fiction American Civil War

They came by boat from a starving land, and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains, seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe, as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.

1861, Donegal, Ireland. Ten years ago Declan Conaghan’s father died in the Great Famine, and since then, Declan has kept his promise to keep his family out of the workhouse. But all that is threatened with the arrival of new landlord, John Adair. Adair is quick to cause trouble and fear among his tenants. When he turns them off his land, Declan has no option but to break his promise. Declan is in despair until he receives a letter from America offering him the chance of a new life and salvation for his family. But it would mean signing up to the US Army and fighting for Lincoln.

In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the third New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come. In London, Ella, the love of Ian's life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin.

Move over, Scarlett O'Hara! It's New England, 1861, and the troubles in the southern states seem a long way off for Jack Edgerton, the spoiled son of a prominent Vermont family. Howver, when he meets and falls in love with Aaron Johnson, the sexy son of a slave on the run from Virginia, Edgerton's world is turned upside down.

1858, Fort Gibson, Indian Territory. 2nd Lieutenant Dobey Walls meets and bonds with veteran Corporal Jimmy Melton. As the Civil War begins, they leave to join the 8th Texas Cavalry in Houston, then take part in the first and the final charges of the Army of Tennessee. Between those events, they ride with Nathan Bedford Forrest, play an honorable role in the Fort Pillow Massacre, harass Sherman with Shannon's Raiders, and visit the second best brothel in Atlanta.

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.

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.

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?

The gold is not making it to the governments of the USA and the CSA. Why? Ambitious politicians point fingers with one hand while stealing from the till with the other. There is violence in the streets and folks are unsure and upset. Can a few good men sort this out? And can anyone tell the good guys from the bad guys? Pinkerton agent Rob Finn and his sidekick Lonnie Walters return to Bannack to get the gold supply flowing to the Union again.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trapped in what appears to be an endless bloodbath - vividly presented with Heffernan's meticulous historical research - three boys gradually begin to change until their close-knit childhood ties are little more than a fractured memory. By war's end, one boy is dead, one returns a physically crippled and emotionally compromised man, and the third comes home as an unfeeling psychopath. The novel turns on the subsequent murder of the psychopath, and the offer of redemption for the wounded young man.

One of the great war novels, The Red Badge of Courage describes the first experience of front-line combat through the eyes of a young recruit, Henry Fleming, in one of the battles of the American Civil War. Under the stress of battle, Fleming is forced to face strong, conflicting emotions, ranging from bravado to terror as the conflict ebbs and flows.

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.

As a teenage girl, Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother's second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm "ninety miles from nowhere." In the shadows of the lush Kentucky landscape, Ginny discovers the empty promises of Linus' "paradise" - a place where the charms of her husband fall away to reveal a troubled man and cruel slave owner. Ginny befriends the young slaves Cleome and Zinnia who work at the farm - until Linus' attentions turn to them, and she finds herself torn between her husband and only companions.

Lexington, Kentucky, 1859. After saving John Hunt Morgan from a puma attack, 15-year-old farm boy Will Crump joins Hunt’s militia, the Lexington Rifles. Morgan mentors Will and enrolls him in the local university, where he hopes to study law. As tensions rise between the North and South, Will is torn between his loyalty to Morgan and his love for his family. Will’s sister Albinia, friend of the Clay family, becomes increasingly aware of the plight of the slaves. Luther is one of the first slaves Albinia helps flee the South after his master cruelly abuses his mother and sister.

1862 was the year that the US Civil War underwent a major ramping up. People on both sides of the fight were confused, angry, and hesitant. Most believed the 'war' would have already been over. Very few people realized to what extent the citizenry was being manipulated to participate in the country's most dividing event in its history. In Longshot in Missouri, we meet Rob Finn - an Irish immigrant farmer living in Wisconsin - and follow him through his introduction to the grueling realities of war within a nation.

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.