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Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail.
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. Instead she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured,...
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"Women of Unfailing Conviction Virginia, 1864 Therese Jennings cannot abide the thought of her family owning slaves. When her wealthy grandfather dies during the Civil War, leaving his slaves and estate to Therese's widowed mother, Therese flees to Richmond. There she works as a tutor by day and a nurse by night. But when trouble befalls her family, how can she reconcile her duty and beliefs? And where does James Talbot--a long-time family friend--fit...
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Screenwriter David Fuller spent eight years researching Sweetsmoke, in the process discovering that members of his family fought on both sides of the Civil War. Cassius Howard is a skilled slave, once his master's favorite. But his master Hoke is now little more than a fragile old man, depressed about an ever-shrinking plantation and losing a son to war. When an old freedwoman who once saved Cassius from Hoke's wrath is killed, Cassius risks everything...
6) Chains
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After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.
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"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...
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"Widely acknowledged as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's adventure story of a shipwrecked sailor became an instant classic upon its publication in 1719 and the yardstick for countless castaway narratives to follow." "Robinson Crusoe, an English sailor, finds himself marooned on a desert island after the rest of his shipmates drown in a terrible wreck. He survives on the island for nearly three decades, domesticating livestock, cultivating plants,...
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From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline....
10) Spy of Richmond
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"Trust none. Risk all. Richmond, Virginia, 1863. Compelled to atone for the sins of her slaveholding father, Union loyalist Sophie Kent risks everything to help end the war from within the Confederate capital and abolish slavery forever. But she can't do it alone. Former slave Bella Jamison sacrifices her freedom to come to Richmond, where her Union soldier husband is imprisoned, and her twin sister still lives in bondage in Sophie's home. Though...
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A novel that spans one hundred years and is set in Virginia during the Civil War and a century beyond explores the brutal legacy of violence and exploitation in American society as it examines the fates of the inhabitants of Beauvais Plantation outside of Richmond, Virginia and their descendants.
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In 1864 twelve-year-old former slave Charlotte is lucky enough to live on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia, owned by a Miss Van Lew, who hates slavery, and when Charlotte overhears a conversation she realizes that her mistress is gathering information and passing it on to the Union army; Charlotte is eager to help, (especially since her own cousin, Mary, is involved) but her enthusiasm may endanger them all--or help free 400 Union soldiers who...
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Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town -- with Brown, who believes he's a girl. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity as he...
18) Rodzina
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A twelve-year-old Polish American girl is boarded onto an orphan train in Chicago with fears about traveling to the West and a life of unpaid slavery.
19) Calico Girl
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Callie struggles to understand slavery when her stepbrother is sold away at the start of the Civil War, but is determined her whole family will be free one day. Includes historical notes.
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This wild and entertaining novel expands on the true story of the West Indian slave Tituba, who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, arrested in 1692, and forgotten in jail until the general amnesty for witches two years later. Maryse Condé brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional childhood, adolescence, and old age. She turns her into what she calls "a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary...