Historical Fiction - North America: Reconstruction - Gilded Age (1783 - 1900)

The harmony of Lily's life in the hill settlement of Stony Clove in 1851 is shattered when she learns her family has been working as conductors on the Underground Railroad and their services are needed to rescue a neighbor who has been captured by slave catchers.

In 1830, Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave leading a dissolute life in New Orleans, finds himself forced into marriage.

Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives in post-Civil War Ohio, has borne the unthinkable and works hard at "beating back the past." She struggles to keep Beloved, an intruder, from gaining possession of her present while throwing off the legacy of her past.

In 1895, after his mother's death, twelve-year-old Nathan moves with his father and grandfather to Pea Island off the coast of North Carolina, where he hopes to join the all-black crew at the nearby lifesaving station, despite his father's objections.

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory.

Years ago, Abby Reynolds was given the letters written by her great-great-grandmother who traveled from Virginia to New Mexico in a covered wagon just after the Civil War. Now, at a crossroads in her life, Abby reads Abigail's letters and follows her ancestor's trail westward where she seeks to understand the other woman's life in a land that was so foreign to her family, they all but forgot her.

A New York lawyer remembers his boyhood in Nebraska and his friendship with a simple Bohemian girl.

A portrayal of New York society in the 1870s where money counted for less than manners and morals.

Sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and boyfriend, takes a job at a hotel in 1906 where the death of a guest renews her determination to live her own life.

Wharton reveals the hypocrisy and destructive effects of the city's social circle on the character of Lily Bart. Impoverished but well-born, Lily must secure her future by acquiring a wealthy husband; but her downfall — initiated by a romantic indiscretion — results in gambling debts and social disasters.

Gabriel Lynch, an African-American teenager who has moved with his mother from New York to live on his stepfather's Kansas homestead, brings serious trouble down upon himself and his family when he leaves the farm to join a group of cowboys who turn out to be a gang of criminals.

Auguste Dupin, upon receiving news of Edgar Allan Poe's death, travels from Paris to America where he visits the people and places the poet knew in an attempt to put to rest his fears that Poe was murdered.

Having been taken as a child and raised by Comanche Indians, thirty-four-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker is forcibly returned to her white relatives, where she longs for her Indian life and her only friend is her twelve-year-old cousin Lucy.

Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.

Continues the adventures of Sarny, the slave girl whom Nightjohn taught to read, through the aftermath of the Civil War during which time she taught other Blacks and lived a full life until age ninety-four.

From the New York Times bestselling author of THE DRESSMAKER comes a moving historical novel about a bold young woman drawn to the looms of Lowell, Massachusetts--and to the one man with whom she has no business falling in love. Eager to escape life on her family's farm, Alice Barrow moves to Lowell in 1832 and throws herself into the hard work demanded of "the mill girls." In spite of the long hours, she discovers a vibrant new life and a true friend--a saucy, strong-willed girl name Lovey Cornell. But conditions at the factory become increasingly dangerous, and Alice finds the courage to represent the workers and their grievances.

After an arduous journey, Will Dwinelle and his friend Ben finally reach California in 1849 intending to bring home the man who betrayed the honor of a girl back home in Philadelphia, but find themselves tempted by the riches of the Gold Rush.

Ulysses McQueen and Stephen Jarvis are both caught up in the California gold rush of 1849, but McQueen is haunted by guilt over the wife he left behind in Iowa, and Jarvis, an ex-soldier in love with Rita Concepcion Estrada, must deal with her family's hatred for the conquering Yanquis.

Former Union officer Luke Williamson and Confederate veteran Masey Baldridge join forces when a riverboat captain is murdered, and Baldridge is hired to lead two Pinkerton agents into the Mississippi backwater in search of a gang of robbers.

Former Union officer Luke Williamson turns to partner and Confederate veteran Masey Baldridge when a prostitute working on his paddle wheeler is murdered, and his African-American first mate is arrested for the crime.

After the Civil War, former slave Obi Booker tries to make a new life on a South Carolina island while waiting to be joined by his beloved Easter, who is studying in the North.

Because of the strong influence which her grandfather, an abolitionist, has in her life, fourteen-year-old Lucy assists a fugitive slave girl in her escape.

Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read.