Akron Public Library

"From American master James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters-enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary Confederate and Union soldiers-are caught in the maelstrom. In the fall of 1863, the Union Army is in control of the Mississippi River. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate Army is in disarray, corrupt...

From USA Today bestselling author and Christy Award Hall of Fame inductee Tamera Alexander comes the story of two women from different centuries living in the same house who share strikingly similar journeys. Claire Powell's life is turned upside down when her beloved husband admits to a "near affair." But when Stephen accepts a partnership with an Atlanta law firm without consulting her and buys a historic Southern home sight-unseen--it pushes their...

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father...

"Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors— the last documented survivors of any slave ship— whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways." --

“Told from the perspective of an enslaved boy being raised in a Roman brothel, a stunning literary historical novel of identity, family, suffering, and freedom. In a brothel on the Spanish coast during the waning years of the Roman Empire, a young enslaved boy of unknown parentage is growing up. His world is a kitchen, then an herb-scented garden, followed by a loud and dangerous tavern, and finally, the mysterious upstairs where the "wolves" do...

In the near future, a plague has wiped out all of the cats and dogs. As a result, apes began to be kept as pets and eventually slaves. One ape, Caesar, son of talking apes from the future, leads a revolution to free the apes and take over the planet.

"Using Olaudah Equiano's autobiography as the source, the text shares Equiano's life story in found verse. Readers will follow his story from his childhood in Africa, enslavement at a young age, liberation, and life as a free man"--

A feisty young boy fakes his own death to escape his abusive father and heads off down the Mississippi River with his newfound friend Jim, a runaway slave.

"Juneteenth is the celebration of the day enslaved people in Texas were were told they were freed. This book explores Juneteenth's little-told history, from the first Jubilee to the making of a national holiday"--