Historical-Fiction
21 books
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Middle Passage
Author: Charles Johnson
It is 1830. Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is desperate to escape unscrupulous bill collectors and an impending marriage to a priggish schoolteacher. He jumps aboard the first boat leaving New Orleans, the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a daring voyage of horror and self-discovery. Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas,- Published on 1998
- 229 pages
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Glorious
Author: Bernice L. McFadden
Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice L. McFadden’s rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty. Glorious is ultimately an audacious exploration into the nature of- Published on 2010
- 241 pages
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Gathering of Waters
Author: Bernice McFadden
Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi--a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families. Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit. Forty y- Published on 2012
- 247 pages
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The Good Lord Bird
Author: James McBride
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 struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion- Published on 2013
- 434 pages
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Wench
Author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men w- Published on 2010
- 290 pages
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Half of a Yellow Sun
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters sw- Published on 2006
- 440 pages
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Mr Fox
Author: Helen Oyeyemi
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, the celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently. It’s a bright afternoon in 1938 and Mary Foxe is in a confrontational mood. St John Fox, celebrated novelist, hasn’t seen her in six yea- Published on 2011
- 278 pages
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Song Yet Sung
Author: James McBride
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with “the- Published on 2008
- 376 pages
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The Covenant of Water
Author: Abraham Verghese
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning — and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch — known as Big Ammachi — will witne- Published on 2023
- 794 pages
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Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world. —Barack Obama African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe. —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's catac- Published on 2010
- 224 pages
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The Fire in the Flint
Author: Walter Francis White
A story of tragedy and violence set in the early 20th century. When Kenneth Harper, a young black physician who has studied in the North, returns to his Georgia hometown to practice medicine, he discovers all too soon that the roots of intolerance are deeply embedded. "A stirring novel, beautifully and passionately written".--The Nation.- Published on 1996
- 316 pages
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Juneteenth
Author: Ralph Ellison
Shot on the Senate floor by a young black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them. Reprint. 60,000 first printing.- Published on 2000
- 404 pages
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Saving Savannah
Author: Tonya Bolden
Savannah Riddle feels suffocated by her life as the daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington, D.C., until she meets a working-class girl named Nella who introduces her to the suffragette and socialist movements and to her politically active cousin Lloyd.- Published on 2020
- 275 pages
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Victoire
Author: Maryse Condé
From the winner of the New Academy Prize in Literature (the alternative to the Nobel Prize) and critically acclaimed author of the classic historical novel Segu, Maryse Condé has pieced together the life of her maternal grandmother to create a moving and profound novel. Maryse Condé’s personal journey of discovery and revelation becomes ours as we learn of Victoire, her white-skinned mestiza grandmother who worked as a cook for the Walbergs, a family of white Creoles, in the French Antilles. Usi- Published on 2014
- 208 pages
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Lucia's War
Author: Susan Lanigan
London, 1950. Opera singer Lucia Percival is due to perform her last concert. But she has no intention of going onstage. A terrible secret from the First World War has finally caught up with her. London, 1917. Lucia, a young Jamaican exile, hopes to make it as a musician. But her past haunts her, and when she meets Lilian, an old woman damaged by war, she agrees to a pact that could destroy everything she has fought so hard for. From the Western Front and Glasgow, to black society in L- Published on 2020
- 367 pages
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The Infamous Rosalie
Author: Évelyne Trouillot
Lisette, a Saint-Domingue-born Creole slave and daughter of an African-born bossale, has inherited not only the condition of slavery but the traumatic memory of the Middle Passage as well. The stories told to her by her grandmother and godmother, including the horrific voyage aboard the infamous slave ship Rosalie, have become part of her own story, the one she tells in this haunting novel by the acclaimed Haitian writer Évelyne Trouillot. Inspired by the colonial tale of an African midwife- Published on 2013
- 146 pages
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The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi
Author: Arthur Japin
"The first ten years of my life I was not black." Thus begins this startlingly eloquent and beautiful tale based on the true story of Kwasi Boachi, a 19th-century African prince who was sent with his cousin, Kwame, to be raised in Holland as a guest of the royal family. Narrated by Kwasi himself, the story movingly portrays the perplexing dichotomy of the cousins' situation: black men of royal ancestry, they are subject to insidious bigotry even as they enjoy status among Europe’s highest echelo- Published on 2002
- 399 pages
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
The narrative drive of Stowe's classic novel is often overlooked in the heat of the controversies surrounding its anti-slavery sentiments. In fact, it is a compelling adventure story with richly drawn characters and has earned a place in both literary and American history. Stowe's religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christianity and how Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery.- Published on 1999
- 486 pages
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Beloved
Author: Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel Beloved is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. This spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s- Published on 2004
- 354 pages
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Invisible Man
Author: Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African Am- Published on 1994
- 620 pages
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The Shadow King
Author: Maaza Mengiste
"A brilliant novel, lyrically lifting history towards myth. It's also compulsively readable. I devoured it in two days." -- Salman Rushdie The Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war. A gripping novel set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, The Shadow King takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record.- Published on 2019
- 448 pages
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