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Historical Fiction -- The Blue and the Grey Books set during and around the Civil War
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Paradise Alley
by Kevin Baker
Three Irish immigrant women become trapped in New York City during the draft riots of the Civil War and must struggle to protect their families. By the author of Dreamland.
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Days Without End
by Sebastian Barry
Entering the U.S. army after fleeing the Great Famine in Ireland, 17-year-old Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, experience the harrowing realities of the Indian wars and the American Civil War between the Wyoming plains and Tennessee. By the award-winning author of The Secret Scripture.
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Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen
by Sarah Bird
In 1864 Missouri, newly freed slave Cathy Williams makes the difficult decision to fight in the Army, disguised as a man, with the Buffalo Soldiers.
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March
by Geraldine Brooks
In a story inspired by the father character in Little Women and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his marriage and beliefs profoundly challenged by his experiences. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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The Spymistress
by Jennifer Chiaverini
Pledging her loyalty to the North at the risk of her life when her native Virginia secedes, Quaker-educated aristocrat Elizabeth Van Lew uses her innate skills for gathering military intelligence to help construct the Richmond underground and orchestrate escapes from the infamous Confederate Libby Prison.
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Shiloh
by Shelby Foote
Six Confederate and Union soldiers relate their experiences and feelings during and after the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862.
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Varina
by Charles Frazier
Forced by limited prospects to marry much-older widower Jefferson Davis, teenaged Varina Howell finds her expectations as the wife of a Mississippi landowner upended by his appointment as the leader of the Confederacy, a situation that renders her and her children fugitives in a divided and increasingly hostile nation.
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Blue Asylum
by Kathy Hepinstall
Arrested and declared insane for seeking justice for her plantation owner husband's slaves at the height of the Civil War, Iris Dunleavy endures a lengthy institutional "rehabilitation" under the eye of a pompous superintendent and bonds with fellow patients, from a woman who compulsively swallows objects to a traumatized Confederate soldier. By the author of The Absence of Nectar.
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All Other Nights
by Dara Horn
Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, struggles with difficult moral questions when he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who has been plotting an assassination attempt against President Lincoln, a situation that becomes more challenging when Jacob is subsequently directed to marry a suspected spy.
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Neverhome
by Laird Hunt
Follows the experiences of Ash Thompson, who becomes a folk hero after she abandons her farmer husband and disguises herself as a man to go fight for the South during the Civil War.
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Simon the fiddler : a novel
by Paulette Jiles
Conscripted into the Confederate Army after nearly escaping the American Civil War, an itinerant fiddle player joins a ragtag regimental band playing for both sides of the conflict before falling in love with an indentured Irish governess.
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The Secrets of Mary Bowser
by Lois Leveen
A slave to one of the wealthiest families in Richmond, Virginia, Mary Bowser, sent to Philadelphia to be educated, secretly joins the abolition movement to bring fugitive slaves to freedom - a cause that leads her to deceive even those who are closest to her as she engages in a deadly game of espionage to end slavery.
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I Shall be Near to You
by Erin Lindsay McCabe
A tale inspired by true accounts and a real female soldier's letters home follows the extraordinary experiences of a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight next to her husband in the American Civil War, an effort that tests the bonds of their relationship and their respective gender perceptions.
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Redemption Falls
by Joseph O'Connor
Having escaped the Irish famine only to become embroiled in America's Civil War, Eliza sets out on a mysterious cross-country quest, while a poetess denies other suitors to take up with a mercurial revolutionary, and a rebel guerilla sets out on a brutal rampage across the West. By the author of Star of the Sea.
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My Name is Mary Sutter
by Robin Oliveira
Traveling to Civil War-era Washington, D.C. to tend wounded soldiers and pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon, headstrong midwife Mary receives guidance from two smitten doctors and resists her mother's pleas for her to return home. A first novel.
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The Rebel Wife
by Taylor Polites
Forced into marriage with a wealthy man after her Southern family is rendered destitute by the Civil War, Augusta becomes a widow a decade later and finds her circumstances hinging on a missing package in a community torn by racial prejudice, violence and disease. A first novel.
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Lincoln in the Bardo
by George Saunders
A long-awaited first novel by the National Book Award-nominated, New York Times best-selling author of Tenth of December traces a night of solitary mourning and reflection as experienced by the 16th President after the death of his 11-year-old son at the dawn of the Civil War.
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A Blaze of Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Shiloh
by Jeff Shaara
Drawing on meticulous research and told from the perspectives of characters on both sides, a story inspired by the pivotal Civil War battle recreates the April 1862 surprise attack by Confederate forces on the Union Army. By the best-selling author of Gods and Generals. 100,000 first printing.
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The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
The award-winning author of The Noble Hustle chronicles the daring survival story of a cotton plantation slave in Georgia, who, after suffering at the hands of both her owners and fellow slaves, races through the Underground Railroad with a relentless slave-catcher close behind.
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