Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Augustus Cain is a damaged man haunted by a terrible skill: the ability to track people who don't want to be found. Rosetta is a runaway slave who bears the scars, inside and out, of a life of servitude to a cruel and unforgiving master. Her flight is fueled by a passion and determination only a mother could feel, and she would rather die than let anyone drag her back to hell. In a dark, volatile time prior to the... (more)

Iqbal

by Francesco D'Adamo

When young Iqbal is sold into slavery at a carpet factory, his arrival changes everything for the other overworked and abused chidren there. It is Iqbal who explains to them that despite their master's promises, he plans on keeping them as his slaves indefinetely. But it is also Iqbal who inspires the other children to look to a future free from toil...and is brave enough to show them how to get there. This moving... (more)

Sarny

by Gary Paulsen

So many readers have written and asked: What happened to Sarny, the young slave girl who learned to read in Nightjohn? Extraordinary things happened to her, from the moment she fled the plantation in the last days of the Civil War, suddenly a free woman in search of her sold-away children, until she found them and began a new life. Sarny's story gives a panoramic view of America in a time of trial, tragedy, and... (more)

Jubilee

by Margaret Walker

Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent... (more)

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

by Mildred D. Taylor

Facing a year of night riders and burnings, Cassie and her family continue their struggle to keep their land and hold onto what rightfully belongs to them, despite the difficult battles they must continue to endure. Reprint. Winner of the Newbery Medal. AB. NYT.

Amos Fortune, Free Man

by Elizabeth Yates

"It does a man no good to be free until he learns how to live." These were the words of Amos Fortune, born the son of a king of the At-mun-shi tribe in Africa. When Amos was only fifteen years old, he was captured by slave traders and brought to Massachusetts, where he was sold at auction. Although his freedom had been taken, Amos never lost his dignity and courage. He dreamed of being free and of buying... (more)

47

by Walter Mosley

A young slave boy is named and numbered 47 on a nineteenth-century Georgia plantation and encounters the brutality and injustice of the system of slavery. 47 meets a strange being named Tall John who appears to be another slave boy - a runaway. But as 47 comes to realise, John is an extraterrestrial visitor who believes that his destiny is intertwined with the young slave's. Tall John is a science fiction... (more)

The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

Reminiscent of Cold Mountain and Enemy Women, this is a gripping novel based on the incredible true story of a woman whose life was changed forever by the Civil War.In 1894 Carrie McGavock is an old woman, an old woman who has only her former slave to keep her company...along with the almost 1,500 soldiers buried in her backyard. Years ago, rather than let someone plow over the field where these young men had been... (more)

Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family

Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family

by Alex Haley, David Stevens

The author of Roots chronicles the remarkable history of the other side of his family, especially his extraordinary grandmother, Queen, the daughter of a slave and a white slave owner. Reprint.

The March

by E. L. Doctorow

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER OF THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “E. L. Doctorow <is> always astonishing. . . . In The March , he dreams himself backward from The Book of Daniel to Ragtime to The Waterworks to the Civil War, into the creation myth of the Republic itself, as if to assume the prophetic role of such nineteenth-century writers as Emerson,... (more)

Cloudsplitter: A Novel

by Russell Banks

A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. Deeply researched, brilliantlyplotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of... (more)

Slaves in the Family (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Slaves in the Family (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Edward Ball

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "<A> LANDMARK BOOK." -- San Francisco Chronicle "POWERFUL." -- The New York Times Book Review "GRIPPING." -- The Boston Sunday Globe "BRILLIANT." -- The New Yorker "EVERYONE SHOULD READ AND LEARN FROM THIS LUMINOUS BOOK...Like Alex Haley's Roots, through which African American history came into national focus...Slaves in the Family has the potential for creating a perceptual shift in... (more)

My Jim: A Novel

by Nancy Rawles

To help her granddaughter accept the risks of loving, Sadie Watson mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie’s Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck Finn. Sadie is suddenly left alone, worried about her children, reviled as a witch, punished for Jim’s escape, and... (more)

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano

The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano

by Margarita Engle

A lyrical biography of a Cuban slave who escaped to become a celebrated poet. Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own. Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they... (more)

Wolf By The Ears (Point)

by Ann Rinaldi

The acclaimed author of The Last Silk Dress and Time Enough For Drums tells the intense, provocative story of a slave, Harriet Hemings, who some believe was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson. "Tantalizing . . . history brought to life by a skillful and imaginative author."--VOYA. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. HC: Scholastic.

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery

A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery

by E. Benjamin Skinner

To be a moral witness is perhaps the highest calling of journalism, and in this unforgettable, highly readable account of contemporary slavery, author Benjamin Skinner travels around the globe to personally tell stories that need to be told -- and heard. As Samantha Power and Philip Gourevitch did for genocide, Skinner has now done for modern-day slavery. With years of reporting in such places as Haiti, Sudan,... (more)

The Book of Night Women

by Marlon James

The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they—and she—will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a... (more)

Sweetsmoke

by David Fuller

"David Fuller vividly and movingly describes the life of Cassius, a slave on a Virginia tobacco plantation. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Sweetsmoke resonates with unforgettable characters and is a gripping story of loss and survival." --Robert Hicks, author of The Widow of the South " Sweetsmoke is a fascinating and gripping novel about the Civil War. The slave, Cassius Howard, is... (more)

Pemba's Song: A Ghost Story

by Tonya Hegamin

Pemba likes to think and insists she is not crazy and normal just like everyone else. She had to move from her hometown f Brooklyn to Connecticut. She was sad she had to leave her friends and also her boyfriend who she liked. She didn't want to move because all she had left from her dad who died in the army was that house and a couple belongings of him. So now it was just her and her mom moving to a completely new... (more)

Any Known Blood

by Lawrence Hill

Langston Cane V is 38, divorced and working as a government speech writer, until he's fired for sabotaging the minister's speech. It now seems like the perfect time for Langston the eldest son of a white mother and prominent black father to embark on a quest for his family's past and his own sense of self.

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by Michael C. White