In Uncle Tom's Cabin , Harriet Beecher Stowe created America's first black literary hero as well as the nation's antecedent protest novel. The novel's vast influence on attitudes towards African American slavery was considered an incitation towards the American Civil War; conjointly, its powerful anti-slavery message resonated with readers around the world at its time of publication. With unashamed sentimentality and expressions of faith, Harriet...

"Amara was once the beloved daughter of a doctor in Greece, until her father's sudden death plunged her mother into destitution. Now Amara is a slave and prostitute in Pompeii's notorious Wolf Den brothel or lupanar, owned by a cruel and ruthless man. Intelligent and resourceful, she is forced to hide her true self. But her spirit is far from broken. Buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel's other women, Amarafindssolace in the laughterand...

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...

Thirteen-year-old Dana investigates a mystery involving the old Kansas house that her parents have turned into a bed and breakfast business; in a parallel story, a Quaker boy living in the house in 1857 sets out to help some fugitive slaves to freedom.

Beautiful and musical Judaean slave Thea attempts to survive and prosper in first century Rome despite a spiteful mistress, a broken love affair with a gladiator, and, most dangerous of all, an interested Emperor. A slave girl from Judaea, Thea is purchased as a toy for the spiteful heiress Lepida Pollia. When Thea captures the attention of Arius, Rome's most savage gladiator, his love brings Thea the first happiness of her life. Their affair ends...

"The paths of three young Black women in pre-Civil War Philadelphia unexpectedly--and dangerously--collide in this dramatic debut novel inspired by the explosive history of a city at war with itself. Philadelphia, 1837. When nineteen-year-old Charlotte escaped from the deteriorating White Oaks plantation four years ago, she'd expected freedom to look completely different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. Instead, she's locked away playing...

"A famous riverboat singer poses as a slave owner in order to lead runaway slaves to freedom and save her own life in this powerful novel from the bestselling author of The Librarian of Boone's Hollow"-- On the Mississippi River, indentured servant Fanny Beck has been forced to sing for riverboat passengers since she was a girl. As her contract comes to an end, she discovers that the captain has no intention of releasing her. An impulse leads Fanny...

"In Rescue on the River, the third book in a three-part story arc focusing on Civil War America, cousins Patrick and Beth attend Abraham Lincoln's inauguration and discover that their friend's brother Kitch is a slave in South Carolina. The cousins search for Kitch as they travel down the Combahee River with Harriet Tubman. They help with the secret mission of the Second South Carolina Volunteers, an African American unit. Will they be able to find...

"A groundbreaking historical novel from a heralded author that explores the seldom discussed Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade. At a time when importing humans from Africa had been prohibited by the Spanish Crown, Pola and other slave women provide their master with babies who are immediately taken away and sold on the auction block. Her serial rapes by a number of men are routine and often provided entertainment for the master and his friends. Understandably...

"It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper--and cousin by marriage--of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also skeptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully...