"The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality in the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. Sven Beckert's rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world's most significant manufacturing industry combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here...

In 1855 two thirteen-year-old girls, one white and one black, run away from a southern farm and make the difficult journey north to freedom, living to recount their story forty-one years later to two similar young girls.

As the Civil War looms, a young Ohio farm boy comes face to face with the injustice of slavery-an evil that tears at his very soul. When Jonathan Gray leaves home, anger causes him to abandon everything he once loved and push away everyone who ever loved him. He joins the Union Army and furious combat strips away his all-too-abundant pride. Worse, he leads men who would just as soon see him dead. If he is to regain his self-respect, he must embark...

From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline....

"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...

The Selection meets The Handmaid's Tale in the epic sequel to the New York Times bestselling author Amy Ewing's The Jewel.

Violet is on the run. She's escaped the Duchess of the Lake, who bought her at auction, and the lifetime of servitude she was once resigned to.

But no matter how far Violet runs, she can't avoid the rebellion brewing just beneath the Jewel's glittering surface or the fact that she wants in on it.

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The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until a recently transplanted English widow decides to move her into the great house and rename her. She remains bound to the plantation despite her "freedom." The arrival of a young English overseer dramatically changes life in the great house.

Lila, visiting the reputedly haunted Laurel Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, is contacted by the spirit of Daphne, a slave girl in the 1840s who has been waiting for more than a century for just the right person to help clear her name of charges that she poisoned two girls and their mother.

After four years in England, fifteen-year-old Vincent Wingfield, who supports slavery but not brutality toward slaves, returns to Virginia and serves courageously under Lee and Jackson through many of the famous battles of the Civil War.

The second book in the Georgia Trilogy that began with Bright Captivity follows the nearly charmed life of John and Anne Couper Fraser from 1825, when the couple leaves London to return to Anne's (and Price's) home on Georgia's St. Simons Island, to 1839. Surrounded by the natural beauty of the family's coastal plantation, John overcomes his abhorrence of slavery to become a respected planter. He and Anne adore each other, raise their children and...