Washoe County Library System

Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail.

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

"Slave. Swordwielder. Spy. Some girls have all the luck...When Rialla was young, slave traders from Darran amburshed her clan, killing all the men and enslaving the women and children. For years, Rialla lived in bondage, until she escaped and fled to the mercenary nation of Sianim.Now she can strike back at her former masters. A lord in Darran seeks to outlaw slavery--but there are plots to kill him before he can. Rialla is chosen by the Spymaster...

"Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father...

Henry Townsend, a former slave, has a fondness for Paradise Lost and an unusual mentor--William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful white man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation as well as his own slaves. Henry tragically fails to understand the fundamental flaws in his thinking that he can be a better slave master than a white man.

"Shamera, the daughter of a minor noble, is forced to turn thief when her homeland is invaded and occupied by the Eastern Empire. After years of life spent in theft and sabotage, her master is killed by supernatural means. To track down the demonic killer that is murdering the natives and the occupants alike, Shamera reluctantly joins forces with the Eastern governor." --

Using original slave auction and plantation estate documents, contrasts the monetary value of a slave with the priceless value of life experiences and dreams that a slave owner could never take away.

Tells of the massive enslavement of tens of thousands of Native Americans from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, describing how kidnapping and forced labor played a key role in the decimations of Indian populations across North America.

Discusses the introduction of slaves into American society, the beginnings of the abolitionist movement, the national conflict over slavery and the resulting Civil War, emancipation of the slaves, and slavery's legacy.