Washoe County Library System

“A rare and extraordinary book . . . heart-stopping . . . spellbinding.”San Francisco Chronicle “A page turner that attains the status of literature.”Newsweek “Finely drawn, full of dark beauty and presentiment.”New Yorker “An astonishing first novel.”New York Review of Books. Charles Fraziers debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history in 1997 when it stood at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks,...

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.

What can a womana mere governessdo against the scourge of slavery? Elizabeth "Lizzie" Cloustons quietly held principles oppose those of the Southern Causebut when forty thousand soldiers converge on the fields of Franklin, Tennessee, the war demands an answer. The Carnton home, where she is governess, is converted into a Confederate field hospital; and Lizzie must gather up her fortitude to assist the military doctor with surgeries that determine...

In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position...

In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences.

With her husband and son off at war, and the burden of running the farm falling to her, Joetta, shunned because she doesn't support the Confederacy's position on slavery, finds one act of kindness bringing her family to the edge of even greater disaster.

"In the Valley of the Shadow, they wrote their names in blood. From a daring Confederate raid that nearly seized Washington, D.C., to a stunning reversal on the bloody fields of Cedar Creek, the summer and autumn of 1864 witnessed some of the fiercest fighting of our Civil War--in mighty battles now all but forgotten. The desperate struggle for mastery of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, breadbasket of the Confederacy and the South's key invasion route...