Books from or about 1851-1876 (America250 Challenge)

Updated April 11, 2026
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Books from or about 1851-1876 (America250 Challenge)

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The American queen : a novel
Miller, Vanessa
Paper Book
A WOMAN EVOLVE BOOK CLUB PICK | A NORTH CAROLINA READS PICK | A Christy Award WINNER | A 2024 American Fiction Award WINNER | A 2025 Audie Awards WINNER | Best Historical Fiction of 2024 (She Reads) | FEATURED IN GMA, WASHINGTON POST, AND ESSENCE | There is only one known queen who truly ruled a...
Amity
Harris, Nathan
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water comes a gripping story about a brother and sister, emancipated from slavery but still searching for true freedom, and their odyssey across the deserts of Mexico to escape a former master still intent on their...
The book of lost friends : a novel
Wingate, Lisa
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital...
The buffalo hunter hunter
Jones, Stephen Graham
Paper Book
Selected as One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of the Year A Barack Obama Summer Read Libby Award for Best Horror Nebula, Bram Stoker, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Award Finalist A Time, The...
Chenneville : a novel of murder, loss, and vengeance
Jiles, Paulette
Paper Book
Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post-Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.  Union soldier John Chenneville...
Cherokee America
Verble, Margaret
Paper Book
From Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble, a multilayered, wholly original epic of the American frontier   A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, and a neighbor have all gone missing in the same corner of the Cherokee Nation West. Cherokee America Singer,...
The demon of unrest : a saga of hubris, heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War
Larson, Erik
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this "riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult" (Los Angeles Times). ...
The failed promise : Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson
Levine, Robert S.
Paper Book
When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, the country was on the precipice of radical change. Johnson, seemingly more progressive than Lincoln, looked like the ideal person to lead the country. He had already cast himself as a "Moses" for the Black...
Flags on the bayou : a novel
Burke, James Lee
Paper Book
EDGAR AWARD WINNER FOR BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR From New York Times-bestselling author James Lee Burke comes a novel set in Civil War-era Louisiana as the South transforms and a brilliant cast of characters - enslaved and free women, plantation gentry, and battle-weary...
Ghosts of Gold Mountain The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad
Chang, Gordon H.
Ebook
"Gripping . . . Chang has accomplished the seemingly impossible . . . He has written a remarkably rich, human, and compelling story of the railroad Chinese." --Peter Cozzens,  The Wall Street Journal WINNER OF THE ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE <...
Gone with the wind
Mitchell, Margaret
Paper Book
Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind--winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time--has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel. Widely considered The Great American Novel, and often remembered for...
The good lord bird
McBride, James
Paper Book
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, the region a battlefield between anti and pro slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an arguement between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave...
Horse
Brooks, Geraldine
Paper Book
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." --The New York Times Book Review "Horse isn't just an animal story--it's a moving narrative about race and art." --TIME "A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and...
In the upper country
Thomas, Kai
Paper Book
Winner of the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize The fates of two unforgettable women--one just beginning a journey of reckoning and self-discovery and the other completing her life's last vital act--intertwine in this sweeping, powerful novel set at the...
The last slave ship : the true story of how Clotilda was found, her descendants, and an extraordinary reckoning
Raines, Ben
Paper Book
An NPR Best Book of the Year The incredible true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day--by the journalist who...
The last stand : Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
Philbrick, Nathaniel.
Paper Book
Watch a video Read discussion questions for The Last Stand. The bestselling author of Mayflower sheds new light on one of the iconic stories of the American West Little Bighorn and Custer are names synonymous in the American...
Let us descend : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * Instant New York Times Bestseller * Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker, and more. "Nothing short of epic,...
Libertie : a novel
Greenidge, Kaitlyn
Paper Book
The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2021 The New York Times Book Review Best Historical Fiction of 2021 Washington Post Best Books of 2021: 50 Notable Works of Fiction TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 ...
The lost wife
Moore, Susanna
Paper Book
A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR * This immersive, brilliantly subversive historical novel, inspired by a true story, is "set in 1855, follows 25-year-old Sarah Browne as she...heads west to the Minnesota Territory...When the Sioux Uprising of...
The mapmaker's children : a novel
McCoy, Sarah
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Baker's Daughter, a story of family, love, and courage When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes...
Midnight on the Potomac : the last year of the Civil War, the Lincoln assassination, and the rebirth of America
Ellsworth, Scott, (Historian)
Paper Book
Told with a page-turning pace and eye-opening cast of characters, Ellsworth sets out to correct a pivotal moment of American history that we have gotten completely wrong-until now. Jam-packed with fresh, revelatory evidence, Ellsworth's research strongly infers that by the time that the house lights...
News of the world : a novel
Jiles, Paulette
Paper Book
Now a Major Motion Picture National Book Award Finalist--Fiction In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered...
Night flyer : Harriet Tubman and the faith dreams of a free people
Miles, Tiya
Paper Book
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography * A Washington Post Notable Book * Finalist for the PEN America Literary Award *One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best History Books of the Year * One of AAIHS's Best Black History Books of 2024 "Though...
Night watch
Phillips, Jayne Anne
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION * A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War--and a...
On Juneteenth
Gordon-Reed, Annette
Paper Book
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have...
I saw death coming : a history of terror and survival in the war against Reconstruction
Williams, Kidada E.
Paper Book
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction "Powerful and deeply moving."--Los Angeles Times * Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History's Stone Book Award * National Council on Public History Book Award Honorable Mention ...
The second founding : how the Civil War and Reconstruction remade the constitution
Foner, Eric
Paper Book
The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal...
Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Paper Book
The abolition of slavery after the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of freedom' in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in...
The sweet blue distance
Donati, Sara
Paper Book
A young midwife travels west to the New Mexico Territory to care for women in need and faces dangers more harrowing than the ones she's fleeing in this epic tale of survival, redemption, and love from Sara Donati, the international bestselling author of the Wilderness series. 1857...
The woman they could not silence : one woman, her incredible fight for freedom, and the men who tried to make her disappear
Moore, Kate, (Writer and editor)
Paper Book
From the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman hero whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women's rights and exposed injustices that still...
Yellow wife : a novel
Johnson, Sadeqa
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Christian Science Monitor "A fully immersive, intricately crafted story inspired by the pages of history. In Pheby, Sadeqa Johnson has created a woman whose struggle to survive and to protect the ones she loves will have readers turning...
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