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

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"Oprhaned aboard a ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. Eventually accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium...

Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state--and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture--rebel, change agent, and artist. Read again or for the first time this masterpiece of 20th-century literature with new material by the author.--From publisher description.

A society wedding turns deadly in the days of the Roman Empire . . .

Second-century sleuth Libertus must prove a bride's innocence in this exciting, twisty mystery in the critically-acclaimed series set in Roman Britain. A perfect read for fans of Lindsey Davis and David Wishart.

"Rowe, a distinguished academic, excels at drawing the reader into second-century Roman Britain, effortlessly inserting historical

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A Libertus Mystery of Roman Britain - The marriage of a former vestal virgin is always an important event, so the anticipated arrival of such a bride in Glevum is the excuse for an even more lavish banquet than usual on the Emperor's birthday feast. However, when Audelia's covered carriage finally arrives, the lady in question is nowhere to be found. Libertus investigates and makes a gruesome discovery, suggesting that Druid rebels may have been involved....

"Structured as a triptych, Africaville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family--Kath Ella, her son Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner--whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through the social protests of the 1960s to the economic upheavals in the 1980s. A century earlier, Kath Ella's ancestors established a new home in Nova Scotia. Like her ancestors,...

In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery. The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region. This story is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution....

"Philadelphia 1793. Hercules, President George Washington's chef, is a fixture on the Philadelphia scene. He is famous for both his culinary prowess and for ruling his kitchen like a commanding general. He has his run of the city and earns twice the salary of an average American workingman. He wears beautiful clothes and attends the theater. But while valued by the Washingtons for his prowess in the kitchen and rewarded far over and above even white...

After the death of Queen Eleanor, Beauty and Laurent are implored to take the throne and uphold the ways of complete sensual surrender that have made Eleanor's realm a legend.

"December 1795. A year has passed since Ian Cameron reluctantly sent his uncle's former slave Seona and their son, Gabriel, north to his kin in Boston. Determined to fully release them, Ian strives to make a life at Mountain Laurel, his inherited plantation, along with Judith, the wife he's vowed to love and cherish. But when tragedy leaves him alone with his daughter, Mandy, and his three remaining slaves, he decides to return north. An act of kindness...