1852. Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine?

"Because something is happening, in the distance, approaching from above and below. Weird holes are appearing. I'm often drawn by a void. And that might be the reason I have started to speak. So says the Scatterwind, the narrator in Robert Perisic's latest novel, A Cat at the Edge of the World. Defying the realms of time and space, the Scatterwind is a knowing presence throughout this story, which spans from the time of ancient Sparta to our contemporary...

"Russell's Knob is not paradise. But already in 1849 this New Jersey highlands settlement is home to a diverse population of blacks, whites, and reds who have intermarried and lived in relative harmony for generations. It is a haven for Dossie Bird, who has escaped north along the Underground Railroad and now feels the embrace of the Smoot family. Duncan Smoot presides as accidental patriarch, protector of his enterprising sister, Hattie, and his...

It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband Will has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Conferedates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter in the army. When the unthinkable happens, she takes in a a woman and child who have been left alone and made vulnerable by the war, and...

"Remembrance...It's a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy...if you can make it there. Ohio, present day. A refugee struggling to rebuild her life in America after the devastating Haitian earthquake is suddenly inexplicably bound to a mysterious old woman who is not at all what she seems. Haiti, 1791, on the brink of...

"Ailsa Connery has waited three long years to finally escape her enslavement at Stirling Castle and reunite with her clan. But her carefully laid plans are completely destroyed by the arrival of the infamous Highland warrior known as Dubh Mahoun, the Black Devil...who has plans of his own. Kallum MacNeill's fearsome reputation has long allowed him to keep hidden his secret double life of freeing enslaved captives across the land. It's only when he...

Published in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin brought the abolitionist's message to the White House and beyond. No woman before or since has so successfully written a novel designed to motivate America to act on a major issue of the day. Controversial still, this novel has weathered continual debates on all aspects of its writing and its subject matter. In her eloquent introduction, Ann Douglas establishes the historical and literary significane of this...

1835, Utica, New York. Newlywed Helen Galway discovers two runaway slaves hiding in the shack behind her husband's house and is suddenly faced with a terrible dilemma. Should she be a good wife and report the fugitives? Or should she help them? Meanwhile, Utica itself is caught between stark divisions as abolitionists arrive for the founding meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society and newspapers accuse the group of being insurrectionists...

"Born the daughter of an enslaved woman and a Louisiana plantation owner, Jeannette B�ebinn is raised alongside her white half sister--until her father suddenly dies. His vindictive wife refuses twelve-year-old Jeannette her inheritance and sells her into slavery. Now on her own, Jeannette must fight the injustices she faces because of her mixed race. She escapes enslavement and travels from Mississippi to Philadelphia to New York to Ohio, all while...