Absalom! Absalom! is William Faulkner's major work--his most important and ambitious contribution to American literature. In the dramatic texture of this story of the founding, flourishing and decay of the plantation of Sutpen's Hundred, and of the family that demonic Stephen Sutpen brought into the world a generation before the Civil War, there rises the lament of the South for its own vanished splendor.

Cruz Guerrero wanted Sloan Stewart from the first moment he laid eyes on the headstrong beauty. But Sloan, eldest daughter of a wealthy cotton planter, belonged to another man.

Amabelle, a Haitian woman who has grown up as a servant in the home of Dominicans, falls in love with Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, and together they try to weather the storms of persecution against their people.

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, ZaritÉ -- known as TÉtÉ -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, TÉtÉ finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves. When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it's with powdered...

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...

Catapulted from her home, her marriage and her children, artist Rebecca Simms has come to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, to hide herself from herself. Little does she know that on this “arrogantly shabby” family playground, she’ll encounter three people who will change her life: a wise and irresistible octogenarian who will pry her secrets from her, a gallery owner who caters to interior decorators and heaven save us, tourists, and a retired...

A story based on the true experiences of a Civil War heroine Carrie McGavock, The Widow of the South, took it upon herself to grieve the loss of many young men in the battle of Franklin, Tennessee, which took place on November 30, 1864. Nine thousand men lost their lives that day. Before the battle begins, Carrie's house is commandeered for a field hospital and all normal life is suspended. Carrie is anything but normal, however. She has buried three...

"Moments after Lisbeth is born, she's taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father. As she...