Newer Civil War Fiction

Devil’s Dream / by Madison Smartt Bell

In the years leading up to the Civil War, soon-to-be Confederate General

Nathan Bedford Forrest marries a woman, has a child and adopts the position of slave owner in the rural south. Fast forwarding in time to Sherman’s march, which targeted Forrest directly, the general tries to fend off the South’s inevitable defeat as he looks back on his past. (FIC BELL)

Sweetsmoke: A Novel / by David Fuller

Cassius is a secretly educated slave on a tobacco plantation in Virginia.

 While the Civil War rages on around him, Cassius is pursuing his own cause: to find out who killed his adoptive mother, a free black woman named Emoline Justice. Setting out on the road, employing various aliases and ruses to avoid suspicion, Cassius encounters a world seemingly bent on chaos as he confronts soldiers, slave traders, spies, slaves both free and those still unliberated in his determined quest. (FIC FULLER)

Escape From Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War / by Gene Hackman
Following capture by a Confederate regiment in 1864, Union Captain NathanParker and 23 of his men are transported to Andersonville prison in Georgia where deplorable treatment prompts Parker to hatch an escape plan. After the daring plan is carried off and the Captain finds himself on the outside, he formulates another daring plan: to improvise a scheme to rescue his remaining troops. (FIC HACKMAN)

Home Land: A Novel / by Barbara Hambly
As a nation goes to war and tensions rise between North and South, two

 women become close friends as pen pals sharing their lives to each other via correspondence. Susanna Ashford, a plantation owner’s wife, and Cora Poole, who lives on an isolated Maine island, find that they have more in common than just liking the same books. They also share a common bond of peace and companionship in a time of conflict. (FIC HAMBLY)

All Other Nights: A Novel / by Dara Horn
In 1862, Jacob Rappaport, a jew, runs away from home and enlists in the Union army where it doesn’t take for his superiors to catch wind of who he really is. Jacob comes from a very powerful mercantile family whose holdings are headquartered in both the South and the North. The 19-year-old is quickly employed as a spy to help the Union get an edge on the supply end of things. But when he’s assigned to infiltrate a Confederate spy, a young jewess named Eugenia Levy, Jacob finds that his mission has become endangered by his growing attraction to the girl. (FIC HORN)

Hallam’s War / by Elisabeth Payne Rosen
Leaving Charleston for what they think will be a better life in Tennessee, Hugh and Serena Hallam have set up shop at a farm called Palmyria with their

three children and 12 slaves. With war on the horizon, the Hallams are still hopeful that a peaceful resolution will come. But when the conflict can no longer be put off and war is declared, Hugh, a West Point graduate, heads off to fight for the Confederacy leaving Serena to deal with what is already the daunting task of running the farm. (FIC ROSEN)

Southtown: A Tres Navarre Mystery / by Rick Riordan

Before he shifted gears to become an immensely successful children's author of such books as The Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson and the Olympians, San Antonio native Rick Riordan wrote mysteries. His Tres Navarre novels about a South Texas private eye didn't have much to do with children, fantasy or mythology and instead depicted the seamy underbelly of San Antonio with its hidden criminal element, showing the harsh, often violent conditions which went with the territory. Southtown is a crackerjack P.I. novel, detailing the aftermath of a violent prison break by five men, one of whom will stop at nothing to see his own brand of vengeance played out.

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The Floresville Five is what they're being called by the media. The five fugitives, 3 of which were serving life sentences for murder, are still on the loose after a prison break from the south Texas maximum security penitentiary. The escape was a bloodbath of an affair in which six men originally plotted a getaway in the prison chaplain's SUV; only the plan went horribly wrong leaving the chaplain, one of the fugitives and two guards behind as casualties. The mastermind behind the whole thing is a nasty character named Will Stirman, a former "coyote" who made a business of smuggling illegals across the border for his own nefarious purposes. Having been ripped off in a deal gone bad and having been caught in the process, Stirman was serving a life sentence when he burst out of the incarceration unit.

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This is bad news for everyone, but especially Erainya Manos, a private eye currently tied up in mostly boring, low-level work with what seems to be the same circle of San Antonio lowlifes. Erainya's former husband, the now deceased Fred Barrow, was part of the bounty-hunting team which originally put Will Stirman away. Only they didn't play by the rules. In addition to taking more than their share of the profit (some loose change gone unaccounted for), Barrow and his partner Sam Barrera accidentally killed two of the wrong people--Stirman's wife and son--and tried to cover the whole thing up with lies. Now, despite the fact that Erainya had virtually nothing to do with the whole mess, Stirman is out to get her and plans to use her son Jem for his purposes. Fortunately she's got a good friend and clever partner in Tres Navarre. A former English professor turned private detective, Tres will do anything and everything in his power to protect Erainya and Jem, even if it means endangering his own life.

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Riordan's skill at storytelling is on full display in this, his fifth Tres Navarre novel, after debuting the wily sleuth in Big Tequila and building his persona through The Last King of Texas. Navarre is the perfect vessel for the author to deliver his story, one well-layered with believable villains and even more believable good guys (most of whom have a hard time walking the straight line themselves). The book is also true to its setting, and Riordan's roots, as a work deeply entrenched in the culture and heritage of San Antonio and South Texas. Readers are sure to never be disappointed with Riordan's work and won't miss a beat with this, one of his best. (MYS RIORDAN)