Military Fiction Civil War

July 1863. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia is invading the North. General Robert E. Lee has made this daring and massive move with seventy thousand men in a determined effort to draw out the Union Army of the Potomac and mortally wound it. His right hand is General James Longstreet, a brooding man who is loyal to Lee but stubbornly argues against his plan. Opposing them is an unknown factor: General George Meade, who has taken command of the Army only two days before what will be perhaps the crucial battle of the Civil War.

First published in 1875, General William T. Sherman's memoir was one of the first from the Civil War and was offered to the public because, as Sherman wrote in his dedication, "no satisfactory history" of the war was yet available. Although Memoirs has been revised and corrected many times over the years, Sherman famously never changed the original text of his recollections.

A Rainbow of Blood continues the epic, exciting story that began in Peter G. Tsouras’s previous alternate history, Britannia’s Fist. The Great War accelerates during a few desperate weeks in October 1863. From the bayous of Louisiana to the green hills of the Hudson Valley, from Chicago in flames to the gates of Washington itself, the conflict uncoils in ropes of fire. French and British armies are on the march, and heavy reinforcements have put to sea.

In April 1860, Dr. Ryder Cole returns home from his studies, sure of his abilities and on fire to serve his country and preserve the Union. A panther attack threatens to cut his life short until a young woman with a rife and a sure-shot eye appears out of the mist. Then she disappears, re-turning as Tom Boyde, his comrade throughout America’s Civil War, and as Diana, met in a Washington D.C. whore house. The seven Aprils from 1860 to 1866 tell their tale of love and war, sex and friendship. And the price of crossing gender lines.

The blood of soldiers is not the only thing soaking the fields of Gettysburg. For Eli Ward, a Union sharpshooter, the battle is a grim calculus of distance and wind. But as the sun sets on the second day of fighting, the familiar horrors of war are twisted into a nightmare he could never imagine. The screams echoing in the twilight are no longer just from the wounded, but from things that hunt in the shadows, creatures born of rage and bloodlust. When Eli is forced into a desperate alliance with a Confederate soldier—an enemy he tried to kill just hours before—they uncover a terrifying ...

Among the autobiographies of great military figures, Ulysses S. Grant’s is certainly one of the finest, and it is arguably the most notable literary achievement of any American president: a lucid, compelling, and brutally honest chronicle of triumph and failure. From his frontier boyhood, to his heroics in battle, to the grinding poverty from which the Civil War ironically rescued him, these memoirs are a mesmerizing, deeply moving account of a brilliant man told with great courage.

Stranded in the past in 1836, Will Travers woke up in the body of William Barret Travis, commander of the doomed Alamo command, and did what any self-respecting Texan would do when handed a bag of lemons: He made lemonade - defeating Santa Anna's army, twice, forging a lasting peace with the Comanche and rescuing his son from a band of kidnappers. Sixteen years later and just months after he wins the presidency of the Republic of Texas, Will faces the worst crisis of his life. The young republic is being torn apart by civil war. On paper, it appears Will holds all the cards: The rebels are ...

This fictional recreation of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants' hearts and minds.

Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.

In this, the first volume of renowned author and historian Peter G. Tsouras’s alternative history trilogy, Great Britain’s support for the Confederacy takes it to the brink of war with the Union. The escape of a British-built Confederate ironclad finally ignites the heap of combustible animosities and national interests. When the US Navy seizes it in British waters, the ensuing battle spirals into all-out war. Napoleon III eagerly joins the British and declares war on the United States.

MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War, how two small shifts in history (as we know it) in the summer of 1863 could have turned the tide for the Confederacy. What would have happened: to the Union, to Abraham Lincoln, to the people of the North and South, to the world?

The first installment in a sweeping family saga that will convey the reader through the drama and sorrow of the American Civil War. Follow the members of one Pittsburgh family as they embark on a journey through America's most consequential and searing experience. From the halls of Congress to the bloody fields of battle, from the windswept decks of gunboats to the solitude of Lincoln's telegraph office, The Heavens Falling will transport you into the middle of this harrowing American experience, while plumbing the deepest depths of its meaning for the world of today.

Debutante Peyton Fuller's life consists of friends, parties, and waiting for her beau to propose to her. With little knowledge of politics and fighting, her cosseted world changes overnight as soldiers stream into Harrisburg to prepare for a war between the states. As they march past her door, she catches the eye of one soldier who makes her question everything.

“Powerful . . . As haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road, and as devastating a look as the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America. . . . Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War, is an...

In the dying days of the Confederacy, the war is a settled chill in the bones. For Lieutenant Davis and his desperate scouting party, a routine patrol in the Virginia wilderness becomes a hunt for something far more terrifying than Union soldiers. They are following legends whispered by locals—tales of a stitched-up giant that haunts the mountains. When they find tracks larger than any man has a right to make, Davis’s ambition ignites. He sees not a monster to be feared, but an unholy weapon to be captured and aimed at the heart of the Union army. They succeed in chaining the creature, ...

In the seven years since he was stranded in 1836 in the body of William Barret Travis, Will Travers has managed to win Texas independence without the costly massacres he recalled from his own history and forge a peace treaty with the Comanche. As 1843 dawns he faces his greatest challenge yet. Mexico has renewed its war of reconquest. A new general is in charge of Mexico’s army, bringing new strategies to blunt Will’s modern tactics and superior weapons. To counter this new threat, thousands of men from towns and farms across the Republic of Texas volunteer to defend their hard-earned ...

All for the Union is the astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns' highly acclaimed PBS television documentary The Civil War. Enlisting as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, Rhodes fought in every major campaign waged by the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Appomattox. Here, in his own powerfully moving words, Rhodes reveals why he was willing to die to preserve his beloved Union.

A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.

In July 1883, just a few days after the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a group of editors at the Century magazine engaged in a lively argument: Which Civil War battle was the bloodiest battle of them all? One claimed it was Chickamauga, another Cold Harbor. The argument inspired a brainstorm: Why not let the magazine’s 125,000 readers in on the conversation by offering “a series of papers on some of the great battles of the war, to be written by officers in command on both sides.”

Stephen R. Platt is widely respected for his incisive nonfiction, particularly in regard to his knowledge and understanding of China. With Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Platt details the absorbing narrative of the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the loss of 20 million lives. Occurring in the 1850s, this is the story of a cultural movement characterized by intriguing personages such as influential military strategist Zeng Guofan and brilliant Taiping leader Hong Rengan.