Ocean State Libraries

"To escape from his violent and drunken father, a 13-year-old boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Huckleberry Finn, fakes his own death and floats away on a raft down the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave.In a series of unforgettable adventures narrated by Huck, they encounter a cross-section of characters from slave-hunters, and con men to feuding aristocrats.This was the first major American novel to be written in the vernacular, a dark and...

2004: Lina Sparrow, an artist's daughter, is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. 1852: Josephine, a seventeen-year-old slave, tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. Lina's search to find a plaintiff for her case will introduce her to Josephine's story. Was she the real talent behind her mistress's now-famous...

"Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town -- with Brown, who believes he's a girl. Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity as he...

"It's 1863, and Thomas and his little sister, Birdie, have fled the farm where they were born and raised as slaves. Following the North Star, looking for freedom, they soon cross paths with a Union soldier. Everything changes: Corporal Henry Green brings Thomas and Birdie back to his regiment, and suddenly it feels like they've found a new home. Best of all, they don't have to find their way north alone--they're marching with the army. But then orders...

Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where...

"Glory over Everything continues the story of Jamie Pyke, son of both a slave and master of Tall Oakes, whose deadly secret compels him to take a treacherous journey through the Underground Railroad ... This ... stand-alone novel opens in 1830, and Jamie, who fled from the Virginian plantation he once called home, is passing in Philadelphia society as a wealthy white silversmith. After many years of striving, Jamie has achieved acclaim and security,...

After escaping from a plantation in North Carolina, Addy and her mother arrive in Philadelphia, where Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship.

"Presents the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as "his" slave."--

March, 1850. In the tense days before the Civil War, a slave breakout in the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland’s eastern shore sets loose a riveting drama of violence, hope, and redemption among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz Spocott, a beautiful runaway slave, shot and near death, is wracked by disturbing visions of the future as she lies shackled to an old woman in the prison attic of the notorious...

“My Bondage and My Freedom”, by Frederick Douglass. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from today’s top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events • Footnotes and endnotes • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired...