Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated...

The making of "Show ways," or quilts which once served as secret maps for freedom-seeking slaves, is a tradition passed from mother to daughter in the author's family.

An aristocratic girl who is a member of a warmongering and enslaving empire purchases a slave, an act that sets in motion a rebellion that might overthrow her world as well as her heart.

In 1851, thirteen-year-old Cecilia has her eyes opened to the horrors of slavery when she accompanies her ornithologist uncle on an expedition in search of the rare "Scarlet Ibis," and watches as he shows slaves the way to the Underground Railroad.

After a fellow slave is beaten to death, Sadie and her family flee the plantation for freedom through the Underground Railroad.

In 1855 two thirteen-year-old girls, one white and one black, run away from a southern farm and make the difficult journey north to freedom, living to recount their story forty-one years later to two similar young girls.

1860, Louisiana. After serving as mistress of Le Petit Cottage for more than six decades, Madame Sylvie Guilbert has decided, in spite of her family's indifference, to sit for a portrait. It will be a testament to all the hardships she overcame, the glory her life ought to have been. As she sits for the portrait, other stories are revealed: that of Thisbe, an enslaved woman who must stand silent by her mistress but observes everything. Or Byron, heir...

Portrays life in Roman-occupied Britain of the second century, as revealed in a story about the conquests and adventures of the ex-slave and gladiator, Phaedrus.

"After a day of picking cotton in late 1860, Ella May, a young slave, joins her friends Bobby and Sue at their second job of listening outside the windows of their master's house for useful information." --

Nine-year-old Addy Walker escapes from a cruel life of slavery to freedom during the Civil War.