Crowley County Combined Library

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is a classic novel that has captured the hearts of readers for generations. Set in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the story follows the life of Scarlett O'Hara, a headstrong and determined young woman who is forced to navigate the challenges of war, love, and loss. Throughout the novel, Scarlett's character undergoes significant growth and transformation as she learns to adapt...

"Stephen Crane's immortal masterpiece about the nightmare of war was first published in 1895 and brought its young author immediate international fame. Set during the Civil War, it tells of the brutal disillusionment of a young recruit who had dreamed of the thrill and glory of war, only to find himself fleeing the horror of a battlefield. Shame over his cowardice drives him to seek to redeem himself by being wounded -- earning what he calls the "red...

Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.

In 1862 Water's Ford, Pennsylvania, abolitionism is prevalent, even passionate, so the local men rally to answer Mr. Lincoln's call to arms. Thus the women of Elm Creek Valley's quilting bee are propelled into the unknown. The women support one another through loneliness and rear, and devise an ingenious business plan to keep Water's Ford functioning. That plan may forever alter the patchwork of town life in ways that transcend even the ultimate sacrifices...

Despite their misgivings about "the Cause," Willie Burke and his best friends, three young men from New Iberia, Louisiana, enlist in the Confederate Army and head off to war, in a novel drawn from the author's own family history.

"In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage...

In the more than fifty violent conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. In a Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a story: at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy,...

Her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history--culpable regardless of her intentions.The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters,...

Midsummer Eve, 1648. England is in the grip of a civil war between renegade king and rebellious parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote tidelands, the marshy landscape of the south coast. Alinor, a descendant of wisewomen, trapped by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead, she meets James, a young man on the...

On the eve of the Civil War, Kirby Jensen is the youngest of three children living on a hardscrabble ranch in Southwestern Missouri. But in 1861 shots were fired in Charleston harbor, and Kirby's father and brother went to war. Back at home, waves of violence crash over Kirby and his family, until the boy quickly becomes the man called "Smoke", riding with Brigg's Marauders, coming up against violent killers like Frank and Jesse James, and proving...