Books like The house girl by Tara Conklin

Cora, a woman enslaved on a Georgia cotton plantation, partners with a new slave named Caesar to flee the South. Their daring escape follows a literal underground network of tunnels that mirrors the perilous journey of countless fugitive slaves toward freedom.

Sisters Vianne and Isabelle are pulled into the turmoil of World War II, each forging a path of courage and resistance against the Nazi occupation of France.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic expose the brutal reality of American slavery, following the devout slave Tom as he faces injustice and moral dilemmas—an influential work that stirred Northern anti‑slavery sentiment before the Civil War.

The Orphan Master's Son follows a man's journey through propaganda, identity, and state power in North Korea.

When a mysterious psychic arrives in 1969 Lower East Side, New York, four siblings learn the day they will die, setting off a life‑long quest that tests fate, choice, family and the search for meaning.

Harriet Jacobs' autobiographical narrative recounts her escape from slavery in North Carolina, her concealment in a hidden garret for seven years, and her eventual reunion with her children in the North.

A runaway slave named Henry escapes his cruel master, joins abolitionist John Brown, and disguises himself as a girl to survive the 1859 Harpers Ferry raid in Kansas Territory.

George Washington Black, a young slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is chosen as the manservant of eccentric inventor Christopher Wilde. Together they escape bondage, journey across America and to the Arctic, and discover freedom and humanity beyond the confines of slavery.

An American college girl in 1947 discovers her belated quest to uncover the fate of her vanished French cousin during WWI, leading her to the shadowy Alice Network where a former spy haunted by betrayal seeks vengeance.

Vivian Morris, a 19‑year‑old expelled from Vassar, discovers freedom and love in the bohemian world of a crumbling Midtown theater, only to confront scandal that forces her to redefine what she wants from life.

Two college friends discover that love can span continents and a decade when they reunite after life‑changing choices thrust them apart.

James Salter's 'All that is' is a captivating and sometimes devastating labyrinth of love and ambition. A deeply intimate portrait of the emotional and physical experiences of being alive. Set during the golden decades following World War II, the book captures Salter's lifelong obsession with capturing the intimate, ephemeral spaces that all of us hold and leave behind on paper. After serving as a young officer in Okinawa during the war, Philip Bowman returns home to a small publishing house in New York. The frenetic social scene of New York in the post-war era is a backdrop for the story, where Bowman feels at home. However, his enduring love seems to elude him. When he meets a woman who captivates him, Bowman embarks on a journey that he never intended to take. The book is celebrated for its lyrical evocation of a post-war world imaginatively rendered and beautifully written.

Lisa Belkin’s *Show Me A Hero* chronicles the landmark 1980s–90s Yonkers public‑housing battle, revealing how a scattered‑site proposal reshaped a middle‑class city and its residents’ lives.

In 1970s New York, a wealthy family's split inheritance, a rising punk scene, an obsessive magazine reporter and a Central Park shooting collide during the infamous 1977 blackout—each character’s fate changes forever.

The bondwoman's narrative is possibly the first novel written by a Black woman slave, offering a gripping autobiographical account that illuminates plantation life, slavery, and the quest for liberty in early America.