Jack,
Well, if you're willing to indulge a little fantasy/sci-fi, I recommend Harry Turtledove's books. He mostly writes alternative history. Guns of the South is probably one of his best, and is a stand alone novel if you don't want to get into one of his 8-12 novel series. That one's a civil war alternative history.
His WWII/alien invasion series is excellent, and his current Civil War through WWII America-split-into-two-countries is amazing.
For all of you who stopped reading Wheel of Time at book 6, you've missed some good stuff. Granted, Book 7 wasn't fantastic, but it was necessary to move the plot along. Book 8 picked it back up, 9 was great, at the end of 10 I thought he was going to end it then and there, and 11 was also quite good. I hope that 12 gets published at some point, although he certainly wasn't done with it.
