Small States

In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.

In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us from one of history's darker moments an extended love song to the world we still have. From its opening parable gleaned from recent news about a lost child saved in an astonishing way, the book moves on to consider a world of surprising and hopeful prospects, ranging from an inventive conservation scheme in a remote jungle to the backyard flock of chickens tended by the author's small daughter.

There's a reason Emmeline Frothingham left her hometown of Creek Water, Missouri, as soon as humanly possible. That reason is small-minded, judgmental people. After graduating from college, Emmie gets her dream job in New York City. As the head buyer at Silver Spoons - a high-end boutique - and single girl about town, her life is ideal. That is, until the night of The Event, her company's annual awards ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Facing the repercussions of her wild night, Emmie is forced to go home to work in her family's business.

1970s, Southern Alabama. Sixty-two-year-old Jeremiah Lewis Taylor, or “Nub,” has spent his whole life listening to those he loves tell him he’s no good—first his ex-wife, now his always-disapproving daughter. Sure, his escapades have made him, along with his cousin and perennial sidekick, Benny, just a smidge too familiar with small-town law enforcement, but he’s never harmed anyone—except perhaps himself.

A collection of stories from the most famous Western author of all time! Desert Death-Song is a compilation of some of Louis L’Amour’s greatest stories, many of which might otherwise be difficult to find. Whether he was writing under his early pen name, Jim Mayo, or his own, L’Amour’s stories are unforgettable, touching on rough and rugged American ideals, and set in the untamable frontier of the Western United States.

Fans of The Conjuring and The Amityville Horror will love this chilling new novel unraveling the tale of a family haunted by the ghosts of their malevolent ancestors’ disturbing past. The decrepit well has been a fountain of terror for generations, an abyss of dread that emits tragedy and death like fog. Its darkness touched Jacob’s soul some twenty years ago, and since moving back to his ancestral home, the chilling feeling of being in front of the old well hasn’t left his troubled mind. But this time, the shadows that creep from the well have taken on a malevolent sentience, ...

Who owns what is traditionally considered sacred? Can the Catholic Church legally conspire with the federal government to steal the most sacrosanct of Native American holy places? Holes in the Sky, the second in the series Zeb Hanks: Small Town Sheriff with Big Time Troubles, explores these questions in a clash of cultures mixed with mysterious deaths.

The ritual killing of a young Apache girl on a reservation in rural Arizona takes the listener through many complex layers of relationships between Apache and Anglo cultures. The myth and spiritual fabric of the Apache community pulls Zeb Hanks, a small town sheriff, through a personal journey, making the murder not just a crime to solve but a cathartic passage. The dead never leave us but they do whisper ghost stories that bring the past back to life. Jake Dablo is a drunken, washed up lawman because of his inability to solve the murder of his only granddaughter.

Fans of Friday the 13th and Halloween will love this gruesome slasher following a group of teens hunted by a supernatural killer. You can run. You can try to hide. But no matter where you are, the scarecrow will find you. After a heart-wrenching breakup, the last thing high school sophomore Kyle Shoemaker expected was to fight for his life. But that’s exactly what happens after a drunken trip takes he and his friends to the abandoned farm at the edge of town. Nightly, the scarecrow claims one of them, leaving him with little time. Will he unravel the mystery of the scarecrow before it's ...

History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America.

Ron Chernow examines the forces that made dynasties like the Morgans, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds the financial arbiters of the early twentieth century and then rendered them virtually obsolete by the century's end. As he traces the shifting balance of power among investors, borrowers, and bankers, Chernow evokes both the grand theater of capital and the personal dramas of its most fascinating protagonists.

The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War, the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War.

A collection of stories capturing what it means to be a cowboy.

It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a 23-year-old slave named Robert Smalls did the unthinkable and boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces.

Olivia Cameron always knew she was adopted. What she didn’t know is that her birth family would come back into her life 47 years later… Just days after her husband’s death, Olivia gets a call that she might have inherited a beach cottage in Cape May. Except she’s never been to Cape May, and the lawyer explains it has nothing to do with her husband’s recent passing. Nestled in front of an old vineyard, the cottage is exactly the fresh start she needs. Although she’ll need to provide proof of her identity within 30 days before it goes to the person next in line. When she arrives ...

Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town.

After the loss of her husband a year ago, Grace Evans can’t continue with her career or her life in the city any longer. Lost emotionally, she sells her law practice and decides to spend her summer among the sandy beaches of Florida, taking care of an old inn in Naples Beach with her childhood friend Susan Willows. Maybe the lush palm trees and sun-drenched days filled with sand between her toes will help her find direction again. What she doesn’t expect to find is a secret tucked away in an old hidden locket that will change her life forever. And making things more complicated is local...

Cecil Younger, local Alaskan investigator, is neither good at his job nor great at staying sober. When an old Tlingit woman, unimpressed by the police's investigation, hires him to discover why her son, a big-game guide, was murdered, he takes the case without much conviction that he'll discover anything new.

In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Equal parts beauty and terror, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.

Western Adventure by Ronnie Ashmore "Ashmore creates fierce characters with confidence and authority. A fresh and welcome Western narrative." -Best-Selling Author Ralph Cotton Jim Long is trying to settle into his new post as marshal of the small quiet town of Leonville. But the town is growing faster than Long thinks it should, the mayor brings a new teacher to town, which brings its own problems and a threat from a gang of rustlers and killers threatens the peace Long has fought to maintain. Now he must face the threat or die trying. Long knows the odds are not in his favor, but he swore ...