In April 1966, police officers in rural Ohio and Western Pennsylvania chased a glowing object across eighty miles of back roads. The object—silent, blinding, and seemingly intelligent—became one of the most famous UFO cases in American history and helped inspire the opening scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But the mystery didn’t end when the lights vanished. Drawing on primary sources, official records, and personal experience, this book traces how a single night’s events were transformed into lasting folklore—shaped not just by witnesses and the media, but by the U.S. military’s own investigative machinery. Rather than merely asking what the police chased, a more unsettling question is asked here: how did government involvement, belief, and mistrust combine to create a self-perpetuating legend that still echoes today?

Just after midnight on July 31, 1952, U.S. Army Lieutenant Coleman A. Peterson walked into the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay, Michigan, and shot Mike Chenoweth in retaliation for an assault on his wife. This revenge killing rocked the small lumber town in the Upper Peninsula, and the trial that followed inspired a best-selling novel and an Academy Award–nominated motion picture, Anatomy of a Murder.

Using the testimony taken from trial transcripts, the police investigator, and the killer, author Patrick J. Baker shares the real story of a sensational murder trial that captivated the Midwest and the aftermath that drew the eyes of the nation.

On a cold February morning in 1990, a commuter driving Georgia Highway 190 near Pine Mountain made a discovery that would haunt Harris and Meriwether Counties for years: a young man, barely alive, abandoned on the roadside with brutal injuries that didn’t match any “accident.” What first looked like a hit-and-run quickly unraveled into something darker—an organized act of violence tied to the cocaine trade, barroom power, and a crew that believed fear was currency. Follow the death of Paul McKeen Jr. from the first 911 call through the long, grinding years of false stories, intimidation, and silence. As investigators dug past staged explanations, witnesses began to crack: ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, frightened associates, and reluctant insiders finally admitted what they heard, what they saw, and what the men involved bragged about afterward. The case became a test of whether justice can survive when physical evidence is thin—but human truth keeps surfacing. Author Clay Bryant traces the path from roadside mystery to indictments, pretrial strategy, and a high-stakes trial built on testimony, pattern, and motive.

Local socialite La Roux Soles’s hometown of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, spoke her name in whispers. She and her husband, Bob, a charming war hero and successful businessman, lived it up with boozy Prohibition-era parties in their mansion perched high above the National Tube Works, the industrial heart of the gritty town. Behind the facade, Bob harbored secrets that shattered them both, drove her mad, and pushed her to commit the ultimate act of desperation—or was it murder? Like grime from the steel mill cloaking their mansion's windows, the real story of that warm June night in 1933 was obscured. The mysterious events left a scar on McKeesport that never quite healed and soon captured the nation’s attention.

Hidden in an urban oasis, the house museum now known as Historic Rosedale is one of the oldest and finest examples of Federal-style architecture in the Southeast. Constructed in 1815 by Charlotte tax collector and postmaster Archibald Frew, the house served as a private home for 173 years to five generations of intertwined families—the Frews, Caldwells, and Davidsons.

These families, along with several generations of Black families, both enslaved and free, were essential to the survival of this extraordinary property. Through the initiative of the home’s final occupants, the house and the immediately surrounding grounds were preserved. Today, Historic Rosedale, located three miles from uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, and adjoining the notable NoDa neighborhood, is open for guided tours of the furnished house and nine acres of gardens. Here, visitors will be intrigued by the beauty of the site and the stories of the many people, Black and White, who lived here. For over 200 years, Rosedale has served as tribute to the history and inhabitants of Mecklenburg County and the North Carolina Piedmont.

A collection of stories, originally published in 1928, from the author of The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk.

A couple set fire to an old farmhouse to collect insurance money. A groom contemplates an old sexual escapade while he waits for his bride at the altar. A young farm boy returns to tell his brother about his capers while stationed in France in the Navy. The eleven stories in this collection, including an introductory essay by Wescott on returning to his parents’ West Allis home outside Milwaukee, deal with themes of exile—often self-imposed—and return.