New Book Releases

Los Angeles’s dizzying array of attractions can easily overwhelm visitors and locals alike, but now there’s a better way to explore the city.

Enjoy a glimpse of the history behind the most prestigious museums and discover sites better known for their part in international scandals. Peek into California’s colonial past, visit sites from the golden age of film or explore the urban legends surrounding the Black Dahlia. With tips from the best times to visit to where to park, experience the best of Los Angeles like a local.

Join author Adam Papagan, experienced tour guide and true California character, for a tour of Los Angeles you’ll never forget.

Beginning in the town of Solon, Old Canada Road winds for nearly 80 miles through the Upper Kennebec and Dead River Valleys before ending at the Canadian border.

Following ancient aboriginal trails and early trade routes to Quebec City, Old Canada Road was traveled by Benedict Arnold and his army of 1,100 men in their failed 1775 quest to capture Quebec. By the mid-19th century the small villages along the route grew as the immigration of French Canadians blossomed and logging became a major industry in the region. This pristine wilderness also became a sportsman's paradise, attracting wealthy families from Boston, New York, and beyond. Today the Forks and West Forks cater to a new breed of sport as the center of white-water rafting on the Kennebec and Dead Rivers. The region is a major hub for snowmobiling, hunting, and hiking throughout the year. Enjoy the rich history of Maine’s Old Canada Road in 15 historic black-and-white postcards.

Victorian Era Treasures

Once the center of bolt manufacturing in the United States, Southington has been affectionately called Connecticut’s “City of Progress.” At the center of this progress was Amon Bradley, an industrialist and philanthropist whose family legacy remains intact inside the Barnes Museum. Beginning as a six-room Greek Revival–style home, the Barnes Museum was built in 1836 for Amon and Sylvia Bradley and was lived in by the family for 136 years. The opulent seventeen-room homestead remains fully staged with the family’s impressive collection of Victorian antiques and more than one thousand pressed-glass goblets. Author and museum curator Christina Volpe reveals their unique collection of Civil War letters, family diaries, photographs and other historic treasures.

Uniquely New Hampshire

New Hampshire has always been fiercely independent, and its history, museums and festivals reflect that trait. Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe broke baseball’s color barrier with the Nashua Dodgers in 1946, and Holman Stadium is now a stop on the Black Heritage Trail. Three of the state’s historic mansions—the Fells, the Castle in the Clouds and the Saint-Gaudens historic site—remain as impressive today as when they were built. Portsmouth’s historic homes give a portrait of life in colonial and Revolutionary times. From the New England Telephone Museum in Warner to the Exeter UFO Festival, the state has a wealth of history on display.

Kathleen D. Bailey and Sheila R. Bailey lead a trip through the past and present of the Granite State’s most memorable sites.

The Buckeye Presidents

Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding. These seven Ohio-born presidents led the nation through some of the most pivotal periods in US history.

Learn how each of them became president and how their time in the White House shaped the future of the country. Travel the Buckeye State and visit the museums, monuments and historic homes that tell their stories. From Canton to Freemont and Mentor to North Bend, Heather S. Cole is a guide to the places the Ohio presidents called home.

What goes bump in Boise?



Searching the darkness of the City of Trees reveals what lurks in the liminal spaces. Idaho’s capital city is dotted with haunted residences, hotels and penitentiaries where many still reside in death. Two youngsters lives were cut short, but their spirits never left their childhood homes. Strange specters prowl the foothills, including hooded figures seeking sacrifices. Strange objects patrol the skies. Spooks haunt local prison cells and frighten at a historic fort. Authors Mark Iverson and Jeff Wade collect ghoulish tales that have become local folklore, while setting the record straight. 

 “…more romance, tragedy and vigorous life than many a city a hundred times its size and ten times its age.” - Historian Hiram M. Chittenden  

Deep in the heart of Blackfoot country on the Upper Missouri River, trade relations opened cautiously in 1831. A series of trading posts and clashes followed. By 1846, Fort Benton had become the center of commerce with Indigenous tribes, including the Blackfoot who dubbed it “many houses to the South.” Drawing settlers from eastern states, the head of steamboat navigation became known as “the world’s innermost port.” As a result, the fort became a multicultural melting pot and home to the “Bloodiest Block in the West.” Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life dramatic sagas of a rapidly developing frontier, from vigilante X. Beidler to the Marias and Ophir Massacres.

The maritime history of Cape Ann, on the northern coast of Massachusetts, is filled with stories of heroism, adventure, and human endeavor.

The lighthouses and lifesaving stations surrounding Cape Ann since the late 18th century have served to protect and safeguard the area's mariners and major industries. Fishing, shipbuilding, and granite quarrying businesses all flourished under their watchful eyes. They provided artists with spectacular subject matter and attracted tourists from around the world to visit them. This book highlights the heroism and dedication of the lighthouse keepers and lifesaving surfmen who served. Cape Ann is famous for being the home of America's oldest seaport in Gloucester and America's most painted building, Motif No. 1, in Rockport.

Discover within these pages little-known facts about the USS Albany, the U.S. Navy's oldest commissioned warship, USS Constitution, and the WWII destroyer, USS Cassin Young.

The photographs in this exciting new volume illustrate the history of the Charlestown Navy Yard from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. Founded in 1800, the yard was oneof the first military shipyards in the United States.Charlestown Navy Yard celebrates the life of the yardthrough one hundred years of photographs, showing thedramatic changes that took place during the transition from wood to steel ships. Charlestown Navy Yard's history is preserved in these images, which include rare views of buildings past and present and snapshots of shipyard workers in the Ropewalk, on the ships, and in the Forge Shop where die-lock chain was developed.

200 images from the archives of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the National Park Service that tell the history of the Appalachian Trail in NY, NJ and CT.

Crossing through 14 states from Maine to Georgia, the Appalachian Trail enters New Jersey through the Delaware Water Gap, crosses New York's Hudson River, and rises over Connecticut's Lion's Head. The area is considered by some to be the pathways birthplace, for in 1923, just two years after Benton MacKaye originally proposed the trail, the first few miles specifically constructed for the Appalachian Trail were built by volunteers in New York's Harriman and Bear Mountain State Parks. These photographs and the corresponding narrative present a historical perspective on what it took to create the trail, including the thousands of volunteers and the arduous tasks they performed, those who lived along the trail before and during its creation, the many people who have enjoyed the trail through the years, and the original routes that are no longer part of the present-day Appalachian Trail.

Throughout Chicago, historic mansions built by legendary architects were the homes to characters just as great and whose impact is still felt today.

Chicago is known throughout the world for its architecture. Although many people are familiar with the city's skyscrapers and public buildings, they often overlook or are unaware of Chicago's mansions that are located throughout the city. These mansions represent Chicago's past and its future, and it can even be said that they are the very embodiment of Chicago and its architecture. These fashionable residences were built to make a statement, and what better way to have done this than to employ the leading architects of the time to design them. These architects included men such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Hobson Richardson, Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root. While the city's mansions are significant because of who built them, they are just as important because of who lived in them. Many of these mansions were built for Chicago's elite businessmen and captains of industry-men who represented old money, new money and big money. Just as important were the families of these men and the other residents who came to live in these mansions-for they left a legacy of their own that contributed to the city's history.

Lighthouses were built on the Hudson River in New York between 1826 to 1921 to help guide freight and passenger traffic. One of the most famous was the iconic Statue of Liberty. This fascinating history with photos will bring the time of traffic along the river alive.

Set against the backdrop of purple mountains, lush hillsides, and tidal wetlands, the lighthouses of the Hudson River were built between 1826 and 1921 to improve navigational safety on a river teeming with freight and passenger traffic. Unlike the towering beacons of the seacoasts, these river lighthouses were architecturally diverse, ranging from short conical towers to elaborate Victorian houses. Operated by men and women who at times risked and lost their lives in service of safe navigation, these beacons have overseen more than a century of extraordinary technological and social change. Of the dozens of historic lighthouses and beacons that once dotted the Hudson River, just eight remain, including the iconic Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor's great monument to freedom and immigration, which served as an official lighthouse between 1886 and 1902. Hudson River Lighthouses invites readers to explore these unique icons and their fascinating stories.

Historic Congressional Cemetery dates from the days when Washington, DC, was a burgeoning city on the edge of a malarial swamp.

The stones--sandstone tablets with colonial calligraphy, ornate Victorian statues, 20th-century art nouveau carvings, and contemporary markers in shapes as strange as picnic tables and upended cubes--are a time line of the city. The most distinctive stones are 171 cenotaphs; large cubes designed by Capitol architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe from the same sandstone used in the Capitol. They are found nowhere else. The men and women buried under those stones led lives of beauty, courage, struggle, cunning, leadership, and humor--in short, the stories of American history.