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.

This Belt Revivals edition features a new introduction by Patrick Nathan. 

Explore the story of a city under martial law during the Civil War

The day after Virginia’s secession in May 1861, Union troops marched from Washington to occupy its neighbor Alexandria. A former powerhouse in the slave trade, Alexandria was the first Confederate city to be occupied during the Civil War and governed under strict martial law. Overnight, this bustling urban town on the Potomac River transformed into a center of disease, death, and debauchery. Viewing all residents as potential threats regardless of allegiance, the military government resorted to heavy-handed actions to control its transient soldier population, counteract civilian opposition, combat waves of gunshot wounds and illness, and imprison those deemed disloyal to the Union cause.

Drawing upon true accounts of civilian and soldier experiences, historian Madeline Feierstein explores whether Union authorities kept order within the city or watched it fall into chaos. 

How Food Became a Point of Pride

For more than a century, hickory smoke has shaped the identity of Lexington, North Carolina. Long before food television and festivals, pit fires burned behind canvas tents and small-town joints, giving rise to what the world now knows as Lexington-style barbecue—slow-cooked pork, kissed by wood smoke, served with tomato-based dip and red slaw, passed down through generations of hardworking families.

Author Caleb Sink takes readers inside the true heart of North Carolina barbecue history, tracing the evolution of Lexington-style barbecue from its earliest pioneers to the legendary restaurants and pitmasters who carried the tradition forward. Learn the human story behind the pits—of families like the Monks, Conrads, and Stameys, and of countless unnamed workers whose labor built a culinary legacy.

Get a place at the table for a cultural history of barbecue in Lexington NC, exploring how a simple sandwich became a point of civic pride, a tourist destination, and a symbol of resilience. Along the way, readers encounter friendly rivalries, vanishing icons, presidential visits, and the annual Lexington Barbecue Festival that draws over 100,000 visitors each year.

Wandering shades, ghost towns, and a phantom train

The Land of Enchantment lives up to its name when it comes to Route 66—and stories of the paranormal. With not one but two paths to explore, the Mother Road winds through New Mexico's mountains and deserts, past ghost towns and thriving cities, and boasts more than its fair share of haunts.

Budville, once a thriving hub and stopover between Albuquerque and Grants, now lies deserted, except, perhaps, for the spirit of the last person to call it home. The whistle of a phantom train can sometimes be heard chugging alongside the highway in Tucumcari, and in Glenrio, an abandoned town that straddles the New Mexico–Texas border, the spirit of a murder victim is rumored to inhabit one of the last buildings standing.

Even the New Mexico Mining Museum plays host to the spirits of miners who once worked in the uranium capital of the world, and in Gallup, the Hotel El Rancho boasts not just Hollywood credentials but tales of otherworldly encounters.

Author Sundee Perkins explores the spooky twists and turns of New Mexico’s Route 66.

An in-depth look at the doomed U.S. Army Air Force attack on Romanian oil fields vital to Hitler's success.

In 1943, the Allied powers were grasping for anything to undercut Hitler's power and relieve his relentless pressure on the Red Army, which had already suffered a staggering 11 million casualties. The U.S. Army Air Force planned Operation Tidal Wave, which would take off from Benghazi, Libya, fly low and maintain complete radio silence to escape Axis observation, and bomb Hitler's vital oil fields in Ploesti, Romania. On August 1, 177 B-24 bombers prepared to take off. Fourteen hours later, only 88 B-24s returned.

Operation Tidal Wave was a massive strategic defeat. However, it proved the mettle of the USAAF and provided a rallying point for the public. Author William R. Bradle offers the definitive account of this doomed operation: the strengths, weaknesses, heroism, and failings and takes readers into the thick of the action with thrilling accounts from many of the crews.

Praise for The Daring World War II Raid on Ploesti

"This account of the Ploesti mission does an admirable job of laying out the planning, personalities, and attendant conflicts among many participants, the mistakes made and losses inflicted by the Germans and Romanians. An eminently readable story that further emphasizes and demonstrates the mettle of the Greatest Generation." —New York Journal of Books

A complicated friendship blooms during a fated meeting in northern Michigan between two nineteenth-century women writers.

In the mid-1830s, the author Anna Brownell Jameson was called from Britain to Canada to see her husband. Before she returned back home, she embarked on a trip around the Great Lakes to gather material for a book on the “plight of the Indian woman.”

In a remarkable interaction on Mackinac Island, where the current-day lower peninsula of Michigan meets the upper peninsula, she met Jane Johnston Schoolcraft—an Ojibwe American poet and translator married to the geologist Henry Schoolcraft, who was working as an Indian agent for the United States government. The two women talked extensively, bonding over their interests and plights, and sharing private demons.

After their meeting, Anna continued to gain recognition for her writing and become a larger part of the literary scene in Britain and the Continent, entangling herself in the affairs of the likes of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Ottilie von Goethe, Lady Byron, and Ada Lovelace. Jane became sicker and less able to work.

In Andrew Wittkop’s sensitive, subtle retelling, complete with Anna's sketches and other historical images, the nuances of the relationship between the two women reveal much about the complicated nature of connection and disconnection and Anna’s blindnesses and missed opportunities. This inventive debut opens a window on two under-remembered writers.