Fiction

Discover your Victorian birthday flower and poem and keep track of friends and family occasions in this lovely gift hardback historic reproduction.

This reproduction of a Victorian birthday reminder book entwines flowers and their emblems with great poetry. Three hundred and sixty-five color engravings grace this little book—which is perfect for keeping track of birthdays or anniversaries. Each day of the year is beautifully illustrated with a flower and a quote from a poem.

Discover the Signers in this gift format hardcover with lovely illustrations.

This small elegant hardcover, is a companion to Applewood Books's bestselling Constitution of the United States of America and features short biographies and commissioned line portraits of each of the signers of the US Constitution.

O. Henry’s classic 1905 Christmas story in an elegant gift hardback with illustrations. A treasure for readers of any age.

This sentimental holiday classic follows a young married couple and the sacrifices made to purchase cherished gifts for each other only to discover the true gift of Christmas is not found in objects but in their own devoted love. 

The Applewood Holiday Classics series presents some of the most beloved holiday short stories in a warm, elegant hardback edition with attractive illustrations. Perfect as a cherished seasonal book or a holiday gift for any occasion.

Includes some 100 observations about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-as well as art and culture-from the author of the Declaration of Independence.

This hilarious, touching debut novel by Aaron Foley, author of How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass, follows three Black gay millennial men looking for love, friendship, and professional success in the Motor City. 

Suddenly jobless and single after a devastating layoff and a breakup with his cheating ex, advertising copywriter Dominick Gibson flees his life in Hell's Kitchen to try and get back on track in his hometown of Detroit. He’s got one objective — exit the shallow dating pool ASAP and get married by thirty-five — and the deadline’s approaching fast.

Meanwhile, Dom's best friend, Troy Clements, an idealistic teacher who never left Michigan, finds himself at odds with all the men in his life: a troubled boyfriend he's desperate to hold onto, a perpetually dissatisfied father, and his other friend, Remy Patton. Remy, a rags-to-riches real estate agent known as “Mr. Detroit,” has his own problems — namely choosing between making it work with a long-distance lover or settling for a local Mr. Right Now who’s not quite Mr. Right. And when a high-stakes real estate deal threatens to blow up his friendship with Troy, the three men have to figure out how to navigate the pitfalls of friendship and a city that seems to be changing overnight.

Full of unforgettable characters, Boys Come First is about the trials and tribulations of real friendship, but also about the highlights and hiccups —late nights at the wine bar, awkward Grindr hookups, workplace microaggressions, situationships, frenemies, family drama, and of course, the group chat — that define Black, gay, millennial life in today’s Detroit.

In this comedic novel set in New Orleans in the late 1980s, an inveterate lottery player will risk everything—except gainful employment—to strike it rich. Filled with local-flavored humor, it features engaging, unforgettable characters and a unique plot that offers insights into fate, faith, and the vagaries of life. 

A history of the region as told through its folklore, music, and legends. Entertaining, informative, appealing, charming, and a thoroughly compelling read from first page to last.--Midwest Book Review

America's first superheroes lived in the Midwest. There was Nanabozho, the Ojibway man-god who conquered the King of Fish, took control of the North Wind, and inspired Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. Paul Bunyan, the larger-than-life North Woods lumberjack, created Minnesota's 10,000 lakes with his giant footsteps. More recently, Pittsburgh steelworker Joe Magerac squeezed out rails between his fingers, and Rosie the Riveter churned out the planes that won the world's most terrible war. In Folktales and Legends of the Middle West, Edward McClelland collects these stories and more, offering a magical history of the region and some of its larger-than-life characters. Readers will encounter all sorts of creatures here, including:

- Nain Rouge: the Demon that Haunts Detroit

- Peg Leg Joe and the songs of the Underground Railroad

- Mike Fink and the Pirates of Ohio

- The Hodag, the terror of Wisconsin's North Woods

- Bessie, the Lake Erie Monster.

By Edward McClelland (How to Speak Midwestern) and with gorgeous black and white illustrations by David Wilson, it's a wonderful look at the magical tales and folk traditions informing the American Midwest.

A book with something for every Midwesterner.

A new collection from a trailblazing writer of science fiction. Part of Belt's Revival Series and with an introduction by Brad Ricca.

Science fiction has historically been seen as a man's game, but from the very beginning, women have made their indelible mark on the genre. Alongside sci-fi pioneers like Mary Shelley and C. L. Moore, we should now add Clare Winger Harris, whose pulp stories in the early twentieth century paved the way for modern woman sci-fi writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.

In Harris's world, you'll find gigantic insects, martians looking to steal Earth's water, and time travel to ancient Rome. Scholar Brad Ricca assembles ten of Harris's greatest short stories here, including "The Fifth Dimension," "The Fate of the Poseidonia," "The Menace of Mars," and "The Vibrometer." Their ideas are as fresh today as when Harris originally wrote them a century ago.

A wonderful collection by a little-known master of science fiction, this book will hold interest for feminist readers and scholars of sci-fi alike.

First published in 1896, this unsung masterpiece of American literature details the rise and fall of a Methodist minister in upstate New York. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Ruth Graham.

The Damnation of Theron Ware is the story of a young pastor who comes to a small town in the Adirondacks to spread the gospel. Once he gets there, his congregation slowly leads him down a path of secular enlightenment, encouraging him to question the very same scripture he has devoted his life to. Through new friends, he has encounters beautiful art and music and gains new insights into the world of Darwinian science. But when he finds himself carried away by these fresh new experiences, where they lead him is not at all what he expected.

A forerunner of the classic naturalistic novels of the early twentieth century, Harold Frederic's work is considered one of the great American novels of his time, a book that belongs on the same shelf with Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser.

Published one year after Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson's greatest novel offers a bleak portrait of luck and modernization in middle America. Part of Belt's Revivals Series and with a new introduction by John Lingan, author of Homeplace.

After a childhood living in poverty, Hugh McVey moves from Missouri to the agrarian town of Bidwell, Ohio, hoping to become an inventor. There, he develops a mechanical cabbage planter to ease the burden of famers, but an investor in town exploits his product and it eventually fails. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a millionaire and transforms Bidwell into a center of manufacturing. McVey, perennially lonely and ruminative, eventually meets Clara Butterworth, who attends college at nearby Ohio State and is perennially harassed by her potential suitors. But McVey is plagued by the search for love in a new America overrun by lifeless machines. Published in 1920, Poor White has a modernist sensibility and a realist attention to everyday life but also an eerily contemporary resonance.

A perfect distillation of how industrialization changed small-town America, Poor White is a little-known classic of American literature from the author H. L. Mencken dubbed America's Most Distinctive Novelist.

From the best-selling author of Giant and So Big, a sweeping look at the lives of three generations of women on Chicago's South Side. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Kathleen Rooney (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).First published in 1921, Edna Ferber's The Girls revolves around the three Charlottes of the Thrift family--Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie's niece Charley. All single old maids, as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago's growing middle class in the early twentieth century. With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice. Told through Ferber's assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.

This masterpiece of naturalism offers an unblinking portrait of the American Midwest during a time of intense change. Part of Belt's Revivals Series and with a new introduction by Brianne Jacquette.

Originally published in 1891, Main-Travelled Roads includes 11 short stories set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or the region of America Hamlin Garland called the Middle Border. Depicting an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty, Garland's radical, realist stories--written in a mode he called veritism--refute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest. Unrelenting, yet strangely hopeful in its view of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful.

An intriguing look at an era of intense change, Main-Travelled Roads was Garland's first major success, a little-known classic of American literature and the Midwest.

Part of Belt's Revivals Series and an undisputed classic of African American literature. With a new introduction by Wiley Cash (When Ghosts Come Home).

On November 10, 1898, a mob of 400 people rampaged through the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina, killing as many as 60 citizens, burning down the newspaper office, overthrowing the newly elected leaders, and installing a new white supremacist government. In a violent reaction prompted by the increasing political powers African Americans in the town were gaining during Reconstruction, the Wilmington Race Riots--also known as the Wilmington Insurrection and the Wilmington Massacre--was the only successful coup d'etat on American soil.

The Marrow of Tradition is a fictionalized account of this important, under-studied event. Charles W. Chesnutt, an African American writer from North Carolina who lived in Cleveland as an adult and was the first black professional writer in the nation, narrates the story of Wellington North Carolina through William Miller, a black doctor, and his wife, Janet, who is both black and the unclaimed daughter of a prominent white businessman. Along with dozens of other characters, including a black domestic servant whose speech is rendered in vernacular dialect, they create a composite of Reconstruction and the violent racial politics created in backlash. The novel is also a masterful work of art that stands on its own: gripping, nuanced, and wholly original.

An unsung American classic with startling resonance for America's racial issues today.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923, One of Ours is the story of Claude Wheeler, the son of a Nebraska farmer. As a young man, Claude is dissatisfied with Nebraska farm like as well as his marriage to a childhood friend, desperate for a more cosmopolitan life. When America joins the Great War, Claude decides to enlist, where he finds excitement and fulfillment--as well as tragedy--on the battlefield.

One of Ours was considered a failure by some male critics of the day: H. L. Mencken said it drops to the level of a serial in the Ladies' Home Journal, fought out not in France, but on a Hollywood movie-lot, and Ernest Hemingway panned Cather for not having experienced the front-line herself.

However, the Pulitzer committee considered it the greatest novel of the year, and this accessible, dramatic novel sold many more copies than Cather's more famous ones, O, Pioneers! and My Antonia.

William Faulkner’s short story “The Bear” was first published in the May 9, 1942 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.  The piece—considered one of the best short stories of the twentieth century—is a coming-of-age tale that weaves together themes of family, race, and the taming of the wilderness, as the young main character learns to hunt and track the huge bear known as Old Ben. 

This short work in an elegant hardback gift edition is part of Applewood’s “American Roots,” series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers and thinkers.

A Taste of the New Orleans supernatural

A bloody romp through the French Quarter, including over 30 delectable recipes by Chef Chris Dunn

New Orleans is filled with mysteries and legends. Ghosts that haunt our city, rougarou (a werewolf-like creature that dwells in the swamps), and vampires. Maidens who were sent from France in 1721 to help colonize the city but were mysteriously turned to vampires on the ship before their arrival. There are also witches—some with remedies and some with curses. They say New Orleans is a melting pot of cultures. If one delves deep into this melting pot, they may just find the supernatural pulling them in deeper still until the food tastes like their favorite memories of home cooking, the unexpected becomes commonplace, and the sharp pain on their neck has them lusting and longing for their lover. Mosquito–Southern Vampires, originally released one chapter at a time as a penny dreadful, is a melting pot of the supernatural. To help create an immersive, mystical experience, at the end of each chapter is a recipe by Chef Chris Dunn from the New Orleans Vampire Café or the Vampire Apothecary, both located in the mysterious beating heart of the old French Quarter.

Marita Woywod Crandle, author and historian, has a passion for historical fiction. She has written several history books as research for her historical fiction work, including New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend and Josie Arlington’s Storyville: The Life and Times of a New Orleans Madame. Crandle also owns several vampire-themed businesses in the New Orleans French Quarter, including Boutique du Vampyre, and two restaurants, The New Orleans Vampire Café and Boutique du Vampyre’s Apothecary. Both restaurants share the same executive chef, Chef Chris Dunn, who offers many of his recipes in this book. Chef Chris creates meals that are decadently delicious, with elegant presentation—the way a vampire would host his mortal guests.

As a season for family, feasting, gifts, and giving, Christmastime brings with it a host of traditions, beliefs, and stories. With an impressive ensemble of award-winning writers, including Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, critically acclaimed Olympia Vernon, and Guggenheim Fellow Elizabeth Spencer, the 11 stories in this anthology offer a range of poignant ruminations on the Christmas season. From the touching account of a handyman's enduring gift to a wealthy child to a father's reconciliation with his estranged, troubled daughter and a lonely judge's attempt to open his heart to his neighbors, this collection is a celebration of family, love, and understanding. With maturity and depth, the stories in this anthology evoke strong emotions in a way only the finest literature can. Accompanied by striking watercolor illustrations, these Southern Christmas tales will be sure to captivate generations to come.

“A deliriously creative tour-de-force … a breathtakingly imaginative and enjoyable novel." (Booklist, starred review)

It begins with a gunshot: a student's public suicide on a university campus. The blast radius of this tragic explosion expands to encompass 50 years of our history and two of the grandest characters in recent American fiction: Simon Magnus, a comic-book writer who transfigured popular culture turned gender activist who transfigures the English language, and Ash del Greco, an online occultist who by the age of 20 has seen to the end of everything and wants desperately to prove the superiority of mind over matter. With a decades-spanning but tightly-knit plot, written in an expansive style, Major Arcana canvasses America’s inner life and moral history from coast to coast and across two generations in a delirious saga about art, magic, love, and death. 

Originally serialized on the author’s Substack newsletter, Major Arcana is a novel about the transformative power of popular culture. With a nod to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and for fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Pistelli reimagines the expansive novel for the 21st century. 

From a judge who must decide which parent will get custody of a young boy at Christmas in �The Christmas Visitation,� to a little girl who only wants a crayon lipstick as her gift in the title story, Mr. Toner�s ten short stories depict times when love rises above life�s obstacles to give new meaning to Christmas.

Ally, an aspiring actress, is about to give up on getting her big break. But then, after another disappointing audition, a charismatic scene partner says he has a fun gig for her. Soon, Ally is making easy money working for a guerrilla-marketing outfit called The Set Up. Now she’s getting lots of practice pretending to be someone she’s not—but each job seems more suspicious than the last.

Marshall is a washed-up journalist, teaching a summer class at the university and struggling to keep his students (and himself) focused on his planned lessons. Someone has been leaving copies of his old articles on his lectern every morning, forcing him to revisit the story of a decades-old tragedy and mistakes he’s made … both personal and professional.

Web, a quirky loner, has always been ready to pick up and go at a moment’s notice. In fact, he’s very good at not being noticed, at least not unless he wants to be. That’s been helpful in his years working for the Set Up, but the new hire’s questions are starting to make Web feel less confident about his work as a con man.

What is the Set Up, and who’s playing whom? The search for answers leads Ally, Web, and Marshall from the glitz of the Strip to the grit of Sin City’s strip-mall suburbs, and from an abandoned Unification compound to a deadly bar mitzvah. As their paths converge, this unlikely trio uncover the shadowy power dynamics and shifting personalities that shape a city. 

From the best-selling author of Giant and So Big, a sweeping look at the lives of three generations of women on Chicago's South Side. Part of Belt's Revivals series and with a new introduction by Kathleen Rooney (Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk).First published in 1921, Edna Ferber's The Girls revolves around the three Charlottes of the Thrift family--Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie's niece Charley. All single old maids, as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago's growing middle class in the early twentieth century. With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice. Told through Ferber's assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, this rediscovered American classic deserves a spot on the shelf next to other great Chicago novels like Sister Carrie and The Adventures of Augie March.