Fiction

A Touching Tribute to a Beloved Pet from America’s Foremost Playwright

Renowned playwright Eugene O’Neill composed this work in 1940 to comfort his wife about the death of their Dalmatian, Blemie. Better known for his despairing and pessimistic dramas, O’Neill’s touching piece, written in the voice of the dying pet, is somehow uplifting and joyous in its touching memory of a life shared between owner and animal. It is sure to comfort anyone experiencing the loss of a beloved, furry member of the family. 

This short work is part of Applewood’s American Roots series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers. 

“There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times.”

Originally part of The Sketch Books of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which also included the famous stories, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Old Christmas is a tale from iconic early American author Washington Irving. The narrative depicts Irving’s Christmas Eve trip by stagecoach to Yorkshire in England, and the delightful holiday games and rituals he shared with his hosts at their home, Bracebridge Hall. Illustrated by famed artist Randolph Caldecott, this edition will be sure to inspire holiday cheer in anyone. 

The Beloved American Classic in an Elegant Gift Edition 

One of the most popular pieces of American fiction is Washington Irving’s historic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Originally published in 1820 in Irving’s short story collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, the story is set amongst the lush backdrop of New York’s Hudson River valley after the American Revolution. Rich in Dutch culture, regional history and ghostly encounters, this landmark is published in a hardback gift edition. Re-discover the origins of two unforgettable characters, schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, and celebrate the fall season with a timeless American short story. 

In these classic, fascinating, and often terrifying tales--Mardi Gras Indians, Baby Dolls, the Zulu King, Loup Garou, and the headless horseman of Natchitoches--all share the stage. Ghost stories from around Louisiana mingle with the true horrors of figures such as the infamous New Orleans Axeman. Learn stories of the Creoles and Cajuns, Southern church traditions, Voodoo rituals, hexes, and charms.  Gumbo Ya-Ya, everybody talks at once, expresses the tension between refinement and profanity, the sacred and the sensual--which defines Louisiana culture to this day. This 80th Anniversary Pelican Publishing unabridged edition's contents are wholly true to the 1945 original edition. First commissioned as a project of the Works Progress Administration Louisiana Writers' Program, it has stood the test of time and is a book beloved by historians, locals, and visitors.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Frightening Tale of a Demonic Cat and a Tormented Murderer in an Elegant Hardback Gift Edition

This macabre short story from the father of American horror fiction was first published in 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post. The classic narratives features a murderer tormented by guilt over his terrible deeds and a cat who may be out for revenge. The narrator’s admission that much of his bad behavior and deranged thinking is the result of alcohol is possibly autobiographical, as Poe himself struggled with alcoholism throughout his life.

This short work is part of Applewood’s “American Roots,” series, featuring tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers and thinkers. 

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.

“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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1921 novel about a young woman's close encounter with her social striving dreams, now republished in a gorgeous new edition. 

Alice Adams is young and pretty, but is struggling to improve her station. Her world revolves around dances put on by richer girls, for which she ingeniously strives to turn her less fashionable dress into something more fashionable and explain away the embarrassing behavior of her younger brother. Money structures this unnamed small town in the Midwest, but Alice’s father has never made much of himself, thus foiling her mother’s constant desire to see Alice and the rest of the family better situated. Will Alice’s future prospects improve when finally Mr. Adams decides to go into business for himself making glue? Will her latest handsome, kind suitor stay around long enough for an engagement? Or will the pernicious forces of greed, gossip, and in 1920s America bring them all down?  

Booth Tarkington’s novel was published when his fame was at its height: Tarkington was considered the preeminent American novelist of the day, a celebrity who would also serve a term representing his native Indiana in Congress. Alice Adams was similarly famous for decades after its publication; the 1935 movie starring Katherine Hepburn based on the novel was nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards. Today, this lauded chronicler of the Midwest is lesser read but no less fascinating, and his novels as worthy, suspenseful, and poignant as they were a century ago.

A coming-of-age story of two sisters living in their grandmother’s boarding house in a small Ohio town just before the first world war and the characters who filter in and out of the house and their lives.

For teenager Linda Shirley, her residence in a family boarding house is a fact to be hidden, ignored, and, eventually, escaped. She aims for a better life and tries desperately to win the approval of the town’s elite, particularly the popular Courtenay Stall, over whom she pines. Her younger sister, Dorrie, is a dreamer who not only tolerates but often delights in the colorful guests of the house, from the reluctantly retired theater troupers to the glamorous young woman of ill-repute, the bed-bound intellectual in the attic to the circus snake charmer who keeps her “babies” in ill-secured boxes under her bed.

Dawn Powell once said, “satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.” She Walks in Beauty is a satire in the most insightful sense, showing the specific clarity and cloudiness of two very different sisters’ worldviews. This Belt Revivals edition includes a new introduction by critic Ilana Masad.

First published in 1824, Tales of a Traveller included some of Washington Irving's most Gothic stories, set throughout Europe rather than in the familiar haunted precincts of the Hudson River Valley.

Years before Edgar Allen Poe began his literary career, Irving was already in the business of scaring readers silly. Read them... if you dare!

A heart warming old-fashioned Christmas tale from the beloved author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, in an elegant hardback edition.

Kate is a young English girl tragically orphaned and left with a large inheritance. Sent to America to live with her extended family, Kate must choose between various uncles and their families to join. Though each is eager for her to choose them, Kate’s choice comes to fruition at Christmas, when Kate surprises everyone with her decision. In his classic tale, Kate embraces the spirit of Christmas to reveal the true meaning of family.

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.

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.

Melville’s Sumptuous Tribute to a New England Culinary Classic

Chowder is chapter fifteen from one of the greatest works of American literature, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. It is so beautifully written, so descriptive and colorful, one can virtually smell the fishy, salt air and picture the warm interior of the Try Pots Inn. Curl up on a cold evening and taste the mouthwatering chowders of Nantucket’s most famous fictional landmark in this homage to New England’s classic dish.

This short work is part of Applewood’s American Roots series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers.