New & Coming Soon

There are as many versions of Greater Cincinnati as there are residents of the region. That’s roughly two million different perceptions of the city.

In Cincinnati in 50 Maps, editor Nick Swartsell and cartographer Andy Woodruff present over fifty ways of looking at the Queen City, from its early roadways and Indigenous earthworks to its shifting neighborhood borders. A visualization of relative population density can tell one story, and one showing where jobs are clustered tells another. New maps with up-to-date data sit beside historical maps that show things like exactly how communities were razed to make room for highways. Broken up into five sections—Mapping the Past, the Shape of Cincinnati, Communities and Culture, Getting Around, and Health and Environment—these visual representations show both the commonalities and the contradictions of an ever-changing American city.

These maps present reported statistics in new ways, and they represent the things that make Cincinnati the unique place that residents know and love: Find every place you can get Cincinnati chili, the location of every public stairway, and where the infamous Cincy traffic is worst.

Anyone who calls or ever called Cincinnati home will find something familiar, something surprising, and something revealing in this glossy, full-color volume.

With unexpected twists and compelling characters, Don’t Feed the Lion explores how young people grapple with antisemitism, prejudice, allyship, and the courage to speak up.

"This book . . . gives kids the tools to recognize and stand up to hate.” —Jake Tapper, CNN Anchor and New York Times Best-Selling Author

Annie and Theo Kaplan have a family ritual: every Friday night they celebrate Shabbat with their energetic, immigrant grandparents. But this Shabbat, which happens to fall on Annie’s eleventh birthday, isn’t like the others. Thirteen-year-old Theo’s soccer hero—Wes Mitchell—has posted an antisemitic message that quickly goes viral, leaving his parents disgusted, his sister enraged, and Theo himself clobbered by a torrent of confusion, anger, sadness, and a deep desire to just ignore it. 

Antisemitism quickly affects the entire Kaplan family in various ways. Theo’s teammates think Mitchell’s comments were no big deal, and Theo notices an uptick in anti-Jewish commentary around school. A rare act of rebellion draws Annie into the fray, and a new classmate shows that ignoring pain is no way to get through it.

Don’t Feed the Lion asks readers of all backgrounds: What will you do when it’s your turn to choose?

This full-color book of maps, one of Belt Publishing’s 50 Maps Series, presents the capital and biggest city in Ohio like you’ve never seen it before. 

Columbus is a place perpetually in search of an identity. Once called a “cow town,” it is now a sprawling metropolitan area and home to the behemoth Ohio State University. How can one best represent the city, in all its complications and contradictions? 

One way is through maps, as editor Brent Warren and cartographer Vicky Johnson-Dahl explore here. These fifty-plus maps show things that are inherently Columbus, from ComFest to the present and former locations of the city’s iconic arches. But you will also find maps that offer surprising ways of looking at the city, whether charting immigrant populations, LGBTQ+ landmarks, or mass transit that was never actually built. Divided into four sections—Situating the City, Getting to Know the City, Getting Around, and People and Places—Columbus in 50 Maps will excite current, former, and future Columbusites as well as people with an interest in the region or creative urban cartography.

In the summer of 2014, a strange thing happened to one of the largest freshwater bodies on the planet: Lake Erie’s western shore turned bright green with toxic algae that could have killed 400,000 Ohioans. Stranger still, it was kind of Patrick Wensink’s fault. Okay, partially his fault, but also to blame was industrial corn farming, greenhouse gasses, the Worst Road In America, his attraction to toxic relationships, Richard Nixon, Charles Dickens, cyanobacteria, high school bullies, and, most importantly, the untold history of the Great Black Swamp: a large swatch of what is now Ohio and Indiana that was once a dangerous, malaria-ridden wetland.

Toxic green algae has become a global problem. While the scientific community scrambles to find a solution, Wensink discovers that the answer might be hiding in his former home, a million acres of table-flat farmland so desolate that even other Ohioans look down upon it.

Great Black Swamp: Toxic Algae, Toxic Relationships, and the Most Interesting Place in America that Nobody’s Ever Heard Of mixes ecological reporting, Midwestern history, and memoir. As Wensink travels through Northwest Ohio, he tells us about his childhood there, his failing marriage, American history, Lake Erie, and the hopeful ecological interventions scientists are performing in the former Great Black Swamp. 

Remembering two palaces of retail

For generations, Scranton’s two big department stores, The Globe Store and Oppenheim’s Scranton Dry Goods Company, affectionately known as “the Dry,” dominated retail in the Electric City. Facing each other on Wyoming Avenue, they created special memories for those who walked their sales floors with attractive displays, special events, community service and elaborate Christmas decorations. Many fondly recall the steamship round of beef carved to order at The Globe’s Charl-Mont Restaurant or waving to customers passing by on the escalator from the Dry’s mezzanine Tea Room. Together, the two stores brought the best the world had to offer to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Join Scranton-area native Daniel J. Packer Jr. and step through the iconic revolving doors into a bygone era of shopping in grand style.

Discover the South's Most Notorious Murders, Mysteries, and Criminal Masterminds

Journey from Texas to Virginia in this gripping collection of haunting criminal cases. Follow a relentless serial killer as he leaves a bloody trail across Louisiana and beyond, witness a cunning lonely-hearts swindler terrorize Texas, and uncover Arkansas's bizarre wave of strychnine poisonings that baffled investigators. Experience the supernatural when a West Virginia murder is revealed through dreams and meet a one-armed conjure-man whose murder-for-hire schemes shocked North Carolina.

Watch forensic science evolve as crimefighters expand their arsenal of detection tools in this compelling tour of the South's most notorious crimes, where fact proves stranger than fiction.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist’s eye to the sinister South and its defining—and quirky—crime stories.

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder. 

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

Possessed with a spirit of optimism and an innate gift for retailing savvy, entrepreneur William T. Grant revolutionized the nation’s retailing industry with the 1906 debut of his W.T. Grant Company department store in Lynn, Massachusetts. Taking aim at the lucrative yet untapped middle ground between the discount five-and-dime variety stores and traditional department stores of the era, he built a well-deserved reputation as the store “Known for Values.” Grants quickly became one of the nation’s fastest-growing and most beloved department store chains, encompassing 1,238 stores in forty-six states at its height in 1972. While the Grants stores are now just a fond memory, the legacy of William T. Grant continues to be remembered today, along with the vibrant philanthropic nonprofit William T. Grant Foundation, which he started in 1936.

A Tale of Two Foes

After the Battle of Monmouth Court House, in June 1778, the Revolutionary War in Monmouth County devolved into skirmishes between local militias and British Loyalists. Chief among these warring factions were revered rebel hero Captain Joshua Huddy and his fierce rival, a runaway enslaved Black man called Colonel Tye, who fought for the British. Attempting to bring the captured Huddy to prison, Tye was killed in battle, and when Loyalists murdered Huddy without benefit of trial two years later, the resulting international outrage jeopardized Benjamin Franklin’s Paris peace treaty negotiations. Only when Marie Antoinette pleaded with George Washington to stop the retaliatory hanging of a young British lieutenant did the peace talks resume.

Author Rick Geffken reveals the stories of these two obscure enemies who died and rose to fame for their beliefs in independence.

Hoboken holds a unique place in American history that no city its size can match.

Originally an outpost of the Dutch empire, it grew into a hub of the Industrial Revolution, becoming synonymous with steam-powered ships and trains, the zipper and even Tootsie Rolls. Over the years, the city was home to some of the nation’s wealthiest and most notable people, including John Jacob Astor and Frank Sinatra, as well as to waterfront shacks and tenements filled with destitute immigrants. When hard times hit, industry and innovation vanished, leaving Hoboken a dilapidated factory town. But it recovered to become a bohemian enclave and a leader in urban renewal.

Join author and journalist Joseph Lauro as he traces the city’s remarkable past.

Haunted Islands of San Francisco Bay: Ghosts, Crime, and Dark Histories

Alcatraz, Alameda, Mare Island, Angel Island, Yerba Buena, and Treasure Island loom out of the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. Even when they aren’t shrouded in mist, the islands are haunted by a past swirling with criminal violence, fatal epidemic, environmental disaster, and explosive sabotage. From an infernal duel on Angel Island to the cursed cells of Alcatraz and the Old 84 naval prison, Jeff Dwyer steers adventurous readers through a haunted history full of phantom ships and open graves. 

Fires were a scourge in nineteenth-century New York, destroying personal property, prominent buildings and, in many cases, a sense of community. In Madison County, fires changed the community, included the mysterious burning of the Madison County Courthouse, the complete loss of business districts in both Canastota and Hamilton and the arsonist who terrorized Cazenovia for nearly five years. Fires destroyed the historic Gerrit Smith Mansion in Peterboro, the Munnsville Plow Company and Duffy-Mott in Bouckville, drastically affecting the future of the county. Madison County historian Matthew Urtz examines the fires, their causes and the economic and psychological impact they had on this peaceful community.

New paperback edition from Pelican Publishing!

"Robert Tallant speaks with authority . . ."

—New York Times

"Straightforward handling of sensational

times and tricksters, of the cult of voodooism in all its manifestations. From its first known appearances in New Orleans of 200 years ago, here are the . . . rites and dances, the cures, charms and gris-gris. Here were the witchdoctors and queens, and in particular Doctor John . . . and Marie Laveau.”

—Kirkus Reviews

"Much nonsense has been written about voodoo in New Orleans. . . . Here is a truthful and definitive picture."

—Lyle Saxon

The word “voodoo” elicits reactions from fear to fascination; thoughts of pins stuck in dolls, hexes, and strange rites immediately come to mind. But few people know the true origin of voodooism or anything about its practice in America, particularly New Orleans. This examination of voodoo rites and beliefs is sure to fascinate every reader.

Originally published in 1946, this intriguing book examines the rites and beliefs associated with voodoo through the legends of the art—its charms, trances, rituals, and difficult-to-explain occurrences.

Robert Tallant was one of Louisiana’s best-known authors. Born in New Orleans in 1909, he attended the city’s local public schools. Before “drifting” into writing, Tallant worked as an advertising copywriter, a bank teller, and a clerk. It was his friendship with Lyle Saxon that led Tallant to his position as editor on the Louisiana WPA Writers’ Project during the 1930s and 1940s. In that position, he coauthored Gumbo Ya-Ya: Folk Tales of Louisiana with Lyle Saxon and Edward Dreyer.

By 1948, Tallant’s career had launched, and over the next eleven years he produced eight novels, six full-length works of nonfiction, and numerous short stories and articles on subjects of local interest. He is also known to have corresponded with, as well as applied to, the Julius Rosenwald Fund for a fellowship in creative writing. During the last years of his life, he was a lecturer in English at Newcomb College as well as a reporter for the New Orleans Item. Robert Tallant died in 1957.

A boy from the swamp, content with a simple existence, is encouraged by a mysterious alligator to explore another side of life.

Although the boy is reluctant to trust his strange new friend, a curious fascination compels him to accept the invitation. He ventures beyond the confines of his quiet swamp, learning much about the outside world and even more about himself.

There is a chef who loves to cook, and gumbo is on the menu!

Sing, clap, and spell along in this Louisiana twist on the classic B-I-N-G-O song.

With pots bubbling and aromas swirling, this catchy read-aloud serves up a flavorful helping of Louisiana culture, filled with rhythm, rhyme, and joyful repetition: G-U-M-B-O!

When it comes to exploring the world of these forest animals, bedtime is just the beginning.

Nighttime Ones is a children’s book for the soon-to-be-slumbering senses. From tracing the camouflaged numerals that correspond to the beautiful illustrations of woodland creatures to the pleasant rhyming text full of bedtime vocabulary, it is an adventure that can slip seamlessly into sleep. For those night owlets in the audience begging to stay up just a little longer, there are one hundred seek and find insects hidden throughout the story.

Horry County, located in Northeastern South Carolina, traces its modern-day boundaries to 1785, when it was known as “Kingston County.” It had previously been included in several colonial parishes and jurisdictions.

In 1801, the area was renamed the “Horry District” for Brig. Gen. Peter Horry, who served in the Revolutionary War. The swampy and forested region gained its present moniker in 1868 and is divided from inland South Carolina by the Little Pee Dee River. Nicknamed “The Independent Republic of Horry,” though contemporary historians question the legitimacy of this sobriquet, Horry County possesses a diverse heritage. For instance, Conway, which sits along the Waccamaw River, is known for its lumber heritage, while Myrtle Beach is noted for being a nationally known tourist destination. Additionally, Horry County’s rural communities have made invaluable contributions to American agriculture and the tobacco trade. Comprehensively, all these elements allow Horry County to hold a unique ambience special to South Carolina’s culture. 

Ryan A. McRae, a historian, graduate of Coastal Carolina University, and area resident with family ties to Myrtle Beach, chronicles Horry County’s past with images he captured or collected himself, and through photographs belonging to museums and community members alike. 

Venice’s remarkable history covers its growth as an agricultural community in the nascent days of the Florida land market expansion with developers and promoters such as Bertha Honoré Palmer and Dr. Fred Albee.

Its growth seemed assured when the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers decided to develop it as a planned community to be a vacation spot and retirement destination. The Great Depression dashed those plans, and the city teetered on the edge of becoming a historical footnote until it was saved by two key occurrences. The Kentucky Military Institute decided to take advantage of its climate and its railroad to use it for its winter quarters. The other was based on the efforts of another local promoter, Finn Caspersen, who in the days before World War II convinced the Army that the local vacant land and year-round flying weather would be perfect for an Army Air Corps training base. These events reinvigorated the area and foretold its growth into the city known today.

Author Margaret Mackle Kapustiak is a local historian, genealogy speaker, and researcher. The images in this book are courtesy of local city and county museums, libraries, archives, and historians. 

When a rule change threatens the big truffle contest, a pig and a pup must dig deep—because true friendship always finds a way!

Peri (a pig) and Tubs (a dog) are best friends who live at an orchard where magnificent truffles grow. They spend their days sniffing and (very gently!) digging in the rich soil. When Tubs' entry in the annual Truffle Dog Championship is threatened by a last-minute rule change, can the friends overcome the odds and win the day? On their own, they're at a disadvantage, but together nothing can stop these truffle snuffling friends!

A Louisiana twist on the classic Gingerbread Man story!

On a whim, an old Cajun couple named Marcelle and Dumas use their famous boudin recipe to make a boy. After they batter up the mixture and fry it up like a boudin ball, the boy magically comes to life and is taught all about swamp life. Follow Boudin Boy on his wild adventures throughout Louisiana and beyond in this Cajun spin on the Gingerbread Man.

Possessed with a spirit of optimism and an innate gift for retailing savvy, entrepreneur William T. Grant revolutionized the nation’s retailing industry with the 1906 debut of his W.T. Grant Company department store in Lynn, Massachusetts. Taking aim at the lucrative yet untapped middle ground between the discount five-and-dime variety stores and traditional department stores of the era, he built a well-deserved reputation as the store “Known for Values.” Grants quickly became one of the nation’s fastest-growing and most beloved department store chains, encompassing 1,238 stores in forty-six states at its height in 1972. While the Grants stores are now just a fond memory, the legacy of William T. Grant continues to be remembered today, along with the vibrant philanthropic nonprofit William T. Grant Foundation, which he started in 1936.

Discover the South's Most Notorious Murders, Mysteries, and Criminal Masterminds

Journey from Texas to Virginia in this gripping collection of haunting criminal cases. Follow a relentless serial killer as he leaves a bloody trail across Louisiana and beyond, witness a cunning lonely-hearts swindler terrorize Texas, and uncover Arkansas's bizarre wave of strychnine poisonings that baffled investigators. Experience the supernatural when a West Virginia murder is revealed through dreams and meet a one-armed conjure-man whose murder-for-hire schemes shocked North Carolina.

Watch forensic science evolve as crimefighters expand their arsenal of detection tools in this compelling tour of the South's most notorious crimes, where fact proves stranger than fiction.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist’s eye to the sinister South and its defining—and quirky—crime stories.

Once a twenty-seven-thousand-acre parcel named for the hills it features, Rancho Los Cerritos is a place where the past meets the present and provides a fascinating glimpse into California’s history.

Home of the Gabrielino-Tongva for more than five thousand years, the land was claimed and colonized by Spain and then Mexico before it became part of the United States. New Englander John Temple, together with his wife, Rafaela Cota, bought the land in the early 1800s. Through a workforce of Indigenous laborers, he built a unique two-story adobe to be the headquarters of a large-scale cattle ranch, propelling Temple and Rancho Los Cerritos to the forefront of Southern California’s prosperity.

Over the next two centuries, the Rancho adobe was home to gold rush miners, Mexican vaqueros, Chinese cooks, and more. These intrepid individuals persisted through feasts and famine, floods, droughts, and even war. Today, the adobe houses a historic museum and connects visitors to those who left an indelible mark on the region.

Join Dr. Leslie Reese as she shares the stories of the people who called Rancho Los Cerritos home.

A work stoppage on the rails led to a fascinating moment in Ohio history.

As the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 made its way into Ohio, the state already had its share of problems. Tramps, men who’d taken to the road looking for work because of the economic depression of the 1870s, seemed to be overrunning the state. Railroads, one of Ohio’s biggest employers, cut jobs. Those not fired suffered from repeated cuts in wages and hours, making their already unsafe work conditions worse.

Strikes in neighboring states, instigated by another 10 percent wage cut on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, became violent and destructive. When they broke out in Ohio, something remarkable happened. Strikers remained mostly peaceful, avoiding the killing, looting, and vandalism seen elsewhere. Much of the credit for the path taken by Ohio must go to its level-headed governor, Thomas L. Young, who used the Ohio National Guard to great effect.