New & Coming Soon

Gone and not forgotten—strange ways Ohioans have met their maker.

Ohio has given us sports legends, world-changing inventors, icons of industry, a wealth of famous artists of all stripes, and eight presidents. It’s also given us ghosts, ghouls, grave robbers, the prematurely buried, historic murders, colorful demises (including death by defective outhouse), those who predicted their own deaths with uncanny accuracy, the violent Wayne County poltergeist, petrified bodies, the Seneca County exploding corpse, obsessive-compulsive Jonathan Ward’s murder-dismemberment of Mrs. Ward, and the faces of way too many dead people appearing in windows.

Light a candle, wrap yourself in a shawl, and join author Keven McQueen and illustrator Addy Atchity on a macabre tour of Ohioans who took a memorable exit. 

An enduring feedback loop where belief masquerades as evidence and credibility becomes collateral damage.

In April 1966, police officers in rural Ohio and western Pennsylvania chased a glowing object across eighty miles of back roads. The encounter—silent, blinding, and seemingly intelligent—became one of the most famous UFO cases in American history and helped inspire the opening scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But the mystery didn’t end when the lights vanished. Drawing on primary sources, official records, and personal experience, this book traces how a single night’s events were transformed into lasting folklore—shaped not just by witnesses and the media, but by the U.S. military’s own investigative machinery. Rather than merely asking what the police chased, a more unsettling question is asked here: how did government involvement, belief, and mistrust combine to create a self-perpetuating legend that still echoes today?

Author Michael Kishbucher, a career Air Force and Defense Intelligence Agency officer, revisits this strange Appalachian legend from an uncommon perspective: from within the intelligence community itself.

Lover's of Ohio history and presidential history will love this exploration of William H. Taft, one of Cincinnati’s favorite sons.

Most Americans know that William Howard Taft was President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But his life and legacy contain much beyond that—especially in his hometown.

He fought to put crooks away in court, and he fought for ethics and integrity. He made judgements that made him unpopular. Beyond the law, he and his wife Nellie were influential in the city’s arts and culture, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. For all of this and more, he is remembered today as one of the Queen City’s greatest citizens.

After years studying Taft’s career in Cincinnati, Brian Planitz brings to life Taft’s time in his birthplace and how it shaped his later career in Washington D.C. and around the world.

An enduring feedback loop where belief masquerades as evidence and credibility becomes collateral damage.

In April 1966, police officers in rural Ohio and Western Pennsylvania chased a glowing object across eighty miles of back roads. The object—silent, blinding, and seemingly intelligent—became one of the most famous UFO cases in American history and helped inspire the opening scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But the mystery didn’t end when the lights vanished. Drawing on primary sources, official records, and personal experience, this book traces how a single night’s events were transformed into lasting folklore—shaped not just by witnesses and the media, but by the U.S. military’s own investigative machinery. Rather than merely asking what the police chased, a more unsettling question is asked here: how did government involvement, belief, and mistrust combine to create a self-perpetuating legend that still echoes today?

Author Michael Kishbucher, a career U.S. Air Force and Defense Intelligence Agency officer, revisits this strange Appalachian legend from an uncommon perspective: from within the intelligence community itself.

Lover's of Ohio history and presidential history will love this exploration of William H. Taft, one of Cincinnati’s favorite sons.

Most Americans know that William Howard Taft was president of the United States and chief justice of the Supreme Court. But his life and legacy contain much beyond that, especially in his hometown.

He fought to put crooks away in court, and he fought for ethics and integrity. He made judgements that made him unpopular. Beyond the law, he and his wife, Nellie, were influential in the city’s arts and culture, including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. For all of this and more, he is remembered today as one of the Queen City’s greatest citizens.

After years studying Taft’s career in Cincinnati, Brian Planitz brings to life Taft’s time in his birthplace and how it shaped his later career in Washington, D.C., and around the world.

Some Ohioans are destined for greatness--some are destined for notoriety.

Akron's Edward Wayne Edwards got an early start, snatching cash and cigarettes from his grandmother's purse. He eventually graduated to murder, offing as many as five people, and he ended up on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list along the way. Lester Eubanks killed a fourteen-year-old in Mansfield. After his death sentence was commuted to life, he was mistakenly allowed to go Christmas shopping and disappeared from a Columbus mall in 1973. U.S. Marshals are still looking for him. Cleveland bank robber "Fast Eddie" Watkins held off fifty lawmen for eight hours while sitting in his car in front of a house near Lodi. John Dillinger was born a Hoosier, but he took from Ohio banks as though he had a birthright to the funds.

From counterfeiters to killers, author Jane Ann Turzillo explores the sordid lives of some of the most awful characters in Buckeye history.

Savor the unexpected and altogether delectable history of Chinese food in the Queen City

While a smattering of chop suey houses were sprinkled around Cincinnati around the turn of the twentieth century, Wong Yie was the first to present the cuisine to non-Chinese Cincinnatians as a new, exotic, and upscale dining experience with his Gold Dragon in 1911. Despite challenges from the Chinese Exclusion Act, which exacerbated the already massive difficulties faced by Chinese immigrants, Yie’s restaurant spawned more than eighty Chinese restaurants in the city, famed spots such as the Canton, the Wah Mee, and the Fortune Kookie. Proprietors like Mike Wong of Oriental Wok and Johnny Chu of KungFood Chu’s AmerAsia keep our local Chinese food culture alive and evolving.

Author and food etymologist Dann Woellert delves into the fascinating and mouthwatering history of Chinese food in Cincinnati.