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Flung down a well. Buried alive in the backwoods. Gunned down in broad daylight.

Not what you’d expect from a place flocked to by influencers for its cozy aesthetic and iconic fall foliage. 

Whether the crimes were intricately plotted or born of passion, Vermont’s history is filled with lawlessness, depravity, and murder. 

Some culprits struck just once, some went on a spree, while others using opportunism and cunning menaced entire regions for years. 

From the place Vermont calls “The Kingdom” to its “Marble City,” Thea Lewis, author of True Crime Stories of Burlington, Vermont, offers up more than a century of mayhem, with double lives, serial killers, and a plot to slay a beloved pop star with a global fan base. 

Join her as she peels back the region’s reputation for wholesomeness and rural charm to show you the darker side of the Green Mountain State.  

“New Jersey is the most celebrated cider making district in America,” wrote Andrew Jackson Downing in 1849. At one time, New Jersey grew more apples than any other state, and they have been a key part of life across the Garden State for more than 300 years.

North Jersey orchards produced internationally renowned Newark cider and high-proof apple brandy—known as applejack, cider spirits, Jersey Lightning, and dozens of other nicknames—which were signature products produced in hundreds of New Jersey distilleries. America’s oldest distillery is a Monmouth County applejack maker. Orchardists, cider makers, and distillers made New Jersey applejack famous. In addition, farmers supplied Washington’s Continental Army with spirits during the coldest winters of the American Revolution, and bootleggers produced thousands of gallons of illegal applejack during Prohibition. By the early 20th century, tastes changed, and the cider industry dwindled. Prohibition nearly snuffed it out entirely. In the 21st century, New Jersey cider is experiencing an unprecedented revival.

James Malchow is a New Jersey native and the director of the Ralston Cider Mill Museum in Mendham, Morris County. The Ralston Cider Mill preserves the unique history of cider and applejack in New Jersey. The images in the book are drawn from museums, private collections, public libraries, and other archival collections.

Ghoulish Legends from The City of Lakes

Haunted government buildings, theaters, museums, restaurants, parks, and, of course, cemeteries—Minneapolis has it all. Local folklore comes to life at the Turnblad Mansion, where the piano plays on its own, and at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where the subjects of portraits move about. Spirits of victims in the disastrous 1878 mill explosion haunt Mill Ruins Park. The Foshay Tower’s elevator seemingly goes haywire for no reason, and inmates and guards in the Hennepin County Jail report sightings of an underdressed spectral figure.

Local author Ron de Beaulieu investigates the roots of the Mill City’s ghost stories, ranging from the tragic to the horrific as well as heartwarming and perplexing. 

Some Illinois travelers are so taken by their destination, they hunker down for eternity.

There’s something about old hotels and locales that tourists flock to. The places are experiences unto themselves, but they also thrum, sometimes quite literally, with the lingering presence of those who previously paid them a visit. At the Mineral Springs Hotel in Alton, traces of floral perfume from a woman who took her life more than a century ago greet visitors in room 220. Spirits abound at the DeSoto House Hotel in Galena, one bearing an unsettling likeness to Abraham Lincoln. At the Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago, children from the past still laugh after dark. From the polite spirit at the Inn at 835 Boutique Hotel in Springfield, who encourages guests to “turn the page,” to the specter of the jilted chambermaid at St. Charles’s Hotel Baker, author Maria Salvo Benson guides intrepid readers through hotels and getaways where previous guests never truly checked out.

Author Maria Salvo-Benson guides the intrepid through the most haunted hotels and getaways throughout the Prairie State.

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.

The College of Staten Island’s history is rooted in service to the borough of Staten Island. The only tax-funded college in this New York City borough, the school serves over 10,000 students annually. 

The college is one of 26 City University of New York campuses and one of the university’s 11 upper-division colleges. A 1932 petition campaign for public higher education on Staten Island was followed by decades of activism before Staten Island Community College opened to offer associate degrees in 1956. Later, demand for bachelor degree programs led to the 1967 opening of upper-division Richmond College. In 1976, during a fiscal crisis, the schools consolidated into the College of Staten Island. In 1993, the college moved to a historic campus, the former site of Halloran General Hospital and Willowbrook State School. The college has a distinctive tradition of serving first-generation college students with diverse ethnic, racial, socioeconomic, and immigration identities as well as nontraditional students and people with developmental, learning, and physical disabilities.

James A. Kaser has been the archivist at the College of Staten Island since 2002 and a full professor since 2009. This is his sixth book. Dr. Kaser is a bibliographer and cultural historian with a doctorate in American culture studies. He has selected images from archival collections documenting the College of Staten Island and its predecessor institutions to illustrate this book, which traces the history of public higher education on Staten Island. 

Nestled along the Ouachita River in the piney hills of north-central Louisiana, Caldwell Parish was formed in 1838 from parts of Catahoula and Ouachita Parishes. Early settlers arrived by riverboat and wagon, drawn by rich timber, fertile bottomlands, and abundant wildlife. The communities that emerged—Columbia, Clarks, Grayson, and others—were shaped by the river’s commerce, the railroads, and the resilience of the people who worked its land and mills. From the steamboat captains who ferried cotton and passengers to notable natives such as Gen. Graves Erskine, Louisiana governor John McKeithen, and FBI agent Guy Banister, Caldwell’s history reflects both its rural roots and its far-reaching influence. Through these pages, readers can explore the faces and stories behind the churches, schools, businesses, and families that defined Caldwell Parish for generations.

Author and teacher Felicia Willhite, whose family’s roots in Caldwell Parish date back to the early 1900s, has spent more than 20 years in education, including teaching within the parish she now documents. Guided by a deep connection to Caldwell Parish’s people and places, she compiled these photographs from library archives and family collections, including her own, to preserve the memories and traditions that shaped the community.

Celebrate fifty defining moments in Pennsylvania sports history.

Few states in the nation can boast as vibrant and fascinating a sports heritage as Pennsylvania. With the Immaculate Reception, Franco Harris transformed a struggling Steelers franchise into a legendary one. On the other side of the state, the Philadelphia Flyers once struck a symbolic blow during the Cold War by overwhelming CSKA Moscow. The origins of pro football possibly lie in Greensburg, and an NFL title was “stolen” in Pottsville. The greatest college football team no one’s ever heard of hails from Carlisle, and college football’s oldest rivalry still rages between Lafayette and Lehigh. The most dominant performance ever in professional basketball took place in Hershey, where the great Wilt Chamberlain poured in one hundred points in a single game.

Historians David Finoli and Tom Rooney bring these stories—and many more—to life in this thrilling ride through all things sports in the Keystone State. 

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.