Virginia

Richmond is a classic Southern city, most notable as the Confederate capitol. However, the irony of Richmond is that much of its beautiful architecture was built by Black laborers.

The city's vast and varied collection of architecture provides an archive of African American history, both of enslaved and free peoples. Author Selden Richardson explains how iconic symbols of old Richmond and the generations of Black laborers who helped assemble it are embodied in both the preserved and the forgotten architecture of the city. After you finish this book, it will be as if the buildings in Richmond tell their own stories to you.

Replete with the bizarre behavior of elevators, the numerous deaths of inhabitants and paranormal sightings by a writer in residence.

""Mayflower Apartments,"" represents just one of the extraordinary tales that Al Chewning documents in his latest book. By delving into the creepy, unexplored avenues of Virginia Beach's past, Chewning entrances the reader with the spectral details of Blackbeard's buried treasure, a deadly stretch of road inexplicably responsible for eighty-nine fatalities in the past thirty years and the untimely death of a military wife, devilishly titled ""Don't Make Mom Mad""--just to name a few.

In a collection of forty stories gleaned from newspapers and personal interviews, Chewning sheds an eerie light on the prosperous tourist hot spot that is welcoming by day, otherworldly by night. A long-time resident of the Virginia Beach area and the owner of Ghost Tours of Virginia Beach, the author tells not only of reported sightings but also of his own spectral encounters.

From a ""wailing woman"" in the old Coast Guard Station to supernatural activity provoked by the association of two friends, Chewning offers up spine-tingling apparitional tales that will shock and delight visitors and locals alike.

Suffolk and Nansemond County are steeped in a rich heritage and form an extraordinary locality in southeastern Virginia.

With a history dating to pre-colonial times, Nansemond County was formed from one of the original shires established by colonists. Many of the first settlers were attracted to the abundant rivers and woods that offered a grand supply of food and sport. They learned to farm the bountiful land and established the crop that would make them famous. The peanut became the cash crop for Suffolk, and it drew the railroads and businesses needed to sculpt the city into a commercial success.

This photographic history pays tribute to a brief but important portion of the people and places that comprised what was known as Nansemond County and is now the City of Suffolk. It provides a visual story of a community that has weathered three major fires as well as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and both World Wars. These images offer readers the chance to experience the ways in which generations of families have lived, worked, and played, and they portray many of the houses and establishments that have been transformed or are completely gone. Look back to the first Peanut Festival in 1941, see how school children dressed in the 1930s, and view Main Street when it was at its height of popularity.

Twentieth-century residents of Williamsburg have witnessed dramatic changes in their community. First, before World War II, was the re-creation of the Historic Area-the fulfillment of a vision seen by a clergyman and financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. In recent decades there has been an ongoing burst of construction to accommodate the influx of visitors and newcomers. Once an almost forgotten, out-of-the-way place, Williamsburg has become a thriving city and one of America's most popular tourist destinations. With photographs from the archives of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and local newspapers, Williamsburg presents a record of building activity and the restoration that returned the city to the eighteenth century and made its streets into pathways to the past. Included are the transformations of the city's two principal institutions, the College of William and Mary and Eastern State Hospital, as well as a photographic curtain call for Paul Green's outdoor drama The Common Glory. The people who have participated in making Williamsburg a vibrant, modern community and the famous visitors who have celebrated its heritage are highlighted in this fitting tribute to an American landmark.