A collection of chilling tales from the dark heart of American literature A masquerade ball cut short by a mysterious plague; a strange nocturnal ritual in the woods; a black bobcat howling in the night: these ten tales are some of the most strange and unsettling in all of American literature, filled with unforgettable imagery and simmering with tension. From Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Zora Neale Hurston, the authors of these classics of supernatural suspense have inspired generations of writers to explore the dark heart of the land of the free. The stories in this collection have been selected and introduced by Laird Hunt, an author of seven acclaimed novels which explore the shadowy corners of American history. Contains: 'The Masque of the Red Death', Edgar Allan Poe'Young Goodman Brown', Nathaniel Hawthorne'The Eyes', Edith Wharton'The Mask', Robert Chambers'Home', Shirley Jackson'A Ghost Story', Mark Twain'Spunk', Zora Neale Hurston'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman'An Itinerant House', Emma Frances Dawson Laird Hunt is an American writer and translator. He has written seven novels, including Neverhome, which was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice selection, an IndieNext selection, winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine and The Bridge prize, and a finalist for the Prix Femina Étranger. His In the House in the Dark of the Woods is also available from Pushkin Press. A resident of Boulder, CO, he is on the faculty in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Denver.

A chilling collection of classic weird and supernatural tales from the dark heart of American literature A masquerade ball cut short by a mysterious plague; a strange nocturnal ritual in the woods; a black bobcat howling in the night: these ten tales are some of the most strange and unsettling in all of American literature, filled with unforgettable imagery and simmering with tension. From Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Zora Neale Hurston, the authors of these classics of supernatural suspense have inspired generations of writers to explore the dark heart of the land of the free. The stories in this collection have been selected and introduced by Laird Hunt, an author of seven acclaimed novels which explore the shadowy corners of American history. Contains: 'The Masque of the Red Death', Edgar Allan Poe 'Young Goodman Brown', Nathaniel Hawthorne 'The Eyes', Edith Wharton 'The Mask', Robert Chambers 'Home', Shirley Jackson 'A Ghost Story', Mark Twain 'Spunk', Zora Neale Hurston 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman 'An Itinerant House', Emma Frances Dawson

On the night of December 1,1900, Iowa farmer John Hossack was attacked and killed while he slept at home beside his wife, Margaret. On April 11, 1901, after five days of testimony before an all-male jury, Margaret Hossack was found guilty of his murder and sentenced to life in prison. One year later, she was released on bail to await a retrial; jurors at this second trial could not reach a decision, and she was freed. She died August 25, 1916, leaving the mystery of her husband's death unsolved. The Hossack tragedy is a compelling one and the issues surrounding their domestic problems are still relevant today, Margaret's composure and stoicism, developed during years of spousal abuse, were seen as evidence of unfeminine behavior, while John Hossack--known to be a cruel and dangerous man--was hailed as a respectable husband and father. Midnight Assassin also introduces us to Susan Glaspell, a journalist who reported on the Hossack murder for the Des Moines Daily, who used these events as the basis for her classic short story, " A Jury of Her Peers", and the famous play Trifles. Based on almost a decade of research, Midnight Assassin is a riveting story of loneliness, fear, and suffering in the rural Midwest.

Essays collected from The Secret Sun. Where we are now and how we got here.

A bizarre story that could only happen in America, this is a vivid, eye-opening narrative about a murderer, the Midwestern culture that spawned him, and the Pope who saved his life.

Rainbow at Midnight details the origins and evolution of working-class strategies for independence during and after World War II. Arguing that the 1940s may well have been the most revolutionary decade in U.S. history, George Lipsitz combines popular culture, politics, economics, and history to show how war mobilization transformed the working class and how that transformation brought issues of race, gender, and democracy to the forefront of American political culture. This book is a substantially revised and expanded work developed from the author's heralded 1981 Class and Culture in Cold War America.

Corporate America is no longer content doing what it does best, which is making money. These business behemoths are aggressively attempting to control the entire economic, cultural and political realms of American life. They have nearly succeeded. Most Americans would agree that corporate power should be prohibited from disrupting the natural rhythm of our democratic institutions. Yet we the people are thwarted from addressing the subject of corporate power, not because we do not wish to have the conversation, but because we have nobody to address the issue. Our political representatives, hostages as they are to corporate campaign donations and government lobbyists, cannot seriously debate the question of corporate power. Indeed, their very careers depend on corporate power. Meanwhile, the media, the so-called Fourth Estate, refuses to discuss the issue of excessive corporate power because the media itself is a corporation. At the same time, the consequences of excessive corporate power are becoming acutely obvious inside of the corporate universe. Today, fewer U.S. workers are spending more time on the job to produce a greater amount of products, while not receiving fair recompense. Meanwhile, wages for American workers, adjusted for inflation, have remained stagnant for the past 30 years, while U.S. vacation time in the United States is the lowest of all the industrial economies. The blatant lack of representation in the workplace is directly responsible for these shameful statistics. Just 7 percent of the American workforce today enjoys union representation, a percentage that pales in comparison with past generations. There is also the question of corporations disrupting the fabric of cultural life. Indeed, today Main Street U.S.A. is largely unrecognizable. This can be witnessed in everything from the preponderance of fast food restaurants and hyper-stores, to Corporate America's aggressive monopoly on all forms of entertainment, which is on a downward spiral to total degeneracy. Since corporate-owned cultural venues (e.g., television, film, books) have more influence over our children than do educational institutions, it should come as no surprise that violence and unsocial behavior is on the rise. History has already proven that no nation can survive for long once its moral fabric has been shredded. Finally, the symptoms of extreme levels of corporate power in our lives are becoming increasingly conspicuous in a variety of ways. From the rise of destructive behavior at home, to the sadistic treatment prisoners of war in foreign lands (read: Guantanamo Bay), to the reckless disregard for the collapse of the natural environment, something has gone awry in the heart of America (I call it 'corporate zombyism'). The nature of the problem suggests that the American psyche is being guided and influenced by less than respectable influences. Since it is Corporate America that is largely responsible for the degraded mental and physical content that we are now feeding the people, this institution must accept a large part of the blame for America's fall from grace. The time has come to tame this beast of burden; the time has come to remove corporate power from the halls of power. It is time for the American people - like their proud and independent ancestors who founded this country many years ago - to regain control of their country once again.

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Library Journal Top Ten Best Books of 2011 A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Bestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale." Tony Horwitz's riveting book travels antebellum America to deliver both a taut historical drama and a telling portrait of a nation divided—a time that still resonates in ours.

New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey takes readers on the ride of a lifetime in this fierce novel of seduction, intrigue, and betrayal featuring hit man Gideon. Gideon trusts no one. But when his former lover resurfaces in need of his skills, Gideon accepts. The assignment leads to Argentina and a team of international mercenaries who will maim, kill, and torture to achieve victory. One of them has a connection to Gideon that neither assassin is aware of, a secret link that reaches into Gideon's past and plunges him into a double-cross so explosive no one will make it out unscarred.

Paul Revere's ride to warn the colonial militia of the British march on Lexington and Concord is a legendary contribution to the American Revolution. This book reveals another side of this American hero's life, that of a transformational entrepreneur instrumental in the industrial revolution. It combines a biographical examination of Revere with a study of the new nation's business and technological climate. A silversmith prior to the Revolution and heralded for his patriotism during the war, Revere aspired to higher social status within the fledgling United States. To that end, he shifted away from artisan silversmithing toward larger, more involved manufacturing ventures such as ironworking, bronze casting, and copper sheet rolling. The author explores Revere's vibrant career successes and failures, social networks, business practices, and the groundbreaking metallurgical technologies he developed and employed. Revere's commercial ventures epitomized what Martello terms proto—industrialization, a transitional state between craft work and mass manufacture that characterizes the broader, fast -- changing landscape of the American economy.