The author of Civil War Ghosts of Southwest Missouri takes the paranormal pulse of this rustic city in the heart of the Ozarks. A rich mixture of inexplicable history and eerie happenstance runs through the portion of the Ozark Plateau that Carthage has carved out for itself. Woodland cabins greet visitors with phantom hosts or vanish into the night entirely. Rumors tell of lost Spanish treasure caravans haunting the hills with the same persistence as the Confederate guerrillas who were run aground there. But the town itself isn’t immune from the encroachment of the supernatural; the drama of tragic death continues to find a stage in an opera house, a hospital, and an elegant residence. Lisa Livingston-Martin tracks down the fiercest and most fascinating specters from Carthage’s past. Includes photos! “According to the book Haunted Carthage, Missouri by Lisa Livingston-Martin, there have been many sightings and various paranormal events in and around Carthage.” —The Joplin Globe

For southwest Missouri, the Civil War was an unparalleled period of violence, sorrow and anger. As the torches burned the physical landscape, the depredations inflicted were also scorched upon the psyche of the people who lived through fires. Survey Carthage's battlefield for stubborn holdouts or hold vigil at the Kendrick House for innocent bystanders who were swept up into the stratagems of bushwhackers and guerrillas. Meet the Bloody Spikes, Rotten Johnny Reb and scores more figures from the region's past who continue to trouble its present.

From Native American societies to the Civil War to the crime spree of Bonnie and Clyde, Joplin’s history leaves spirited legends in its wake . . . The barrier between Joplin’s boisterous past and its present is as flimsy as a swinging saloon door. Lisa Livingston-Martin kicks it wide open in this ghostly history. In her expert company, tour a hotel with a reputation made from equal parts opulence and tragedy. Visit that house of horrors, the Stefflebeck Bordello, where guests regularly got the axe and were disposed of in mine shafts. Navigate through angry lynch mobs and vengeful patrols of Civil War spirits. Catch a glimpse of Bonnie and Clyde. Keep your wits about you—it’s haunted Joplin. Includes photos! “There may be as many non-living residents of Joplin as there are live ones, according to Haunted Joplin.” —The Morning Sun

Contains over seventy tales of ghostly hauntings from each of the fifty United States and Canada.

A look at various Civil War battlefields and the hauntings now reported from them.

Tracing Route 66 through Missouri represents one of America's favorite exercises in nostalgia, but a discerning glance among the roadside weeds reveals the kind of sordid history that doesn't appear on postcards. Along with vintage cars and picnic baskets, Route 66 was a conduit humming with contraband and crackling with the gunplay of folks like Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James and the Young brothers. It was also the preferred byway of lynch mobs, murderous hitchhikers and mad scientists. Stop in at places like the Devil's Elbow and the Steffleback Bordello on this trip through the more treacherous twists of the Mother Road.

In 1837 Representative Joseph J. Anthony stabs the speaker of the house to death during a debate about wolf pelts. In 1899 Hot Springs police shoot it out with the county sheriffs over control of illegal gambling. In 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns in part due to the outspokenness of Pine Bluff native Martha Mitchell. In this special print project of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, legendary cartoonist Ron Wolfe brings these and many other stories to life. Accompanied by selected entries from the encyclopedia, Wolfe’s cartoons highlight the oddities and absurdities of our state’s history. Seriously, you couldn’t make up this stuff.

For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book

By the time residents of Carthage celebrated the city's centennial in 1942, the city had grown to a population of approximately 12,000 and sat at the intersection of two national highways nicknamed "Broadway of America" (US 71) and "Main Street of America" (US 66). As the governmental hub of Jasper County, Carthage was surrounded by bountiful agricultural prairies to the north and east, scenic Ozark hills to the south, and the world's lead and zinc center to the west. This geographic diversity contributed to the town's vibrant economy and growth even in difficult economic times. Images of America: Carthage: 1940-1990 begins after the hard times in the 1930s and focuses on the 1940s through the 1980s, when many schools, churches, and industries expanded or moved to new quarters. Stores and businesses around the courthouse square modernized and competed with new commercial centers developed in other sections of the expanding town.

Drawing from a rich corpus of art works, including sarcophagi, tomb paintings, and floor mosaics, Patrick R. Crowley investigates how something as insubstantial as a ghost could be made visible through the material grit of stone and paint. In this fresh and wide-ranging study, he uses the figure of the ghost to offer a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. Tracing the shifting practices and debates in antiquity about the nature of vision and representation, Crowley shows how images of ghosts make visible structures of beholding and strategies of depiction. Yet the figure of the ghost simultaneously contributes to a broader conceptual history that accounts for how modalities of belief emerged and developed in antiquity. Neither illustrations of ancient beliefs in ghosts nor depictions of afterlife, these images show us something about the visual event of seeing itself. The Phantom Image offers essential insight into ancient art, visual culture, and the history of the image.