Ragtime is new, Victorians are out, and free love is on the rise. New York dandies Bryce, Jack, and Morgan open an emporium in the nascent art colony of Taos, New Mexico, promising to bring metropolitan culture and the latest wonders from the St. Louis World's Fair. The problem—none of them knows how to run a business. Free love? That they understand. Soon, the handsome young New Yorkers meet freethinking women ready to test the mores of a new century. With too little capital, their venture struggles until a leading member of Taos society begins holding teas for her inner circle at their store. But just as the business starts to thrive, the ladies usurp the tea parties to hire a Protestant pastor and are sent a recently ordained Universalist minister. Calamities pile up. The Universalist's sermons don’t go over well in Catholic Taos and the ensuing religious conflict hurts the emporium's business. Meanwhile, the men lose a lucrative Gramophone deal, and while Morgan’s trying to fix that, they get shaken down by a brothel owner. Then, Jack’s landlady dies, leaving him responsible for her nearly grown daughters. Oh yeah, and Bryce quits to join a peyote cult. Yet even as the partners fail at transforming Taos, Taos begins to transform them. And by the time the emporium goes belly up, they are ready to start their lives over again.

It’s 1904. St. Louis, birthplace of the hottest new music craze, Ragtime, is hosting a World’s Fair that everyone wants to see. Three fun-loving New York dandies are already planning to attend the Fair when a newspaper photo of them dallying with a colleen from Brooklyn sets a pair of Irish boxers on their trail. With the pugilists mere days behind them, they hastily hop a train to St. Louis. Aboard a Pullman sleeper, the dandies meet three sisters from New Jersey, free-thinkers whose view of morality seems to match the dandies’ own. Quickly, they pair off in couples for a romantic journey. But as the train nears St. Louis, the sisters reveal they are going to the Fair to meet marriageable, titled, European aristocrats. That obviously precludes the New Yorkers. They arrive for opening day of the largest world’s fair ever held—a dazzling sight. Over the next two weeks, the dandies keep bumping into the sisters; the sisters keep snubbing them; and the pursuing boxers keep just missing them. As the Irishmen close in, the New Yorkers hear of an art colony forming out West, and the idea of opening an emporium in distant New Mexico seems as brilliant as the Fair’s electric lights. The men rush to buy enough goods to start a business and get out of town before the boxers find them.

Ragtime is old hat, World War I is over, and the Roaring Twenties are underway. Cherie, an American flapper living it up in Paris, never intends to go back to her tiny hometown, Taos, New Mexico. But while visiting her sister in New York, a telegram brings word that an old friend, Morgan, is dying. Ragtime dudes Morgan and Jack, and wife Abigail, helped the sisters when their mother died. Now it’s time to repay the favor. They arrive in Taos to find Abigail overwhelmed, Jack’s in denial about Morgan’s fate, and Abigail’s son, Cyrus, is suffering from shell-shock—just like veterans Cherie’s seen in Paris. Touched by his plight, Cherie nurtures him. It’s not long before they fall in love. Abigail fears that once Cherie returns to Paris, Cyrus will be worse off than before. Cherie misunderstands and thinks mother hen wants her out of the picture. When Bryce, another friend from the days of ragtime, arrives, Morgan experiences a brief rally and asks to be driven to a place in the Taos Mountains he’s always found spiritual. On the mountaintop, the Parisian flapper, the ragtime dudes, and their strange, extended family find themselves at the threshold of a thin place in this charming sequel.

Local Lives in a Global Pandemic: Stories from North Central Florida covers the COVID-19 pandemic at its peak in 2020. It is a snapshot designed to give readers insights into the thoughts and feelings of their neighbors, and for future generations, a window into the real-time experiences of those who lived through the ordeal. The book includes a preface from Lauren Poe, mayor of Gainesville, and entries from a long list of contributors. The essays were collected by the Matheson History Museum and the Writers Alliance of Gainesville. Contributions come from writers and non-writers alike. Victims describe their suffering. Medical personnel highlight their struggles. Young people decry being denied rites of passage such as prom and graduation. Teachers, parents, grandparents, public figures, and even a prison inmate give their perspective. While the stories are drawn from north central Florida, they will resonate with anyone who wants to get a deeper sense of how the world was blindsided by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dick Gartee is a time traveler who has journeyed ninety-three years from the past—one day at a time. During the Great Depression, the only hockey puck in the neighborhood slides onto thin skim-ice and nine-year-old Dick heroically skates after it. When his father leaves his mother for another woman, plucky thirteen-year-old Dick takes a night job in a bakery to help his mother make ends meet. At seventeen, with World War II raging, he enlists in the Navy and rises from gunner mate to payroll and disbursements. By age twenty, the Navy trusts him with two million dollars cash. In the post-war years, he teaches himself engineering, builds factories, and designs manufacturing production lines and industrial robots. Elements of daily life that seemed ordinary to Dick are inconceivable to young people today. His biography provides context for key transformative eras of America’s recent past as Dick faces tribulations and joys with morality, humor, and humility. Younger readers will be astonished to learn how people managed before smartphones while older generations will smile as they recall anecdotes their parents shared. But no matter your age, you will be charmed by Dick’s story, and maybe you will discover some things you didn’t already know.

It's 1951, and ragtime is making a comeback. In Sedalia, Missouri, plans are underway for a ceremony to honor Scott Joplin. Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, learns of a journal Joplin kept and wants to show it to Sedalia's movers and shakers, hoping to persuade them to set up a ragtime museum. Unfortunately for Brun, author/historian Rudi Blesh is determined to publish the journal. But Joplin's old friend wants to suppress the material. Even worse, two Sedalia Klansmen are hot after the journal and don't care if they have to kill someone to get it. In the middle of this imbroglio is Alan Chandler, a 17-year-old pianist in love with ragtime. If Alan can stay alive, he may be able to prevent catastrophe and learn what it really means to be Black in 1950s America.

The inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney—exclusively in theaters December 25, 2023! The #1 New York Times bestselling true story about the American rowing triumph of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—from the author of Facing the Mountain For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

"The Furnished Room" is a short story about love and dedication, about exhaustion and despair. A young man is in search for a girl he fell in love with. He rents a room near the theaters where she is to be seen and he devotes his days to the dream of finding her. When all of a sudden the sweet fragrance of her perfume fills his room ... Is he finally blessed with success? Or this is an evil ghost from the past? Will he get to embrace the girl he loves or she will drag him to the verge of sanity? William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, was an American writer who lived in the late 19th century. He gains wide popularity with his short stories which often take place either in New York or some small American towns. The plot twists and the surprise endings are a typical and integral part of O. Henry’s short stories. Some of his best known works are "The Gift of the Magi", "The Cop and the Anthem", "A Retrieved Reformation". His stories often deal with ordinary people and the individual aspects of life. As a result of the outstanding literature legacy that O. Henry left behind, there is an American annual award after his name, given to exceptional short stories.

Includes discography (page 203-225) and index.

“A funny, savage appraisal of a totally automated American society of the future.”—San Francisco Chronicle Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul’s rebellion is vintage Vonnegut—wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality. Praise for Player Piano “An exuberant, crackling style . . . Vonnegut is a black humorist, fantasist and satirist, a man disposed to deep and comic reflection on the human dilemma.”—Life “His black logic . . . gives us something to laugh about and much to fear.”—The New York Times Book Review