Follow crime fiction’s toughest hero from San Francisco to the Mexican frontier in the third installment of the Collected Case Files of the Continental Op The Continental Op is short, fat, and aging—but don’t let his appearance deceive you. Handy with a gun, and always willing to take a roundhouse to the chin, the Op is the toughest sleuth San Francisco has ever seen. And when a rich Englishwoman hires him to find her estranged husband, the Op thinks he’s in for an easy job. But the husband is an addict last seen in Tijuana, and finding him will take the hardboiled detective past the border and into a hellhole called the Golden Horseshoe. Before Nick Charles or Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett made his mark with the adventures of the Continental Op, whose particular brand of justice defined the legendary Black Mask style. In “The Golden Horseshoe,” “The House in Turk Street,” and “The Girl with the Silver Eyes,” the Op follows his cases from civility to temptation and back again.

The legendary U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer was branded 'the wolf of the Atlantic', and for good reason. In his dramatic wartime career he sank ship after ship, sowing terror among Allied convoys and dismay in those charged with their protection. Kretschmer was a daring officer who favoured bringing his U-boat into the heart of the convoy and destroying it from within. He earned himself a tremendous reputation before his capture in March 1941, and The Golden Horseshoe makes it clear why. Terence Robertson’s biography of the U-boat ace draws upon first-hand experience of conditions and the deadly game as the hunter sought to outfox the hunted. He paints a masterly portrait of life at sea and weaves in the fascinating story of Kretschmer and the exploits of his U-Boats. Kretschmer was eventually captured and interviewed by Captain McIntyre of HMS Walker, an episode which is also recounted in this book. Otto Kretschmer became a prisoner of war in March 1941 and spent most of the rest of the war in Bowmanville camp, Canada, before his release in 1947.

Eighth grade students have been awarded "The Golden Horseshoe" for excellence in West Virginia history since 1931. Award-winning teacher and author Frances B. Gunter makes West Virginia history come alive for students, parents and history buffs alike in her novels The Golden Horseshoe and The Golden Horseshoe II. The Golden Horseshoe received the Citation of Merit Award in 1992 from the West Virginia State Reading Council. The Golden Horseshoe II was written to fulfill the many requests by students, parents, and teachers to provide a sequel to the first novel. These modern day mysteries are a fun and entertaining way to learn some hard historical facts about the Mountain State. "Frances Gunter makes West Virginia history come alive with a great story line and characters with which middle school students readily identify. The students learn both the history of West Virginia and the pride of being a West Virginian. Parents have told me they enjoyed reading the book after their children had finished it." Katherine A. Ferris, West Virginia Studies Teacher Reading Specialist Travel back into the history of West Virginia with three students as they solve a fascinating mystery. When young Ginny Lucas and cousins Chelsea and Brad discover an antique horseshoe pendant, the trio begin a dangerous trip through time, first landing in the caves of the ancient mound builders. Next the trio lands on Blennerhassett Island, on the eve of the Burr conspiracy, where they narrowly escape with their lives. When the teenagers arrive in Harpers Ferry, they witness the rowdy crowd at the grisly hanging of John Brown. They get caught in the crossfire between the Hatfields and the McCoys on the Tug River, and even experience some of the mine wars at Blair Mountain.

Now for the first time ever in one volume, all twenty-eight stories and two serialized novels starring the Continental Op—one of the greatest characters in storied history of detective fiction. Dashiell Hammett is the father of modern hard-boiled detective stories. His legendary works have been lauded for almost one hundred years by fans, and his novel The Maltese Falcon was adapted into a classic film starring Humphrey Bogart. One of Dashiell Hammett's most memorable characters, the Continental Op made his debut in Black Mask magazine on October 1, 1923, narrating the first of twenty-eight stories and two novels that would change forever the face of detective fiction. The Op is a tough, wry, unglamorous gumshoe who has inspired a following that is both global and enduring. He has been published in periodicals, paperback digests, and short story collections, but until now, he has never, in all his ninety-two years, had the whole of his exploits contained in one book. The book features all twenty-eight of the original standalone Continental Op stories, the original serialized versions of Red Harvest and The Dain Curse, and previously unpublished material. This anthology of Continental Op stories is the only complete, one-volume work of its kind.

An exploration of trees in the Golden Horseshoe and the stories they tell. Trees define so much of Canadian life, but many people, particularly in the Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario, don’t know that much about them. Granted, it is harder here: there are more trees that are native to this area than anywhere else in Canada. The great storytellers of the landscape, trees are looking glasses into the past. They speak of biology, ecology, and geology, as well as natural and human history. Through a greater understanding of trees, we can become more rooted to the land beneath our feet, and our place in it.

Adam's faded second-hand guitar never left his side. He played it at home. He played it at school. He even slept with it. As Adam and the rest of the Elite Team practiced their talents, Adam felt overshadowed by his friends. He just wasn't good enough... When he heard about the legend of the Golden Horseshoe, and its charm to make champions, he knew he had to find it for himself. But on his quest, Adam finds more than just the horseshoe. Will he finally find the champion within himself?

Essential tales from the files of San Francisco’s hard-bitten, prototypical PI—penned by the undisputed “master of the detective novel” (The Boston Globe). Before Dashiell Hammett introduced such iconic sleuths as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, he put to work the most influential detective ever to scour America’s hard-boiled literary landscape. An operative of San Francisco’s Continental Detective Agency, the Continental Op was a world-weary, pragmatic, and inelegant company man—and though always nameless, he has remained as distinctive as a fingerprint. Informed by Hammett’s own work with the Pinkertons, the twenty-three stories collected here—originally published between 1923 and 1930—introduced a bracing, jaded, dry-witted realism to the genre. Written with “the precision of a diamond cutter,” they are seminal masterworks in the legacy of a genuine original (Newsweek).

Part adventure story, part love story, part homecoming, Still Points North is a page-turning memoir that explores the extremes of belonging and exile, and the difference between how to survive and knowing how to truly live. Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, seven-year-old Leigh Newman spent her time landing silver salmon, hiking glaciers, and flying in a single-prop plane. But her life split in two when her parents unexpectedly divorced, requiring her to spend summers on the tundra with her “Great Alaskan” father and the school year in Baltimore with her more urbane mother. Navigating the fraught terrain of her family’s unraveling, Newman did what any outdoorsman would do: She adapted. With her father she fished remote rivers, hunted caribou, and packed her own shotgun shells. With her mother she memorized the names of antique furniture, composed proper bread-and-butter notes, and studied Latin poetry at a private girl’s school. Charting her way through these two very different worlds, Newman learned to never get attached to people or places, and to leave others before they left her. As an adult, she explored the most distant reaches of the globe as a travel writer, yet had difficulty navigating the far more foreign landscape of love and marriage. In vivid, astonishing prose, Newman reveals how a child torn between two homes becomes a woman who both fears and idealizes connection, how a need for independence can morph into isolation, and how even the most guarded heart can still long for understanding. Still Points North is a love letter to an unconventional Alaskan childhood of endurance and affection, one that teaches us that no matter where you go in life, the truest tests of courage are the chances you take, not with bears and blizzards, but with other people. Praise for Still Points North “Newman has crafted a vivid exploration of a broken family. . . . Her pain will resonate strongly with readers, and she vividly brings both Alaska and Maryland to life. . . . A natural for book clubs.”—Booklist “Newman’s adult search for her own true home is riveting, as are her worldwide adventures; it’s a joy to be in on the ride.”—Reader’s Digest “What really sets this fearless memoir apart is the heartfelt, riotously funning writing, which will have you reading passages aloud, and rooting for Newman all the way.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Newman writes so lucidly about bewilderment, so honestly about self-deception, so courageously about fear, so compassionately about insensitivity, so hilariously about suffering and loss. Still Points North is a remarkable book: a travel memoir of the mapless, dangerous seas and territories between childhood and adulthood.”—Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Swamplandia! “A wise, refreshing and enjoyable read.”—New York Daily News “[Newman is] at her best bringing to life the chapters on her near-feral Alaskan upbringing. You can practically smell the freshly killed game.”—Entertainment Weekly

From the sands of Arizona to the alleys of the Tenderloin, the Continental Op deals out rough justice, in this collection of short stories from master of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett In the Arizona desert, the sun’s high, the heat’s relentless, and there’s murder in the air. Across this long stretch of sunbaked hell, one town stands out as the worst of all. Someone is killing the cowboys of Corkscrew, and Continental Op has been hired to stop the slaughter. From the moment he rides into town, he tastes dust on his teeth and blood in the wind. The locals have no respect for this hardboiled San Francisco detective, so it’s up to the Op to show them he deserves his badge. But before peace can come to Corkscrew, more men will die. A portrait of a tough man in a rough town, “Corkscrew” offers a taste of Dashiell Hammett’s first novel, the legendary epic of hardboiled violence Red Harvest. Along with the other stories in this volume—“Dead Yellow Women” and “The Gutting of Couffignal”—it shows Hammett and his infamous Continental Op at the top of their forms.