The two newest additions to the local bookshelf are on volume focusing on Patterson Park, and one focusing on Highlandtown. Both are published by the Arcadia Images of America series.

Lynne Howard Frazer enjoys the fact that her first merit badge as a Girl Scout was for writing. Eventually, writing became her profession. Raised in northern Virginia, Frazer earned her B.A. in American History from James Madison University. She later added an M. A. in Colonial American History from the College of William and Mary. During her graduate studies, she participated in a two-year Museum Management program jointly administered by the college and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

A pictorial history of Red Bluff went on sale Monday, highlighting the city's role, beginning in the 1850s, as a burgeoning and surprisingly prosperous center for commerce, navigation and the area's logging industry.

It all started with some apples. Rogers resident Paulie Skaya-Bell stopped in at the home of Eugene Ahlstrom in late 2005 to buy some fruit, and the two got to talking. A couple hours later Ahlstrom was still telling about the early days of the city, showing off pictures of his time serving in World War II and from the early days of the city.

Without any Christmas shopping on his part, Richard Dabney is filling countless stockings all over town.

SNOW HILL -- A former town employee has chronicled Snow Hill's more than 300 years of history, distilling it into a book brimming with photographs set to be released Monday.

Arcadia Publishing returns to the Capital Region with its "Images of America" series by focusing on Amsterdam in one of its newest compendiums of local history and vintage photographs.

Ray Bottenberg didn't plan on becoming an author. The 41-year-old bridge engineer with the Oregon Department of Transportation says the opportunity simply presented itself.

James Casto’s new book, “The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway,” is a heavily illustrated history of the company and regional railroad culture. In 200 photographs accompanied by lengthy captions, Casto, a former editor at the Huntington Dispatch, sketches a railroad giant built on plots of land first surveyed by George Washington.

BALTIMORE - Freelance writer and Maryland native Christianna McCausland has recently published her first book with Arcadia Publishing, entitled “Maryland Steeplechasing.” The book explores in text and pictures a slice of the sporting life that not only holds a place in Maryland sporting history, but remains a challenging pursuit today. The Baltimore Examiner recently sat down to chat with her.

KEARNEY — Packing more than 130 years of history into l30 pages is not an easy task. The result is the book “Kearney,” part of the the Images of America series from Arcadia Publishing. The company specializes in books on local history. Mark R. Ellis and Heather E. Stauffer researched and wrote the book.

How did we get here? Not in a metaphysical sense, but what was Paradise like before it became what it is today? It seems like an easy question to answer. Just ask those who have lived here the longest. With every old-timer comes a new story and every story brings imaginings of the simple life.

Like other books in Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America " Series, in Whitestone Jason D. Antos through historic photographs and well-researched accompanying text chronicles the town's transformation from a quiet Dutch settlement to a massive urban center.

History buffs should set aside noon-3 p.m. Saturday for a signing at the Ohio Book Store that will bring together six local authors. The store held the event last year and it was such a success, it was decided to repeat it. On hand: Kevin Grace, Allen Singer, Don H. Tolzmann, Tom White, Robert J. Wimberg and Jeff Lueders.

MILFORD - In addition to being Milford Borough’s chief administrator and the area’s hardware advisor, Matt Osterberg is one the region’s most active historians. The 49-year-old resident of the borough has just released his fifth book, “Port Jervis.”

Having developed my collecting interest and done research for my master's degree in Comecticut, I am very familiar with many of the old sites included in this fascinating glimpse at mining in Connecticut.

Come a little farther south, and learn about Akron-Canton Football Heritage, a book that declares, ``To the people of this region, the Tigris and the Euphrates are the start of human civilization, but Route 21 and Interstate 77 are the start of life.''

MURRIETA - If a picture still is worth a thousand words, then three local residents have teamed up to produce an epic on Murrieta's history. Titled "Images of America: Murrieta" and released last month as part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, the 128-page book contains 214 photographs accompanied by lengthy captions that detail the city's history.

As so many people move into Baltimore's changing neighborhoods, I often get asked about books to help reveal Baltimore's story. It's a sign of this region's vitality that so many new volumes have cropped up this holiday selling season.

Longtime Glendale residents Carol and Charles St. Clair have pieced together Glendale's history through photos in a book released last month by Arcadia Publishing.

CORONA - Local historian Mary Bryner Winn first captured Corona's past in a book of photographs released in 2005. Now, Winn returns to document local history with a book of postcards.

Robert Nelson didn’t think he had any ties to Arizona as a young boy cleaning his family’s mausoleum in his hometown of Falls City, Neb. The mausoleum houses the bodies of the Dorrington family — including John W. Dorrington, owner of The Arizona Sentinel newspaper in Yuma in the late 19th and early 20 centuries.

Claudine Chalmers has written a book, "Images of America: Grass Valley." That doesn't sound unusual until you hear her story. A native of France who now divides her time between Mill Valley and Grass Valley with a yearly trip to France to visit family, Chalmers says she became enchanted with the Gold Country when she moved to the United States more than 40 years ago.

RIPLEY - More than 40 people lined up in the conference room at the Union Township Public Library in Ripley on Sunday afternoon to obtain signatures from the husband-wife author team who wrote the most recent book released on Brown County's history.

Turning each page of “Images of America: Glendale” is like taking a stroll down memory lane.The pictorial history is divided into seven chapters that begin with “The Early Years” and end with “A City on the Move.”

SAN LORENZO — When Doris Marciel, a third-generation native of San Lorenzo, was in elementary school in the 1940s, most of the area was farmland.

Not every neighborhood has a history worth sharing with other people. But in the Olde Wythe section of Hampton, the history reaches back far and deep.

YREKA – A group of local historians is seeking photograph submissions for an upcoming book documenting Yreka history through pictures.

This collection of historical images documents the islands and villages of Newport, Balboa, and Corona del Mar. The seaside resorts had been a place for dory fishing, bustling wharf traffic with railroad transportation, and visitors who arrived in Pacific Electric Cars.

GREEN TWP. - Longtime township resident Jeff Lueders used his writing skills to preserve the history of Green Township. In his most recent book, Lueders, 51, details the rich history of the township from its humble beginnings as a rural farming community in 1809 to its recent recognition as the largest township in Ohio.

In a book filled with memorable photographs, Norman Grimm has a clear favorite. It's on page 93, and shows his father, George, pictured with other members of the Alexandria Police Department's pistol team around 1947. Grimm's father, who created the boys' camp band, was a member of the force from 1927 to 1965.

The hiss of the steam, the shrill sound of the whistle cutting the solitude of a quiet summer afternoon, the smoke billing out of the stack of old 2 Spot as it glides across the tracks that connect Oak Meadow Park with Lake Vasona.

MASON - Three quarters of a century after golfing legend Bobby Jones teed off the first ball at the Sharon Woods golf course in Hamilton County, a Mason man was inspired by a photograph of the event to write a book.

In one sense, the second book also deals with wild places, or at least onetime wild places. Arcadia Publishing's prolific Images of America series of photo-driven local histories has introduced readers to several thousand American places, but it's likely the back story of "Ironwood, Hurley and the Gogebic Range" (Arcadia Publishing, $19.99) could hold its own with any of them.

Relive the glory days of glider and sail planes in northern Michigan with "Soaring and Gliding: The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Area" (Arcadia, $19.99).

After Sept. 11, 2001, there was an outpouring of thanks and praise for firefighters. However, these heroes were battling blazes of all sorts long before Al-Qaida attacked, and Schaumburg author Karen Kruse always gave them their due.

Since 1870, the Alexandria Police Department has served and protected the people of the city. Now there is a new book that pays tribute to the men and women of the department.

A runner jogging West Cliff trail might not give a passing thought to the shifting rock under her feet. Home-builders, enticed by the hefty profits high property values allow, build dangerously close to eroding cliffs.

“The Mission is the city’s first neighborhood.” So says Mission District native Bernadette C. Hooper, author of San Francisco’s Mission District, the latest book on San Francisco from Arcadia Publishing.

Bill Hart of Plainsboro had a busy October. His third book is “Images of America Series: East Orange” and he has already had book signings in East Orange and at the recent Plainsboro Historical lecture. He also led two of the three Plainsboro Trolley Tours on October 21.

It's tough keeping up with the local history books that flow out of Arcadia Publishing, but I'm working on it. The newest title to land on my desk is "Cincinnati Boxing," by father and son Kevin and Joshua Grace with an introduction by Cincinnati pizza man and boxing fan Buddy LaRosa

A publisher of photo-filled local history books has found a welcoming audience -- and many willing authors -- in Monterey County.

Railroads of Los Gatos by Edward J. Kelley with Peggy Conaway debuts November 6. Peggy's 2004 book, Los Gatos, was also published by Arcadia. The earlier collection of town photos was part of the Images of America series; the new book is from Images of Rail.

In the 1940s there was an optimal time to go into George Hale’s barbershop. “My Uncle George drank a little,” said Marvin Curran, one of the authors of the new book “Images of America: Murrieta.” “If you went in before 10 [a.m.] his hands were still too shaky. If you went in after 1 p.m. he was already drinking.”

Authors Robert Sands and Barbara Turner found themselves confronted by a dilemma as they compiled a pictorial history book on the history of Woodbury. What do they leave out?

The Images of America book series is slowly but surely chronicling every corner of the country. The series, published by Arcadia Publishing, has already released books about Boone, Blowing Rock, Abingdon, and Early Tourism in Western North Carolina. The latest edition, dedicated to Caldwell County and the city of Lenoir, fills an important gap in the series.

Anthony Mitchell Sammarco has just had his third book about South Boston released (October 9). It is one of the popular “Then & Now” series published by Arcadia Publishing. It is called simply “South Boston” and it is basically a book of photographs, half of which are current day, and half going back as much as a century or more. The old photographs are coupled with the new photographs one-to-one, so that each set presents a graphic contrast demonstrating how South Boston has changed.

This 128 page book about the Torrance, Calif. Airport - officially Zamperini Field – is a nostalgic look at one of America's most important airfields, preserving its history for future generations.

Tybee Island: The Long Branch of the South by Robert A. Ciucevich (Arcadia Publishing, 2005; ISBN 0-7385-2475-1, $24.99). There was a Tybee Island prior to Sandra Bullock's arrival, and it is well-documented in this volume. Tybee has long been a family beach area, but in recent years has become the new hot property. Ciucevich, a local historian, has done considerable research on the subject of Tybee and has produced a very enjoyable book.

It’s getting close to the holiday season, and here in Chicago, that definitely means a trip downtown to visit State Street’s crown jewel, Marshall Field’s Department Store. But, behold, the name was officially changed as on September 9, 2006 and in my humble opinion, the store with “The Christmas Spirit” is no longer.

The early twentieth century brought the railroad to eastern Kentucky, forever changing both landscapes and lives. Photographer John G. Kinner documented these changes, and author Martha Hall Quigley pays tribute to his historic images in this volume, the newest addition to Arcadia’s Images of Rail series.

In an effort to preserve local history and raise funds for the proposed Heritage Room of the Murrieta Public Library that is under construction in the area of Jefferson and Jupiter in Historic Downtown Murrieta, local writers and long-time residents have joined talents to piece together the history of Murrieta into a beautifully created new pictorial history book.

Gary Griggs has been studying the California coast for nearly 40 years. As a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UCSC, he is particularly interested in what he calls "applied coastal geology," the study of areas where the human element interacts with - geology.

There was a time when human beings spoke to each other – they communicated one-on-one. Families ate meals together. Adults sat on the front porch and visited with neighbors, while the children played in the yard. By the mid-1960s, many people had moved to the suburbs and broken old ties. Television replaced storytelling in the same way fresh food gave way to frozen TV dinners.

My interest in Victorian architecture started with my childhood home in the Belmont section of West Philadelphia, has been part of my life ever since, and even launched me into the publishing world in my senior years.

Readers who enjoy our photo essays will get a kick out of this series! More than 200 black-and-white photographs bring to life the people, places and events that define a community or region in each book from this wonderful series that preserves our nation’s shared history.

When Daniel Hendrick started to write a book about Jamaica Bay and its history, he did not realize just how big a task he had taken on himself.