Arcadia Bestsellers

Champion Race Horses of the Empire State

From Saratoga to Belmont Park, New York hosts some of horse racing's most important races, but many of the most successful thoroughbreds of the past five decades also have called the state home. Say Florida Say seemed to only improve with age, winning thirty-three times throughout a seven-year career that made him a regional favorite in the 1990s. The first ever New York horse to win the Kentucky derby, Funny Cide, rose to national prominence in 2003, winning both the Derby and the Preakness in incredible fashion. The thoroughbred Audible shared owners with triple-crown winner Justify, and though embroiled in some controversy as a result, was also an elite race horse during a brief career.

Author Allan Carter highlights the stories behind the greatest New York thoroughbreds of the past half-century.

Cape Cod has a rich tradition of local lore, stretching back to a time before the Pilgrims arrived.

Ancient Wampanoag legends like Granny Squannit and Princess Scargo are as familiar as tales of pirates and explorers, including "Black Sam" Bellamy and Donald Baxter Macmillan. Felines often blocked "Cat's Alley" in pursuit of food from fishermen's boats. The remnants of Billingsgate Island can be seen at low tide, and visits from Jenny Lind and Helen Keller contrast with the mysterious stories of the "Lady of the Dunes" and New England's Dark Day. Author Robin Smith-Johnson shares historic tales of shipwrecks, murders, hauntings and more from the Cape.

Venture off the beaten path down forgotten roads and discover where a hidden South Carolina exists.

Time-travel and dead-end at a ferry that leads to wild islands. Cross a rusting steel truss bridge into a scene from the 1930s. Behold an old gristmill and imagine its creaking, clashing gears grinding corn. See an old gas pump wreathed in honeysuckle. Drive through a ghost town and wonder why it died. When's the last time you saw a country store's cured hams hanging from wires? How about a vintage Bull Durham tobacco ad on old brick? Author Tom Poland explores scenic back roads that lead to heirloom tomatoes, poke salad, restaurants that were once gas stations, overgrown ruins and other soulful relics.

Ghastly Hospitality

The footsteps of silver kings, grizzled miners and sleek saloon girls faded, but their dark shadows still whisper in the halls and glide silently down the stairs. Heartbroken Dr. Luigi ended his life with a .45 at Silverton’s Grand Imperial but still makes his nightly rounds, checking on guests’ health. Furious Liz, abandoned by her lover, breaks dishes and throws pots around the Forest Queen’s kitchen. The laughter of the Tarabino children echoes through the halls of their home, now the Tarabino Inn. In the silence of the night, pretty Ellar Day screams bloody murder at the Beaumont.

Author Nancy Williams revisits the unbridled revelry, scandalous romps and grand gala affairs that characterized the unique hotels where the paranormal persists.

The first orange groves, planted in St. Augustine in the 1500s by Ponce de León, were the precursor to what would become an integral part of Florida's identity.

Orange groves slowly spread across the state, inspiring horticultural and manufacturing ingenuity. Discover the story behind Deland's eccentric "citrus wizard'? Lue Gim Gong, the rise and fall of smuggler Jesse Fish and the silver-tongued politician William J. Howey, who made his fortune selling plots of groveland through the 1920s. Celebrate the heyday of orange tourism and the farmers who weathered freezes, floods and citrus greening. Join author Erin Thursby as she explores the history of the Sunshine State's most famous crop.

The Plott bear hound, a dog originally from Germany and developed in the North Carolina mountains, is known as one of the world's best hunting dog breeds.

Recognized now as one of the premier hunting dogs in America, the Plott bear hound is unique among hunting dog breeds because it descends from Germanic stock rather than the traditional English foxhound. The breed's story began when its original breeder, Johannes Plott, and his brother Enoch left Germany in 1750 with their prized hunting dogs. This trip across the Atlantic began the two-hundred-year journey that would culminate in the North Carolina mountains with the development of what is now arguably the world's finest breed of hunting dog. This fascinating story of the Plott family and the Plott hound is a classic American tale of adventurers and underdogs--a story that Bob Plott, the great-great-great-grandson of Johannes Plott, is uniquely qualified to tell.

Discover the Motor City before the motor: a muddy port town full of grog shops, horse races, haphazard cemeteries and enterprising bootstrappers from all over the world.

Meet the argumentative French fugitive who founded the city, the tobacco magnate who haunts his shuttered factory, the gambler prankster millionaire who built a monument to himself, the governor who brought his scholarly library with him on canoe expeditions and the historians who helped create the story of Detroit as we know it: one of the oldest, rowdiest and most enigmatic cities in the Midwest.

With fewer than a thousand remaining in the United States, the covered bridges of Alabama are an important relic of the paths our ancestors took.

Alabama's covered bridges are reminiscent of a more romantic time, when people rode in horse-drawn buggies and couples stole kisses beneath their roofs. But they are also keepers of history - structures built by former slaves and Civil War soldiers. Such places are steeped in legend, including tales of ghostly children and the hanging of a sheriff turned outlaw. Just eleven historic covered bridges survive in Alabama - the oldest dating to the 1850s - but dozens of more recently constructed spans dot the landscape. Wil Elrick and Kelly Kazek provide photos and detailed information on more than fifty Alabama bridges, reveal the fate of the state's lost bridges and delve into the haunting legends surrounding these nostalgic structures.

Go inside the people and places that made Atlanta the pop music capital of the United States in the second half of the 20th century.

Former DJ Bill Lowery attracted a galaxy of talent and created an empire of music publishing, production and promotion. In 1956, the Lowery Music Company had its first million copy-selling hit single with "Be-Bop-a-Lula,'? by Gene Vincent. Under Lowery's direction, popular artists like Tommy Roe and Billy Joe Royal flourished. Audio engineer Rodney Mills teamed up with Lowery and future Atlanta Rhythm Section manager Buddy Buie to build Studio One, a recording studio that produced albums from legendary acts such as Joe South, Lynyrd Skynyrd, 38 Special and others. Andy Lee White and John M. Williams offer a comprehensive portrait of the vibrant postwar Atlanta music scene.

Temperance workers had their work cut out for them in the Upper Peninsula. It was a wild and woolly place where moonshiners, bootleggers and rumrunners thrived.

Al Capone and the Purple Gang came north to keep Canadian whiskey passing through Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago and Detroit. Federal enforcement agent John Fillion double-crossed both his office and the bootleggers. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island survived due to gambling and fine Canadian whiskey brought in by rumrunners, sometimes assisted by the Coast Guard. Author Russell M. Magnaghi dives into the raucous history of Yooper Prohibition.

Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States began to prepare to enter World War II.

When the army decided to build a depot in Seneca County in 1941, dozens of families were given only days to vacate the homes they loved and land they had farmed for generations. The depot provided vital jobs for residents, but it also continued to cause controversy even after it was established--all while providing critical support for the army through the Persian Gulf War. Since the base closed in 2000, the community has grappled with what to do with the property, including protecting the area population of white deer. Join local historians Carolyn Zogg and Walter Gable as they tell the story of the Seneca Army Depot and the lives it has affected.

Discover four hundred years of Maine's history through the tales of its unique residents.

Maine history would be bare but for the contributions of hardy and impassioned individuals whose lives make up the story of Maine's "hidden history." Author Harry Gratwick creates intimate and detailed portraits of these Mainers, from the controversial missionary Sebastien Rale to Woolwich native William Phips, whose seafaring attacks against French Canada earned him the first governorship of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gratwick also profiles inventors such as Robert Benjamin Lewis, an African American from Gardiner who patented a hair growth product in the 1830s, and Margaret Knight, a York native who defied nineteenth-century sexism to earn the nickname "the female Edison." From soprano Lillian Nordica, who left Farmington to become the most glamorous American opera singer of her day, to slugger George "Piano Legs" Gore, the only Mainer to have ever won a Major League batting championship.