Marketplace

Unearth the history behind northern Ohio's best treasure tales, from sunken ships to misplaced spoils of war. Perfect for fans of historical mysteries and legends.

Encounter a cast of characters as rich as any secret hoard, such as the notorious gangster John Dillinger, who left a trail of robbed banks, dead bodies and buried loot across the northwest stretch of the state. Read about the disaster that befell the G.P. Griffith, the tragic massacre of a family for money and the Ohio counterfeiters who plagued the nation. But tread cautiously in your treasure hunt--Mad Anthony Wayne'sgold is said to be jealously guarded by a dark, ghostly figure.

Author Wendy Koile is a lifelong resident of Ohio. In 2012 she published her first book, Geneva on the Lake: A History of Ohio's First Summer Resort. When not writing or traveling, Koile teaches at Zane State College. Koile founded her own treasure hunting club, First Glass Gals.

At its height, Cleveland was a center of industry. Nearly a million people called the city home, and all of them needed various assortments of goods, wares and sundries. To serve their desires, fabulous stores once graced the city. The names alone - Higbee's, Halle's, May Company, Taylor Son & Company, Sterling Linder and Bailey's - conjure a comforting memory of sophisticated style and lost glamour. At the heart of this consumer paradise stood Euclid Avenue, Cleveland's golden façade. With its dynamic retail stores, homes to countless millionaires, and elevated air, it was one of a trio of famous American retail promenades alongside New York's Fifth Avenue and State Street in Chicago.

Author of Lost Cleveland and Lost Grand Hotels of Cleveland, Mike DeAloia offers an illuminating chronicle of the city's golden age of prestige and elegance.

The perfect keepsake of a trip to beautiful, historic Natchez, this delightful postcard book also allows a slice of the antebellum South to be sent to friends and family. Stanton Hall, the headquarters for the world-famous annual Natchez Pilgrimage, and Texada, a brick building that has served as everthing from a tavern to a town meeting hall, are but two of the architectural marvels presented.

For visitors to Natchez, this postcard book will preserve many fond memories and will also allow them to send the essence of the Old South to friends and family unable to visit Natchez themselves.

The only comprehensive history of one of America's most infamous prisons, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, PA.

Looming on the horizon like a storm cloud made of stone, the Eastern State Penitentiary spent more than a century as the fortress that both the law-abiding and criminal feared. In this superbly balanced and thoroughly researched volume, Paul Kahan presents the history of this revolutionary penitentiary, from its inception as a model of the revolutionary Pennsylvania System of incarceration in 1829 to the demands for its closure in the wake of ever-increasing violence in 1971. Through tales of spectacular escapes, official corruption, reformation and retribution, Kahan chronicles the tensions that plagued Eastern State since the arrival of its first prisoners.

With an eye for bizarre, macabre detail, Keven McQueen tracks down seventeen true crimes and unsolved mysteries in this collection of historic Hoosier homicides.

This grim collection of tales includes unimaginable incidents like the Indianapolis businessman whose car contained suspicious hams and the man who handed his new bride a drink of carbolic acid. It also reveals the tragedy of Gary's beautiful Arlene Draves, killed by her football player boyfriend, as well as a surprisingly comic courtroom revelation by Hammond's Hazel McNally that cleared her of all charges.

Author Keven McQueen is an instructor in the Department of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of twelve books on biography, history, folklore, ghost lore, natural disasters and historical true crime.

Boston journalists Beverly Ford and Stephanie Schorow navigate the backrooms and seedy hangouts throughout the real story of Boston's gangster past.

The capture of notorious mobster James "Whitey" Bulger closed an infamous chapter in Boston history, yet the city's criminal underworld has a long and bloody rap sheet that stretches back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Ford and Schorow reveal the underbelly of Boston through profiles of ruthless gangsters like Charles "King" Solomon, the Angiulo brothers, Joseph "The Animal" Barboza, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and many more who carried out deadly hits and lucrative heists.

The surpsing story of the Cog Railway on Mount Washington, and how one eccentric man's dream paved the way.

On July 3, 1869, the three-and-one-third-mile track leading to the summit of picturesque Mount Washington opened for public use. Once, only those daring enough to scale the 6,288 feet could enjoy the splendor of the scenery, but now everyone could journey to the summit using the invention of retired businessman Sylvester Marsh, who dreamed of this mountainous mode of transportation. Created at the height of the age of rail, the Cog Railway continues to chug up the mountain and into the hearts of tourists each year. Local historian Bruce D. Heald ties the history of its construction together with the grand romance of the railway as they triumphantly converge at the top of Mount Washington.

This book made me laugh out loud and also gave me glimpses of an entire horizon of possibility I hadn't seen before.--Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy.

In 2008, Geoghegan―then an established labor lawyer and prolific writer―embarked on a campaign to represent Chicago's Fifth District in Congress, in a special election called when Rahm Emanuel stepped down to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. For ninety days leading up to the election, Geoghegan, a political neophyte at age sixty, knocked on doors, shook hands at train stations, and made fundraising calls. On election night he lost, badly.

But this humbling experience helped him develop a framework for reimagining American government in a way that is truly just, fair, and constitutional. Taking its title from Walt Whitman, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written: How We Have to Learn to Govern All Over Again, combines hilarious tales from his time on the campaign trail with an incisive vision of how we might be able to create an America that fulfills its great promise. In a polarized country, where 100 million citizens don't vote, and those who do are otherwise rarely politically engaged, he makes an impassioned case for the possibility of a truly representative democracy, one built on the ideals of the House of Representatives, the true chamber of the people, and inspired by the poet who gives the book its name.

At once an engaging memoir and a call to arms, The History of Democracy Is Yet to Be Written will inspire and invigorate political veterans and young activists alike.

A passionate and well-informed study on the importance of improving inclusiveness in mental health evaluations.―Kirkus Reviews

In a clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, author of the critically acclaimed This City Is Killing Me, takes us through troubling examples of bias in mental health work. Placing them in context of past blunders in the history of psychiatry and the DSM, he looks closely at questions that lay bare the intersections between mental health care, race, gender, and sexuality:

- Why are women more likely to be labeled borderline personalities?

- Is transphobia being treated today like homosexuality was in the past?

- Has protest psychosis, a term used to diagnose Black men during the civil rights era, simply been renamed schizoaffective disorder?

- How different is our current label of intellectual disability from the history of eugenics?

- What does it actually mean to be diagnosed with a mental illness?

This slim but wide-ranging collection of essays wrestles with these questions and offers potential ways forward in a world where mental health diagnoses can be helpful, but not necessarily absolute.

A pragmatic and sympathetic guide to how we might craft a better and more just therapeutic future for all people.

Beginning with the Spanish padres in 1769 and reaching its apex in the 1950s, California’s rise to a global leader in agriculture rested on a series of converging events. California’s population exploded during the Gold Rush, and many who chose to stay found their gold in California’s sunshine, fertile soil, and optimal growing climate.

Initially, those settlers grew staples such as grain, but by the early 1900s, due to innovations in irrigation, transportation, mechanization, and food processing, California rose to the nation’s top grower and shipper of fresh produce. California currently grows over two thirds of America’s fruits and nuts and over one third of its vegetables, and each fruit, vegetable, nut, and grain has its own unique backstory. California’s crop history is full of the risk-taking and determination of pioneers, immigrants, and entrepreneurs. California also deserves credit for many modern marketing and advertising methods, and the preponderance of food “capitals of the world” is a nostalgic feature of California culture.

Patti DesMarais has lived in six California cities. She has a bachelor of arts degree in television and film production from San Diego State University and a master of arts in humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills. She collects vintage crate labels and has picked lemons, oranges, grapefruits, peaches, and avocados from her own California backyards.

In Currents in the Electric City, an installment in Belt’s City Anthologies series, the story of Scranton gets told by the people who know it best.

Scranton, PA, is more than just the setting for The Office. It's the hub of Northeastern Pennsylvania with a rich industrial and labor history. It’s also a small town in many ways: Are you really from Scranton if your family doesn’t go back several generations (as Maria Johnson asks)? Neighborhood talk can reveal your family secrets before you even know them yourself, as Barbara J. Taylor writes. The essays and poems in this collection show the city as it is today, a Rust Belt city that often serves as a punchline for being stuck in the past but one that is very much alive, with stories to tell. Learn about a Gujarati family’s experience, the small but hearty LGBTQ community, the beauty of the Lackawanna River Valley, and the foreign plants along the roadside that mirror the people who emigrated to the region alongside memories from the past: playing on culm banks, the multigenerational family who thrived in a now-dilapidated home, and even voices from the people buried in Dunmore Cemetery. Through it all runs the juxtaposed desire to leave and pull to stay, or return. Though many have heard of Scranton—through television, as President Joe Biden’s birthplace, or as a so-called relic of the past—nobody knows it like the people who call it home.

King Philip’s War not only left much of early New England in ruins, but it also left a permanent psychic scar upon the land that still resonates in the many haunted places where wartime tragedies took place.

Ghosts of both settlers and indigenous peoples flourish in the region to this day where battles, murders, and massacres took place. Even the ghost of Metacom, better known as King Philip, roams the many places he held dear in life. Visit Nine Men’s Misery in Cumberland, Rhode Island, where screams of the victims of the war can still be heard. Take a trip to Hockamock Swamp where ghosts and strange creatures roam among the thicket. Stroll the paths along Sin and Flesh Brook where the ghost of Reverend Howland is seen centuries after he was brutally murdered by the enemy. These are just a few of the many places that still harbor eternal tenants from one of the bloodiest conflicts ever fought on American soil.

Authors Thomas D’Agostino and Arlene Nicholson uncover the dark side of what is largely considered the “Forgotten War.”

Dig into a first-hand account of excavations at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

A small earthen fort on Roanoke Island, traditionally known as Old Fort Raleigh, was the site of the first English colony in the Americas. Previous archaeological discoveries at the site left many questions unanswered by the 1990s. Where was the main fort and town founded by Raleigh's lieutenant, Ralph Lane, the first governor? Was the small log structure outside the fort really a defensive outwork? And why did the colonists go to the effort of making bricks from the local clay? These are the questions that scholars hoped to answer in an extensive, professional dig funded by National Geographic from 1991 to 1993. This skilled team of excavators-with a little luck-revealed America's first scientific laboratory, where the Elizabethan scientist Thomas Harriot analyzed North American natural resources and Joachim Gans assayed ores for valuable metals.

Famed archaeologist of Colonial America Ivor Noël Hume describes the labor-intensive process of discoveries at Fort Raleigh.

The Eerie and Ominous in Kentucky 

Kentucky is no stranger to strange occurrences. From weird encounters with the Grim Reaper to local graveyard dogs, the Bluegrass State has its share of odd stories. Learn about local ghosts who’ve haunted areas for years. Encounter body snatchers and some very odd modes of death. Go on the hunt for Daniel Boone’s bones and witness the marvelous twisting tombstone. Witness the people who uncannily predicted their own death. Author Keven McQueen details these creepy stories and more. 

Untold stories of Howard County's rich and fascinating past.

First settled in the 17th century when the area was part of Anne Arundel County, early towns formed around grist mills. Nearby quarries and mills shaped Ellicott City before the more well-known impact of the B&O Railroad in the 1830s. Cotton mills flourished, and mill towns like Savage grew. In the 20th century Savage briefly became the Christmas capital of the country. It was also a well-known sundown town. Historically Black communities dealt with battles over education as the state emerged from segregation. Development brought suburban neighborhoods and change to rural areas, and planned communities like Columbia affected Guilford and other surrounding towns. Local authors Nathan Davis and Wayne Davis explore local myths and uncover erased histories.

Burlington has long been known as the shining jewel in Vermont's crown, but a current of darkness flows beneath this charming port on Lake Champlain.

There is a sordid side to the city that top-ten lists routinely call one of the country's most livable cities,” with stories of dirty cops, notorious ladies of the night, knife wielding psychopaths, lovers off the deep end and famous serial killers.

Author and tour guide Thea Lewis showcases the cunning culprits who would go to any lengths to get what they wanted, and finally got what was coming to them.