Minnesota

Minnesota history teems with more stories than its geography gushes with lakes. Pass the interminable winter with the unsolved mystery of the Kensington Runestone or the forgotten legacy of Long Prairie battlegrounds. Spend a short summer coasting through the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness and the Excelsior Amusement Park. From downtown Minneapolis to dockside Duluth, Minnesota’s history is an all-weather companion and our Minnesota history book catalogue is an all-purpose guide. [View all Minnesota books]
4 products
Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang in Minnesota
Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang in Minnesota
$21.99
Minnesota Mayhem
Minnesota Mayhem
$23.99
Murder in Chisago County
Murder in Chisago County
$21.99 $11.00 Save 50%
Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King
Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King
$21.99

Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang in Minnesota

9781467146227

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
From their home base in Minnesota, the Karpis-Barker Gang cut a swath of crime and terror across the Midwest in the early 1930s. They kidnapped two important businessmen and held them for exorbitant ransoms. They stole payrolls and robbed banks as the bullets flew. Corrupt police and wily crime bosses helped Alvin Karpis and the Barker brothers Freddie and Doc every step of the way. Who were these men and women? What made them into killers and kidnappers? How did their reckless lifestyles lead to their downfall? From Ma Barker to Volney Davis to Edna Murray the Kissing Bandit, authors Deborah Frethem and Cynthia Schreiner Smith delve into the crimes, personalities and motivations of one of the most successful and infamous gangs in American history.
Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang in Minnesota

Minnesota Mayhem

9781609495978

$23.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
Turn back the yellowing pages of Minnesota's past and explore the best of the state's worst moments, as chronicled in the Minneapolis Tribune and its successor newspapers. These stories and photos, culled from the Star Tribune's microfilm archive by author Ben Welter, range from the catastrophic to the merely curious. From a fire that destroyed the State Capitol in 1881, to a wordless fistfight that broke out on a Minneapolis street in 1898, a flu outbreak that killed more than 10,000 Minnesotans in 1918 and the arrest of Frank Lloyd Wright at a Lake Minnetonka cottage in 1926.
Minnesota Mayhem

Murder in Chisago County

9781467142335

$21.99 $11.00 Save 50%
At 3:30 a.m. on April 11, 1933, neighbors and firefighters arrived at the farmhouse of Albin and Alvira Johnson to find a smoldering heap where a seemingly happy home once stood. Beneath the ruins, investigators found the bodies of Alvira and her seven children, but Albin's remains were nowhere to be seen. The authorities determined that Alvira and the children were dead before the fire, and fingers immediately pointed to Albin. Hundreds of searchers, including the illustrious Pinkerton Agency, combed the area and even crossed into Canada in pursuit of Johnson, who was indicted in absentia for murder. But he was never found, dead or alive. What happened to the Johnson family and what part, if any, Albin played in the tragedy remain a mystery. Twin Cities journalist Brian Johnson tells the story that has beguiled the community for generations.
Murder in Chisago County

Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King

9781626192072

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
From 1887 to 1893, the era Frederick Jackson Turner marked as the close of the American frontier, a young woman scandalized the residents of the Dakotas, Minnesota and northern Wisconsin with her fetching appearance, eccentric behavior and criminal misdeeds. Best known as Nellie King, she employed over a dozen other aliases throughout her career as fake detective, horse thief, laudanum fiend and general disturber of the dubious peace of saloons and brothels across the northern plains. She attracted sensational headlines, love-struck suitors and stray revolver shots with equal abandon; her story's Dickensian cast of characters included a hapless counterfeiter, a dashing physician, a battle-hardened magician and a determined mother. In this engaging narrative, Jerry Kuntz pieces together the clues to her true identity for the first time.
Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King