Town Histories

In the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice.

Trochenbrod was the only freestanding, fully realized Jewish town in history. It began with a few Jewish settlers searching for freedom from the Russian Czars’ oppressive policies, which included the forced conscriptions of one son from each Jewish family household throughout Russia. This scene of ethnic harmony was soon shattered, as Trochenbrod vanished in 1941 - her residents slaughtered, her homes, buildings, and factories razed to the ground.

They’d prepared for this moment all their lives without believing anything would ever come of it...they were wrong. Danae knew before she ever heard her brother’s voice that it was bad...and it didn’t take long to find out just how bad it was. She’d always understood the high cost of secrets...and quickly learned that sometimes the price of truths was far more costly. It took her even less time to realize that she’d never really known true fear. She did now and knew that the heart-pounding terror she’d experienced in those handful of moments when a gun was pointed at her brother...

It's March 1942. Singapore has fallen. Darwin has been bombed. Australia is on the brink of being invaded by the Imperial Japanese Forces. And Val Callahan, publican of The Brown's Bar in Townsville, could not be happier as she contemplates the fortune she's making from lonely, thirsty soldiers.

A historical fiction novel set in the Five Towns of England during the late 19th century, Three Penny Sunday offers an engaging journey into the life of an intriguing character, Edward Henry Walker, born in 1867. Tracing his trajectory from a modest upbringing in Bursley to prominence, the novel weaves a rich tableau of the era's local pottery industry often referred to as "potbanks", and the tight-knit, gossip-ridden community that shapes the town's social and political landscape. Henry's Course Initially an ordinary boy, Henry secures a surprise scholarship at twelve, albeit through ...

They say a single moment can change your life. For Cornish artist Sennen Kellow, that moment comes with the discovery of her late gran’s epic love story—a story that happened years before she ever met Sennen’s grandfather. Now, as Sennen digs into her grandmother’s past and discovers a forgotten beach, a hidden poem and a love that blazed brightly before Fate intervened, her search for answers leads her on a fated journey of her own. One which sees history repeating itself, and Sennen faced with a chance at the kind of once-in-a-lifetime love her gran experienced.

George Mergenthaler, the grandson of the inventor of the Linotype, was an only child, and at the time of his birth in 1920, became the sole male heir the family fortune. Tall, handsome, Ivy League educated, speaking fluent German and French, "Merg" as he was know to his friends, did what many in his generation did following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor: He enlisted in the Army.

Step into a twisty, time-bending mystery where small-town secrets collide with supernatural intrigue! Quinn Harper never asked to see auras, but when glowing colors start swirling around people in Pine Harbor, she realizes her sleepy town is anything but ordinary. A creepy new teacher, a shadowy diver appearing in the mist, and a lighthouse that seems to reset reality—something isn’t right. As Quinn unravels the town’s hidden past, she discovers that Pine Harbor is trapped in a time loop, orchestrated by an ancient entity that feeds on sorrow. With the help of her sharp-witted ...

daily life of a man who discovers he is in love and that he can become a teacher in a small rural town and marry. Then his adventures begin.

Barney Dwyer is a gentle giant who has yet to find a place in the world. Capturing two notorious outlaws has made a hero of him, so much so that rancher Robert Parmelee offers him a job on his ranch to put a stop to persistent rustling. Taking the job promises an income sufficient for Barney to marry his sweetheart. But this promise for the future falls into jeopardy when the outlaws escape, determined to kill Barney.

A remote sanctuary near Yellow Point became my escape from a haunting history in the MMA ring. Under an alias I meet Abbey James, local host of a popular paranormal YouTube channel, and her captivating spirit and inquisitive nature draw me in. As she conducts a pivotal investigation on my own property, my guarded nature only intensifies her curiosity and she begins to unravel my true identity. Though we’re nothing alike, I can’t seem to distance myself from this woman, but the weight of my secrets threatens to tear us apart. When danger strikes I must choose between protecting Abbey or ...

This is the third book in THE CRIMPER OF OLD TOWN novella series… Portland, Oregon - Spring 1876… Morris and Drexler combine their skills and robbery earnings to buy and remodel a rundown hotel that soon provides more than just luxurious accommodations to Old Town's finest visitors. Through strife and absurdity, their venture flourishes, drawing the attention of nefarious competitors along the way... Told with saturated visuals and a tongue-in-cheek approach, The Crimper of Old Town, is a fast-paced saga set against the underbelly of America’s port cities. Featuring a raucous group of...

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

In this chapter from Lynn Thorndike's The History of Medieval Europe, gradually there grew up in the medieval West a native merchant class who devoted most of their time to buying and selling. They found it advisable to band together for mutual support and protection; in the towns a merchant guild arose as a sort of medieval chamber of commerce. A guild consisted of apprentices, journeymen, and master-workmen.

Given its background and location, the story of Milwaukee may have resembled other nearby cities like Detroit or Chicago, but Milwaukee would have its own flavors and characters thanks to the unique ethnicities and businesses that arrived early on. Before the beer capital of the country became Brew Town, it was Cream Town, and before that it was just a trading post, where some men with a dream came to live.

There is a corner of every town and city in Britain where the air is tangy with vinegar and thick with the scent of frying. It is almost impossible not to follow this mesmeric vapour trail, fuelling a nostalgic rush of parents across the land declaring ‘Chippy tea!’, followed by the golden anticipation of the chip shop queue. In this lively and relatable book, acclaimed author Daniel Gray ponders the magic of chippies and rejoices in the delights they have sprinkled among us over the last 150 years.

This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the outback - a desolate place of gas stations and fast-food franchises: flat and nearly abandoned. When a young writer arrives to research just such depressing middles-of-nowhere as they are choked into oblivion, he finds something more sinister than economic depression: The ghost towns of Australia appear to be literally disappearing. An epidemic of mysterious holes is threatening his new home’s very existence, and this discovery plunges the researcher into an abyss of weirdness from which he may never escape.

After five years of virtual banishment because he sold out his small outfit to the Middle Arizona Cattle Company, giving it a foothold on the Mesa Grande range, violent-tempered Joe Bonnyman is summoned back to Lodgepole by his father when it appears that a cattle war between the syndicate and the various rangers is imminent. During his short stay in town, Joe has an unpleasant meeting with Ed Merrill, the brother of a girl Joe had once courted.

Peace & Health is the story behind this improbable effort: the 20-year-old who plants the flag in his small hometown of Middletown, Connecticut; the daughter of a sharecropper, who made her way north during the great migration and becomes the North Star of the drive to transform health in the community.