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Michigan Legends: Folktales and Lore from the Great Lakes State
By Sheryl James. 2013
Over the course of its history, the state of Michigan has produced its share of folktales and lore. Many are…
familiar with the Ojibwa legend of Sleeping Bear Dunes, and most have heard a yarn or two told of Michigan's herculean lumberjack, Paul Bunyan. But what about Detroit's Nain Rouge, the red-eyed imp they say bedeviled the city's earliest residents? Or Le Griffon, the Great Lakes' original ghost ship that some believe haunts the waters to this day? Or the Bloodstoppers, Upper Peninsula folk who've been known to halt a wound's bleeding with a simple touch thanks to their magic healing powers? In Michigan Legends, Sheryl James collects these and more stories of the legendary people, events, and places from Michigan's real and imaginary past. Set in a range of historical time periods and locales as well as featuring a collage of ethnic traditions--including Native American, French, English, African American, and Finnish--these tales are a vivid sample of the state's rich cultural heritage. This book will appeal to all Michiganders and anyone else interested in good folktales, myths, legends, or lore.The Way I Heard It: Tales of the Big Bend
By Walter Fulcher. 1940
The folklore of Texas' Big Bend region was still in the making during Walter Fulcher's lifetime. Born in Lampasas County…
in 1887, he worked on the Martin Ranch near Sheffield when a young man. There he witnessed events in the last outlaw activities of the Black Jack Ketchum gang. He also listened to legends told almost as gossip, and some of the legendary figures were still alive—or said to be alive, usually in hiding. In every village there was sure to be some ancient with a good memory and a better imagination, and Walter Fulcher heard many versions of many tales. He has set them down as he heard them, as simple folk tales that reflect the color of a wild and vivid country in 400 years of its settlement.Skywater
By Melinda Worth Popham. 2013
"Brand X and his fellow coyotes . . . are meticulously observed in the desert environment that Ms. Popham seems…
to know like her backyard. And so are the people of this fable--old Hallie and Albert . . . and the several varmint-hunters, callous or alcoholic or both. There is a parable of how we might relate to the creatures that share the world with us; and a parable of dreams versus realty; and a parable of home, of known territory with its comparative safety; and a parable of making the best of a world short of everything. The people and the creatures of Ms. Popham's fable are right, they belong, and they mean." --Wallace Stegner "This spare and affecting novel has the precision and the stinging sweetness of a fable. A wonderful book." --Thomas McGuane "Refreshing . . . Life-affirming . . . The first book I've read in a long time that left me with teary eyes at the end."--The San Diego Tribune "Captivating . . . The animals' arduous westward journey down the Colorado River to the Gulf suggests a coyote world view that is subtly sustained by their mysterious ways." --Publishers Weekly "With dramatic urgency and imaginative tenderness, Melinda Popham has given the world a painful, poetic, and delightfully unpredictable story that pulsates with hope and healing meaning." --Al Young, California Poet Laureate Emeritus "Rich with poetic resonance." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "Evoking a rich sense of place and animal behavior, [Popham] lets us see through very different eyes." --The Seattle Times "A daring and visionary tale. [Popham] dares to tell us what a coyote thinks and sees and feels and dreams. . . . A hero of the classic kind--a furry, howling, water-seeking version of the Hero with a Thousand Faces." --James D. Houston "Masterful . . . Astonishing . . . Remarkable . . . Put down the latest technothriller and bask awhile in the descriptive prose of Skywater." --L.A. LifeA Tree Accurst
By Daniel W. Patterson. 2000
On a wintry night in 1831, a man named Charlie Silver was murdered with an axe and his body burned…
in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. His young wife, Frankie Silver, was tried and hanged for the crime. In later years people claimed that a tree growing near the ruins of the old cabin was cursed--that anyone who climbed into it would be unable to get out. Daniel Patterson uses this "accurst" tree as a metaphor for the grip the story of the murder has had on the imaginations of the local community, the wider world, and the noted Appalachian traditional singer and storyteller Bobby McMillon.For nearly 170 years, the memory of Frankie Silver has been kept alive by a ballad and local legends and by the news accounts, fiction, plays, and other works they inspired. Weaving Bobby McMillon's personal story--how and why he became a taleteller and what this story means to him--into an investigation of the Silver murder, Patterson explores the genesis and uses of folklore and the interplay between folklore, social and personal history, law, and narrative as people and communities try to understand human character and fate.Bobby McMillon is a furniture and hospital worker in Lenoir, North Carolina, with deep roots in Appalachia and a lifelong passion for learning and performing traditional songs and tales. He has received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the state's Arts Council and also the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Folklore Award.Invisible Beasts
By Sharona Muir. 2014
"An amazing feat of imagination." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Invisible Beasts is a strange and beautiful meditation on love and seeing,…
a hybrid of fantasy and field guide, novel and essay, treatise and fable. With one hand it offers a sad commentary on environmental degradation, while with the other it presents a bright, whimsical, and funny exploration of what it means to be human. It's wonderfully written, crazily imagined, and absolutely original." -ANTHONY DOERR, author of All the Light We Cannot See and The Shell CollectorSophie is an amateur naturalist with a rare genetic gift: the ability to see a marvelous kingdom of invisible, sentient creatures that share a vital relationship with humankind. To record her observations, Sophie creates a personal bestiary and, as she relates the strange abilities of these endangered beings, her tales become extraordinary meditations on love, sex, evolution, extinction, truth, and self-knowledge.In the tradition of E.O. Wilson's Anthill, Invisible Beasts is inspiring, philosophical, and richly detailed fiction grounded by scientific fact and a profound insight into nature. The fantastic creations within its pages-an ancient animal that uses natural cold fusion for energy, a species of vampire bat that can hear when their human host is lying, a continent-sized sponge living under the ice of Antarctica-illuminate the role that all living creatures play in the environment and remind us of what we stand to lose if we fail to recognize our entwined destinies.Sharona Muir is the author of The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives. The recipient of a Hodder Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, her writing has appeared in Granta, Orion magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is a Professor of Creative Writing and English at Bowling Green State University. Invisible Beasts is her first novel.The Wild, Wild West: Thrilling Tales by Famous Authors
By Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, O. Henry, Max Brand, Charles Dickens, Bret Harte, Jack London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Stephen Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Washington Irving, Zane Grey, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ambrose Bierce, Walt Whitman, John Muir, John Richard Stephens. 2013
A town that had a man for breakfast every morning.That's how Tombstone, Arizona was described in the late-1800s, bolstering the…
myth that a corpse would be found cooling in the town's dusty streets each sunrise. The reality was quite different and much less violent, of course, but that hasn't kept the fanciful folklore of the Wild West from being retold in the years since, across America and around the world.This book captures the quick-trigger temper and savage spirit of America's frontier days in The Wild, Wild West, an exciting compilation of factual and fictional stories about the Wild West by famous authors.This is a collection of works on the Wild West by many of the world's most famous authors from the 1800s, including Dickens, Wilde, Emerson, Whitman, Longfellow, Muir, Irving, Thoreau, Twain, Kipling, Bierce, London, James Fenimore Cooper, O. Henry, Bret Harte, Zane Grey, Max Brand, Stephen Crane, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson. The selections involve gunfights, outlaws, gold mining, the Pony Express, stagecoach robberies, cowboys, card sharks, vigilantes, lynchings, ghost towns, and sheep, along with tributes to Custer and to the Native Americans who did him in.In a Max Brand tale, a town offers to reward a gunslinger for bringing in a stage robber dead or alive, leading to a battle of wits in the outlaw's canyon hideout. A story by Stephen Crane involves four men who play a card game for fun which ends in death, while Jack London tells of a deadly struggle between a hard-working prospector and an opportunistic murderer over a load of gold. Then there's the very first story that introduced the Cisco Kid to the world, along with the jumping frog story that made Mark Twain famous.The vivid personalities and the stories they give rise to in The Wild, Wild West reveal the truth behind the embroidered legends of the Old West, even as they add to them.(300 pages, 62 illustrations)The Hash Knife Outfit: A Western Story
By Zane Grey. 2016
They are just about as bad and evil as outlaw gangs come. But in the end, they finally go straight.Skyhorse…
Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns-books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians-are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Legend of the Golden Coyote: A Western Duo
By Max Brand. 2017
“Thunder and Lightning” is the story of two men, Soapy Almayer and Jimmy Clarges. When they go to work in…
a lumber camp, their extraordinary strength and the speed that they work leads to their being called Thunder and Lightning. Then one man, afraid to fight either, is crafty enough to use Rosita Alvarado to cause them to fight each other … to the death.“Legend of the Golden Coyote” is the story of a wild coyote, known far and wide for his unusual golden coat. Crafty and ferocious, he will confront even a timber wolf. But he also has a special relationship with a man and his daughter: the girl loves him and the man has spared his life when he might have killed him. When a terrible forest fire threatens them all, the golden coyote faces the painful choice between saving one of his own offspring and leading the human to safety.Kill the Indian: A Killstraight Story
By Johnny D. Boggs. 2012
"Boggs is among the best Western writers at work today. He writes with depth, flavor, and color.” -BooklistYoung Comanches Daniel…
Killstraight and Charles Flint have been called to Texas. Captain Pratt will be giving a talk on the transformations brought about by the Carlisle Industrial School, of which Killstraight and Flint are shining examples. They’ll be joining a Comanche delegation led by Quanah Parker, who will be negotiating grasslands leases-until blown-out gas lamps in Quanah Parker’s room kill a Comanche chief and put Parker in a coma.But the question of who tried to murder Quanah Parker is not an easy one. He had many enemies among both native and white men. Daniel attempts to unravel the mystery while fulfilling his original purpose in Texas-to support Captain Pratt’s talk. But he doesn’t know who to trust, especially as the list of suspects begins to dwindle.Will Killstraight figure out who is after Quanah Parker? Can the land disputes of the People be resolved? And will justice be served by the anti-Indian townspeople? Find out in Johnny D. Boggs’s novel Kill the Indian.The Killing Trail: A Killstraight Story
By Johnny D. Boggs. 2015
"Boggs is among the best Western writers at work today. He writes with depth, flavor, and color.” -Booklist"Boggs' narrative voice…
captures the old-fashioned style of the past.”-Publishers WeeklyAfter visiting his late mother's people on the Mescalero reservation, Comanche tribal policeman Daniel Killstraight waits to catch a train home when local cowboys bring disturbing news: an Chiricahua Apache has brutally murdered a teenage girl in the railroad town of Deming-and a bunch of locals plan on lynching him.Killstraight has no jurisdiction in this territory. He knows nothing about Deming, the murdered girl, or the accused killer; and he doesn't really care much for Apaches anyway. Yet, still heartbroken over the death of his beloved Rain Shower, he is in no hurry to return home. So he hops on a train to Deming to help a fellow Indian.However, once he arrives Killstraight learns that the man in jail isn’t really an Apache. Francis Groves, is a brooding, embittered, binge-drinking white man who had lived with the Chiricahuas and was known as "Walking Man." He had once been an excellent tracker who scouted and interpreted for the Army during the last of the Apache wars, but has had nothing to live for sinceh is wife and daughter were murdered by Mexican scalp hunters. Killstraight sets out to prove Groves innocent-in a town that hates Indians and where he has few allies and many enemies-all the while with this thought in the back of his mind: What if Groves is really guilty?Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns-books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians-are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Ghost Legion: A Western Story
By Johnny D. Boggs. 2016
"Boggs is among the best Western writers at work today. He writes with depth, flavor, and color.” -Booklist"Boggs' narrative voice…
captures the old-fashioned style of the past.” -Publishers WeeklyAgainst the backdrop of the War for Independence, two intriguing storylines emerge. Stuart Brodie is a black freedman from Charles Town who owns a tavern in the backcountry of South Carolina. On his return from the war, he finds his younger brother, Ezekiel, hanging from the limb of a tree, his tavern burned to the ground, and a note warning any passerby that this is what lies in store for all Tories. Knowing that the guilty party was allied with the Colonial Patriots, Brodie decides to join the British Army under the command of Major Patrick Ferguson to exact his revenge.Marty McKidrict, born Martha Anne Sinclair, is often abused by her drunk husband, Sebastian McKidrict. One day, she is raped by him and his friend, and left to recover alone. While dressed in men's clothing, Marty is mistaken for Sebastian by a recruiter for the Patriots’ army, and promptly uses this to her advantage to join the colonial forces and escape.Meanwhile, the Patriots are gathering backcountry fighters for an open confrontation with the British troops under Major Patrick Ferguson. This Ghost Legion is growing steadily, and because the British do not believe the legion exists or refuse to acknowledge their strength, a bloody conflict looms on the horizon.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns-books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians-are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.The Arkansas Regulators (Transatlantic Perspectives #5)
By Christoph Irmscher, Charles Adams. 2019
The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to…
English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.The Deer Stalker: A Western Story
By Zane Grey. 2017
In The Deer Stalker, readers will find all they have come to expect from the great Western author Zane Grey—swift…
action, magnificent descriptions of the desert and canyon country, plus the added valiant effort of a ranger's struggle to save the doomed herd of deer on the Buckskin range. Grey makes the reader see this colorful Arizona country, feel something of the awe that is the inevitable reaction of man to the majesty of one of nature's miracles, smell the tang of mingled pine and sagebrush, and thrill to the heroic struggle of a few dedicated men as they battle to undo the harm of the willful and greedy.The Dude Ranger: A Western Story
By Zane Grey. 2017
Upon the death of his uncle, Ernest Selby, a young man from Iowa, inherits the Red Rock Ranch in Arizona.…
When he learns that the ranch's 20,000 cattle have dwindled to 6000 he suspects foul play. Ernest decides to go under cover in order to investigate these strange circumstances and lands a job on his own ranch, posing as a tenderfoot cowboy under a different name. As he makes friends and enemies and courts Annie, the daughter of the crooked foreman, Ernest learns to enjoy cowboy life. He knows that his charade must end eventually, but not until he can find the truth behind the disappearance of so many cattle-and win Annie’s heart.The Dude Ranger is a classic western story written by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time. Follow Ernest Selby as the young dude quickly learns to be a rancher, a law-enforcer, and a cowboy.Stairs of Sand: A Western Story (Zane Grey Ser.)
By Zane Grey. 1988
The beautiful, young, and headstrong Ruth Virey gets herself in trouble with her fiery temper and impulsive ways. Willing to…
risk anything to escape her life at a "barren desert water-hole," she finds herself having jumped from the frying pan into the fire until Adam Wansfell, her husband’s brother and murderer, shows up and professes his love for her. Excitement rises to a smashing climax when, in their fight to retain possession of a priceless waterhole, Ruth and Adam come face to face with the law and the man they both believed to be dead.In Stairs of Sand, the desert country of Southern California and the amazingly beautiful canyon country of Arizona come vividly to life as the background of this thrilling Zane Grey story of life in the bold, action-packed days when the west was still a frontier.Arizona Ames: A Western Story (Zane Grey's Arizona Ames Ser.)
By Zane Grey, Joe Wheeler. 2016
Not all outlaws are bad men.Rich Ames didn’t set out to be a gunslinger-it was forced on him. When two…
men roughed up his sweet sister, Rich reached for his trusty Colt and let loose on them. When the smoke cleared, Rich was the only one standing, now a fugitive of the law and forced to abandon his quaint home and family in Tonto Basin.Rich soon acquired the name "Arizona Ames” and for years after that fateful day his name struck fear into the hearts of bad men all over the West. To some people, Arizona was a bad man. Certainly he was quick with a six-gun; to be sure there were many notches in the Colt he threw with such lightning rapidity; but at his core he was a good man, forced into a life of wandering for protecting his kin.Arizona Ames is a classic western full of thrill and adventure, written by the granddaddy of them all-Zane Grey. Join Rich "Arizona” Ames as he travels his home state meting out justice and evading the law.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns-books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians-are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Riding for the Brand: A Western Trio
By Louis L Amour. 2015
Louis L’Amour’s Western stories are beloved worldwide. Now, collected together for the first time in a single volume, are three…
of his finest tales of the West. The texts have been restored to their original appearances in magazines. In "The Lion Hunter and the Lady,” Cat Morgan is plying his trade--trying to bag a mountain lion alive in order to sell it to a circus or zoo. As he and Long John William try to lure the cat from a tree, they’re interrupted by a lynch posse, the leader of which accuses Cat and Long John of running off his horse herd--and they intend to hang them right where they stand! "The Trail to Peach Meadow Cañon” tells of Mike Bastian, who has been raised by an outlaw chief, Ben Curry, and trained in frontier skills by Curry’s most trusted associates. Jed Ashbury was stripped and forced to run the gauntlet by the Indians in "Riding for the Brand. ” Able to outfit himself from the contents of a covered wagon that had been attacked and left behind, Jed also learns what the mission of those killed in the attack was and determines to push forward with it--regardless of the consequences.Robbers' Roost: A Western Story (Sagebrush Western Ser.)
By Zane Grey. 2015
A classic story of imperiled love on the western frontiers of nineteenth-century America. "He was a young man in years,…
but he had the hard face and eagle eye of one matured in experience of that wild country. He bestrode a superb bay horse, dusty and travel-worn and a little lame. The rider was no light burden, judging from his height and wide shoulders; moreover, the saddle carried a canteen, a rifle, and a pack. From time to time he looked back over his shoulder at the magnificent long cliff wall, which resembled a row of colossal books with leaves partly open. It was the steady, watchful gaze of a man who had left events behind him. ” So begins Jim Wales’s story in Robbers’ Roost. While a battle rages between two outlaw gangs in a remote Utah canyon, Jim struggles to rescue Helen Herrick, who has been captured and held for ransom. Robbers’ Roost tells the story of their personal struggle to escape the clutches of the murderous outlaws while simultaneously safeguarding their passion, one that is not likely to survive the beautiful, yet deadly, terrain and people of the old American West.The Red Well: A Western Trio
By Max Brand. 2015
A thief has a change of heart after a robbery goes wrong and decides to return the money . .…
. at all costs!In "Bad News for Bad Men,” Jimmy Jones is a ne’er-do-well with a trigger finger who has spent half his life raising hell. In hopes of turning his life around, Jimmy arrives to the town of Jasper, where his uncle has gotten him a job at the town newspaper. No longer a gunfighter, Jimmy is now an editor. But his uncle welcomes Jimmy with a warning: "The only news in Jasper is bad news.”When Bill Genniver and his partner, Jerry Garlan, decide to hold up a stagecoach for some quick cash, the two outlaws quickly find themselves at odds. Garlan shoots down a horse to stop the stage, but Genniver takes it one step further when he shoots a passenger to get to the cash. With the cold-blooded money in their hands, Garlan’s conscience gets the better of him. He regrets not only killing the horse, but the whole robbery too, and decides that somehow he has to do the right thing and return the money in "The Lion’s Share.”The title story introduces Jerry Finnegan, a rancher and a family man. But when Slade the outlaw and his band of misfits threaten to kill Finnegan and his family to steal the ranch, Finnegan calls out to Charlie Kimball for help. Kimball knows his friend is in trouble, and believes the real reason Slade wants the ranch is a special well on the property that just happens to turn the water blood red.Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns-books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians-are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.Journey: A Western
By Stephen H. Foreman. 2017
Set in the early eighteen hundreds in the wild desert wilderness of New Mexico Territory, Journey follows the lives of…
three distinctly different characters whose destinies are one: Journey, a fiercely independent, sixteen-year-old of mysterious origins; Reuben Moon, the stoic half Mexican, half Apache hunter who raises her; and Esau Burdock, a brutal, pragmatic, and wealthy slave trader.The story opens on a November night in 1833, the sky on fire with meteors, each character alone, experiencing the storm. The narrative then delves into their individual histories. But Journey, Reuben, and Esau’s stories soon collide in the summer of 1834 when Esau holds a rendezvous of horse racing and trading. Despite being only sixteen, and a girl at that, Journey joins the race. She doesn’t win, but she’s caught the attention of Esau. A year later, a mountain lion is terrorizing the area and Esau comes across Journey and Reuben in the desert as he hunts for it. Journey has tamed a wild colt. The lion had killed its mother then attacked the colt, but Journey rescues it and nurses it back to health. Esau claims the colt is his by the law of the land. Journey refuses to give him up and so Esau threatens to hang her on the spot. Instead, they make a deal: Journey can work at Esau’s stables for six months to earn the horse.And so she does. All the while the mountain lion continues to kill and Esau broods. He is a successful man, but he is a lonely one too, haunted by the death of his first slave and lover, Livy, and by their daughter Lilly Rose, both of whom betrayed him and are now dead. The story comes to a fever pitch when Esau spots a necklace Journey has worn her whole life, given to her by her mother, a necklace once worn by Esau’s dead daughter, Lily Rose. From there, the story races to an end, as Esau, Journey, and Reuben are tested in ways they never dreamed imaginable. Brimming with action and panoramic in scope, in Journey Foreman provides a breathtaking narrative with a heroine you’ll never forget.