Birds were “the objects of my greatest delight,” wrote John James Audubon (1785–1851), founder of modern ornithology and one of the world’s greatest bird painters. His masterpiece, The Birds of America depicts almost five hundred North American bird species, each image—lifelike and life size—rendered in vibrant color. Audubon was also an explorer, a woodsman, a hunter, an entertaining and prolific writer, and an energetic self-promoter. Through talent and dogged determination, he ...

**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Winner for Western Non-Fiction - Young Readers**Welcome to Western Writers of America’s first anthology for young readers. In this collection of true tales of the West, we leave textbook history in the rearview mirror and take you on a tour of twenty seldom-told dramas, the kind you might stumble across only if you leave the main road to wander the detours and byways of the American story. Here you’ll meet extraordinary characters, from a you...

Filled with more than 150 recipes, anecdotes, and stories from some of America’s most popular writers and personalities, this collaborative effort has a writerly sensibility and a Western point of view. Including recipes for drinks, appetizers, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, and fun extras—as well as stories from and profiles of the contributors, this is both a Western book and a cookbook that moves beyond the genre.

Un roman qui a le souffle d'un cantique à la mémoire d'un territoire – les grandes plaines de l'Alberta, la vieille civilisation indienne et celle, désormais caduque, des pionniers –, d'un siècle (le XXe) et d'un homme, Paddon, dans la démesure de ses illusions et de ses passions.

“Engrossing . . . beautifully written and carefully crafted . . . [a] work that explores the healing power of truth.”—The Boston GlobeFor seventeen years, a rural community in Kansas has faithfully tended the grave of an anonymous teenage girl christened the Virgin of Small Plains. And some claim that, perhaps owing to the girl’s intervention, strange miracles and unexplainable healings have occurred. Slowly, word of the legend spreads.But what rea...

January 1987, Small Plains, Kansas. On the night of the decade's worst blizzard, a boy discovers the naked corpse of a beautiful girl. No-one can identify her, so the people of the town bury her with a gravestone marked with the date and 'Peace Be Unto You'. Seventeen years later, the mysterious dead girl - the 'Virgin of Small Plains' - has inspired a local myth. In the two decades since her death, strange miracles have visited those who faithfully tend her grave; some believe her spirit ...

Plaintext has won critical acclaim and a wide audience for author Nancy Mairs’s unapologetic views on agoraphobia, multiple sclerosis, and the challenges of being a woman in a patriarchal world. The provocative collection includes the widely anthologized essays “On Being a Cripple” and “On Not Liking Sex.”

A Plain Sailorman in China is a biography of Cdr. Irvin Van Gorder Gillis, USN that recounts both his extraordinary family history – a fascinating slice of Americana in the 1800’s – and Irvin’s multi-faceted career as a naval officer for 25 years and then as successful rare Chinese book collector. Son of a U. S. Navy Rear Admiral, as a U.S. Naval Academy graduate in 1894 he distinguished himself academically at the Academy and soon operationally while serving aboard his first U. S...

The North American handgame has a long lineage, attested in the myth, oral traditions, and archaeological records of Native American people. In The Handgame of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache: Spirited Competition on the Southern Plains, noted scholar William C. Meadows examines the game’s history, evolution, and practice from origin accounts to the present day among people of the Southern Plains American Indian nations.According to Meadows, the handgame, once pri...

When people think of legendary Texas cattle ranches the images that first come to mind are iconic, open-range operations like King Ranch of South Texas. In Henry C. “Hank” Smith and the Cross B Ranch, historian M. Scott Sosebee tells the story of one pioneer settler’s small but significant ranch in West Texas. The Cross B Ranch of Blanco Canyon struggled but endured to become quite successful, even while surrounded by big ranching empires. Founder Hank Smith went on to be...

For fans of C. E. Murphy’s Negotiator series, this is a story of a hidden fantasy world amidst our normal world - where those who are normal know and are scared of these creatures, though the normal world will intrude, with the 1929 Stock Market Crash just days away . . . Is it possible to stay alive when you’re surrounded by the enemy? Her parents tortured her. She escaped. And headed to New York City. Karolina Wokowski dreams of a career on Broadway. In a world where werewolves and other...

In All My Parents: Seeking a Sense of Self in Family, Nancy Henderson-James contemplates the impact of her ancestors and descendents on her relationship to family. She delves into the lives of parents and grandparents and how their personality traits and passions affected her. When she married at 23, her husband's family also influenced her and their children, who at times stepped in to teach her how to be a mother. The arrival of her grandchildren brought her life into balance, r...