A New York Times Notable Book: A man sorts through the secret life of his troubled, reclusive brother in this "powerful, moving personal history" ( Entertainment Weekly).Every family has its odd character, the one who never seems right with the world. When a grieving John Vernon was charged with settling his brother's affairs, he came face to face with a life he had never suspected. His brother's house in southern New Hampshire was in a state of squalid, s...

A myth-busting novel about America's most infamous and beloved outlaw, Billy the Kid, from a critically acclaimed historical novelistAccording to legend, Billy the Kid killed twenty-one men, one for every year of his short life; stole from wealthy cattle barons to give to the poor; and wooed just about every senorita in the American Southwest.In Lucky Billy, John Vernon digs deeply into the historical record to find a truth more remarkable than the legend, and draws a fresh, ...

On St. Helena island in 1821 a mysterious doctor removes Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis from his corpse while in the next room his loyal lieutenants brag about their dead emperor’s merciless cruelty. Fifty years later the search for this itinerant appendage leads through Victorian London to ante-bellum New York, Amherst, Massachusetts, and finally Colorado Territory, dragging in its path a promiscuous mix of French counts, love-sick poets, dandies, shady antiquarians, utopian dreamers, con men...

Adventuress, miner, home-wrecker, pauper, dreamer—the drama of Colorado legend Baby Doe’s life has inspired several biographies, a 1932 film starring Edward G. Robinson, even an opera, but never before a novel. Few lives have been so dramatic—leaving Oshkosh, WI and heading toward Colorado’s mining territory in 1879, she ditched her husband and snared silver magnate Horace Tabor, who divorced his wife to marry Baby in the “wedding of the century.” “A furiously bubbling stew of a manner of ...

The much-loved and celebrated children's story, written and illustrated by John Vernon Lord, Emeritus Professor of Illustrating at Brighton University, has been out of print for many years. Bouley Bay Books is bringing out a special, golden anniversary edition, to celebrate the fiftieth year after its original publication by Jonathan Cape in 1973.In Lewis Carroll's nineteenth century children's classic, it was a White Rabbit who tempted Alice to go down a rabbit hole, leading to fa...

“Both gritty and sublime” (Seattle Times), The Last Canyon tells the story of John Wesley Powell’s 1869 voyage of exploration through the Grand Canyon, the last great expedition of discovery in United States history. In this vivid novel, John Vernon intertwines two stories – that of Powell and his crew, and that of a band of Paiute Indians, known as the Shivwits, who lived on the north rim of the canyon. As the novel moves inexorably toward a violent encounter between the two groups, Verno...

All this began long before I died,” says the brain in a jar that narrates John Vernon’s second novel. The brain once belonged to Charles Cooper, a 55-year-old water engineer in upstate New York, and has been kept alive by a perfusion pump invented by the man who may have been Coop’s fatherCharles Lindbergh. Then again, maybe not. Coop’s suspicion that he is the kidnaped Lindbergh baby who never really died but instead was stolen as a child and raised by gangsters begins when, on a day li...

A university lecturer and his PhD student embark on a research trip to a remote village in England to write about its dark history.They think they know some of the stories. A burglar shot dead; a tragedy on the train tracks; and remnants of psychological experiments from the Cold War. But as they meet the inhabitants of Renslow, and try to make sense of their sometimes-odd behaviour, they wonder how much of this is connected, and how much is just them seeing patterns.‘A fan...

A New York Times Notable Book: A novel about growing up in a remote corner of Vermont, from the author Richard Russo calls "one of our very best writers."When six-year-old Austen Kittredge was sent up north to live on his grandparents' farm in 1948, he didn't know that he would spend the next twelve years of his life there—or that his remarkable stay would never leave him, no matter how far he traveled.The farm in Lost Nation Hollow would become a magical p...

**Winner of the 2018 Nebraska Book Award for FictionA rousing, suspenseful debut novel—True Grit meets Catch Me If You Can—based on the forgotten true story of a Robin Hood of the American frontier who pulls off the first successful kidnapping for ransom in U.S. history**“A kidnapper with a social-justice mission” (Time), Pat Crowe was once the most wanted man in America. World, Chase Me Down resurrects him, telling the electrifying story...

This illustrated anthology features the celebrated poet's complete works for children—with an introduction by his wife, Paula Sandburg.As a young father of two daughters, Carl Sandburg noticed that children's literature was still stuck in the traditions of European folklore, centered on princes, princesses and peasants. He wanted to create stories that spoke more directly to American children and their way of life. His first book for children, Rootabaga Stories

**Quite possibly the GREATEST science-fiction collection of ALL TIME—past, present, and FUTURE! • "Nearly 1,200 pages of stories by the genre’s luminaries, like H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as lesser-known authors." —**The New York Times Book ReviewWhat if life was never-ending? What if you could change your body to adapt to an alien ecology? What if the Pope was a robot? Spanning galaxies and millennia, this must-h...