Between 1946 and 1963, St. Petersburg was the quintessential Sunbelt city experiencing a post-World War II boom and wrestling with the problems that accompanied rapid growth. The city's old-school techniques of promotion expanded the population from about 60,000 to more than 180,000 in eighteen years. The city developed a split personality--it aimed to be modern but retained a dated, rustic appearance. Follow St. Petersburg author and journalist Jon Wilson as he details how the city coped ...

A man crushed by profound grief seeks solace at Elvis Presley's mansion...Three shunned children embark on a peculiar quest that changes their lives...A despondent writer finds new hope when he meets a crazy cat lady... A missing lion revives the flagging career of a private eye who is not as hard-boiled as he thinks...Time travel promises exotic romance when a dull boy learns life offers more than his weekly soda ... plus more short fiction, poetry, and essays as Helpless at the Gates of ...

Days of Fear exposes the shocking story of a gruesome 1914 murder in St. Petersburg, Florida and the calculated lynching of the Black man accused. Who killed Frank Sherman with a shotgun blast inches from his head? What in the restless photographer's life led to his bloody end? And whydid powerful men decide John Evans had to die for the crime? This book explores true-crime events buried for decades. It tells of the friendless Evans torn from his jail cell, marched down the main st...

For the century and a half before the Second World War, Britain dominated the Indian subcontinent. Britain’s East India Company ruled enclaves of land in South Asia for a century and a half before that. For these 300 years, conquerors and governors projected themselves as heroes and improvers. The British public were sold an image of British authority and virtue. But beneath the veneer of pomp and splendour, British rule in India was anxious, fragile and fostered chaos.Britain’s Ind...

A sweeping history of the conquest of India by the British, from the first faltering trading stations to the marbled imperial cities, emphasizing the violence of colonial rule and its chaotic inheritanceThe popular image of the British Raj—an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local functionaries, doting amahs, blisteringly hot days and torrid nights—chronicled by Forster and Kipling is glamorous and nostalgic, but entirely fictitious. In this dr...

During the first half of the twentieth century, Atlantic City was the nation's most popular middle-class resort--the home of the famed Boardwalk, the Miss America Pageant, and the board game Monopoly. By the late 1960s, it had become a symbol of urban decay and blight, compared by journalists to bombed-out Dresden and war-torn Beirut. Several decades and a dozen casinos later, Atlantic City is again one of America's most popular tourist spots, with thirty-five million visitors a year. Yet ...

Only Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, can imagine the horror of a good and angry man who fights back against bureaucracy when it threatens to destroy his vitality, home, and memories. “Under any name King mesmerizes the reader” (Chicago Sun-Times).Barton Dawes is standing in the way of progress when his unremarkable but comfortable existence suddenly takes a turn for the worst. A new highway extension is being built right over the laundry plant wh...

Our illustrated travel guide will take you to Chicago, Illinois.Chicago is the home of the blues and the truth of jazz, the heart of comedy and the idea of the skyscraper. Here, the age of railroads found its center, and airplanes followed suit. Butcher of hogs and believer in progress, it is one of the world's great cities, and yet the metropolitan luxuries of theater, shopping, and fine dining have barely put a dent in real Midwestern friendliness. It's a city with a swagger, but...

The classic short story collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King.A wrong turn on a lonely road lands a wayward couple in Rock and Roll Heaven, Oregon, where there’s no escaping the free nightly concert….A novelty toy becomes an unexpected and terrifying instrument of self-defense….An ex-con pieces together a map to unearth a stolen million dollars—but at what price?...A private investigator in Depression-era Los Angeles is finding ...

The Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller on India's experience of British colonialism, by the internationally-acclaimed author and diplomat Shashi Tharoor'Tharoor's impassioned polemic slices straight to the heart of the darkness that drives all empires ... laying bare the grim, and high, cost of the British Empire for its former subjects. An essential read' Financial TimesIn the eighteenth century, India's shar...

Includes the story “The Monkey”—now a major motion picture!The #1 New York Times bestseller—a mesmerizing treasury of short stories by Stephen King.An eerie-looking child’s toy harbors an unimaginable evil. A supermarket is unexpectedly the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. An idyllic lake conceals a bottomless terror. And a desert island is the scene of th...

Stories and photographs celebrating the city's history through its abandoned architectural landmarks.Lost Detroit tells the stories behind twelve of the city's most beautiful left-behind landmarks and of the people who occupied them, from the day they opened to the day they closed. While these buildings might stand as ghosts of the past today, their stories live on within these pages.This book brings you the memories of those who caught trains out o...