What if your survival depended on the villainy you long despised? Sister and brother. A loyalty forged in the crucible of their tragic upbringing in the Northwoods town of Backus, Minnesota. Cass, a quiet young woman caring for the grandmother who raised them. Jack, a fugitive carrying a life-changing sum of stolen drug money. Desperate, trusting only his sister, Jack enlists her help in burying the cash in their grandmother's back acres. Cass agrees to the scheme, a decision that soon endangers not only her unassuming backwoods existence, but both of their lives. Jack returns to hiding, and Cass learns of the bounty placed on his head, as the cast of characters in their orbit-some villains, some saviors, some perhaps both-emerges. Their corrupt cop uncle and lawless cousins. Their father, a violent, conniving career criminal whom the siblings blame for their mother's unsolved murder many years ago. Claiming reformation, he pledges to ensure her and Jack's safety. Bowed by the burdens of her love for Jack, haunted by a past that seems poised to repeat itself, Cass realizes that her survival may depend on her own measure of wickedness.

Praised by both Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, this classic of Black literature is a brutal depiction of the Great Migration from the Jim Crow South This brutally gripping novel about the African-American Great Migration follows the three Moss brothers, who flee the rural South to work in industries up North. Delivered by day into the searing inferno of the steel mills, by night they encounter a world of surreal devastation, crowded with dogfighters, whores, cripples, strikers, and scabs. Keenly sensitive to character, prophetic in its depiction of environmental degradation and globalized labor, Attaway's novel is an unprecedented confrontation with the realities of American life, offering an apocalyptic vision of the melting pot not as an icon of hope but as an instrument of destruction. Blood on the Forge was first published in 1941, when it attracted the admiring attention of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. It is an indispensable account of a major turning point in black history, as well as a triumph of individual style, charged with the concentrated power and poignance of the blues.

The “riveting”* true story of the fiery summer of 1970, which would forever transform the town of Oxford, North Carolina—a classic portrait of the fight for civil rights in the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird *Chicago Tribune On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses. Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away. Tim Tyson’s gripping narrative brings gritty blues truth and soaring gospel vision to a shocking episode of our history. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “If you want to read only one book to understand the uniquely American struggle for racial equality and the swirls of emotion around it, this is it.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Blood Done Sign My Name is a most important book and one of the most powerful meditations on race in America that I have ever read.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Pulses with vital paradox . . . It’s a detached dissertation, a damning dark-night-of-the-white-soul, and a ripping yarn, all united by Tyson’s powerful voice, a brainy, booming Bubba profundo.”—Entertainment Weekly “Engaging and frequently stunning.”—San Diego Union-Tribune

In this account, Rodney Barker tells the full and terrifying story of a microorganism popping up along the Eastern seaboard—far closer to home than the Ebola virus and equally frightening. In the coastal waters of North Carolina—and now extending as far north as the Chesapeake Bay area—a mysterious and deadly aquatic organism named Pfiesteria piscicida threatens to unleash an environmental nightmare and human tragedy of catastrophic proportions. At the very center of this narrative is the heroic effort of Dr. JoAnn Burkholder and her colleagues, embattled and dedicated scientists confronting medical, political, and corporate powers to understand and conquer this new scourge before it claims more victims.

As Runebreaker Travis Wilder and three of his Eldh friends become trapped in a lawless 1880s Colorado mining town, Grace Beckett must confront her own destiny to oppose the Pale King and powerful evil army that will determine the fate of Eldh.

When Angus Murchie, son of a Scotch father and an Indian mother, came to the trading post run by his father, the old Scot told him that treacherous Jacques Larue, a rival trader and a whisky smuggler, had tried to murder him and would probably try again. Colin Murchie made his son promise that even if Larue succeeded, Angus would not kill him personally, but would help the law seek vengeance. Angus reluctantly agreed. The next day the old man was shot down in cold blood by Larue, and Angus, true to his word, had to hold his fire. Corporal Downey of the Mounted took charge, and Larue was tried in Edmonton but acquitted. Outside the courtroom, Angus told the sneering Larue that no amount of lying could save him from paying the penalty for his crime. Larue returned to the North, but terror clung to him.

How Angus creates a psychological world of horror to destroy the murderer is a tale of revenge to remember.

William Shea offers a gripping narrative of the events surrounding Prairie Grove, Arkansas, one of the great unsung battles of the Civil War that effectively ended Confederate offensive operations west of the Mississippi River. Shea provides a colorful account of a grueling campaign that lasted five months and covered hundreds of miles of rugged Ozark terrain. In a fascinating analysis of the personal, geographical, and strategic elements that led to the fateful clash in northwest Arkansas, he describes a campaign notable for rapid marching, bold movements, hard fighting, and the most remarkable raid of the Civil War.