Playing Detective with Family Lore is more than one family's saga. The far-ranging origins of the author's family and the course of the progenitors' lives and those of their descendants provide a microcosmic illustration of the macro-level triumphs and tragedies of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and America. From the tiny Radekhiv shtetl to the famous Polish market town Jaroslaw, from the Russian port city Nikolayev - inside of the Pale of Settlement during the 1905 pogroms, to Jassy - rife with unique antisemitic legislation following Romanian independence, this book unwittingly traces a collective history epitomized by one particular family's combined narratives, making it a 'must read' for the 80% of American Jews who trace their ancestry back to Eastern Europe. Playing Detective with Family Lore goes beyond Researching Your Family History Online for Dummies. Offering more than a ringside seat how to mine information online, the author, a seasoned journalist, shares her expertise with budding memoirists. She explores how the skills and the logic of a Sherlock Holmes can be employed to stitch together snippets of information in order to forge a more coherent whole that may confirm, contest, augment, or complicate oral family lore. Not your run-of-the-mill memoir, the structure is a tad unique. Sprinkled at the bottom of the pages, academic footnotes are repurposed to create a new genre: Experiential Reading. The links to historical footage, photos, and short texts make reading this work closer to a virtual museum than a traditional e-book.

This enthusiastic investigation of Disneyland's hidden treasures leads both first-time visitors and aficionados through the legendary theme park while pointing out tiny surprises around each turn. Helpfully organized as a reading tour, this guidebook features the whereabouts of many of Disneyland's secrets, including the locations of several “Hidden Mickeys,” and original movie props that appear around the park. Also included are original illustrations, trivia, and an exploration of Disneyland's history, which notes the subtle tributes Walt Disney placed throughout the grounds honoring the people who made the park possible. Also included are fascinating facts about Disneyland and American history that will interest teachers and tour guides as well as the 13.9 million guests who visit Disneyland every year.

S.C. Perkins's Fatal Family Ties is the captivating third mystery in the Ancestry Detective series, in which Texas genealogist Lucy Lancaster deals with murders in both the past and present. Lucy is just about to tuck into a plate of tacos at her favorite Austin joint, Big Flaco’s, when she gets an unexpected visit from her former—and least-favorite—co-worker. Camilla Braithwaite hasn’t gotten much friendlier since the last time Lucy saw her, but that doesn't stop her from asking a favor. In her hand is a newspaper feature on an ancestor, a civil war corporal—and a liar, according to the article. Charles Braithwaite is depicted as a phony and a deserter, and Camilla wants Lucy’s help clearing his name. Lucy would prefer to spend her free time with her new beau, special agent Ben Turner, but takes the case, making no promises that Camilla will like the outcome of her investigation. Camilla leads Lucy to the Texas History Museum, where their first clue is a triptych painting, passed down in the Braithwaite family for generations, one panel of which has disappeared. But before Lucy can get much further, a member of the Braithwaite family is murdered in his own bed, and another panel of the painting found missing. There are no shortage of suspects among the Braithwaite clan—including Camilla herself. This case will take Lucy to Houston and back again as she works to find the truth, and catch an elusive killer.

After her mother dies in 1975, ten-year-old Lemonade must live with her grandfather in a small town famous for Bigfoot sitings and soon becomes friends with Tobin, a quirky Bigfoot investigator.

In the summer of 1937, with the Depression deep and World War II looming, a California triple murder stunned an already grim nation. After a frantic week-long manhunt for the killer, a suspect emerged, and his sensational trial captivated audiences from coast to coast. Justice was swift, and the condemned man was buried away with the horrifying story. But decades later, Pamela Everett, a lawyer and former journalist, starts digging, following up a cryptic comment her father once made about a tragedy in their past. Her journey is uniquely personal as she uncovers her family's secret history, but the investigation quickly takes unexpected turns into her professional wheelhouse. Everett unearths a truly historic legal case that included one of the earliest criminal profiles in the United States, the genesis of modern sex offender laws, and the last man sentenced to hang in California. Digging deeper and drawing on her experience with wrongful convictions, Everett then raises detailed and haunting questions about whether the authorities got the right man. Having revived the case to its rightful place in history, she leaves us with enduring concerns about the death penalty then and now. A journey chronicled through the mind of a lawyer and from the heart of a daughter, Little Shoes is both a captivating true crime story and a profoundly personal account of one family's struggle to cope with tragedy through the generations.

Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime! This is the shocking and amazing true story of the first female U.S. District Attorney and traveling detective who found missing 18-year-old Ruth Cruger when the entire NYPD had given up. Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells the true story of Grace Humiston, the lawyer, detective, and first woman U.S. District Attorney who turned her back on New York society life to become one of the nation's greatest crime-fighters during an era when women were still not allowed to vote. After agreeing to take the sensational case of missing eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger, Grace and her partner, the hard-boiled detective Julius J. Kron, navigated a dangerous web of secret boyfriends, two-faced cops, underground tunnels, rumors of white slavery, and a mysterious pale man, in a desperate race against time. Brad Ricca's Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is the first-ever narrative biography of this singular woman the press nicknamed after fiction's greatest detective. Her poignant story reveals important clues about missing girls, the media, and the real truth of crime stories. Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is a nominee for the 2018 Edgar Awards for Best Fact Crime.

For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end. Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage. At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.