Bobby Burns knows he’s a lucky lad. Growing up in sleepy Keely Bay, Bobby is exposed to all manner of wondrous things: stars reflecting off the icy sea, a friend that can heal injured fawns with her dreams, a man who can eat fire. But darkness seems to be approaching Bobby’s life from all sides. Bobby’s new school is a cold, cruel place. His father is suffering from a mysterious illness that threatens to tear his family apart. And the USA and USSR are testing nuclear missiles and creeping closer and closer to a world-engulfing war. Together with his wonder-working friend, Ailsa Spink, and the fire-eating illusionist McNulty, Bobby will learn to believe in miracles that will save the people and place he loves.

Surreal, playful, and always poignant, the prose poems in Jose Hernandez Diaz’s masterful debut chapbook introduce us to a mime, a skeleton, and the man in the Pink Floyd t-shirt, all of whom explore their inner selves in Hernandez Diaz’s startling and spare style. With nods to Russell Edson and the surrealists, Hernandez Diaz explores the ordinary and the not-so-ordinary occurrences of life, set against the backdrop of the moon, and the poet’s native Los Angeles. The TRP Chapbook Series

Some people called Robert Barnwell Rhett the Father of Secession. This book illuminates Rhett's role in secession's time and passage. It tells of Rhett's interest in secession doctrine as early as 1828 and his outspoken support of disunion fully a quarter-century before 1861.

Rhett first raised the possibility of secession in 1826, well before Calhoun adopted the notion, and would ever after hold fast to his one great idea. In this examination of Rhett's personal and political endeavors, Davis draws upon many newly found sources to reveal the extremism that would make and mar Rhett's adult life."--BOOK JACKET.

"In the troubled years leading up to the Civil War, newspapers in the North and South presented the arguments for and against slavery, denouncing opposing viewpoints with imagination and vigor." "Although it is impossible to determine the precise effect of the newspapers on their readers, there is no question that they took the temperature of their communities and recorded the rising local agitations, unifying opinions, raising alarms, and cementing prejudices." "Tracing political accounts and diatribes published in northern and southern newspapers from 1856 to the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861, Ratner and Teeter assert that newspapers, in their desire to be profitable and promote specific agendas, stoked the fires that heated tensions between North and South, and ably demonstrate the power of a fast-growing media to influence both perception and the course of events."--BOOK JACKET.

Magicians debunking charlatans and revealing secrets of the trade: it's not something that Penn and Teller or James "The Amazing" Randi invented. The legendary Harry Houdini was doing the same thing a century ago, to popular acclaim. In this 1920 book, the master showman-and surprisingly entertaining writer-uncovers the mysteries behind such extraordinary feats as fire-eating, sword-swallowing, snake-charmers, and strong men. More a simple expose of stage trickery, though, this is a brisk history of such oddities throughout history and around the world, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, from the culture of the Native Americans to that of Japan. This is a fascinating work of the strange and seemingly inexplicable made plain and understandable. Hungarian-American magician and professional skeptic EHRICH WEISS (1874-1926)-aka Harry Houdini, "Handcuff King and Jail Breaker"-also wrote Magical Rope Ties and Escapes (1920) and A Magician Among the Spirits (1924).