Michigan in the Novel records 1,735 novels published from 1816 through 1996 that are set wholly or partially in the state of Michigan. Consulting literally thousands of novels and visiting scores of libraries, Robert Beasecker spent more than twenty years researching this exhaustive bibliography. Works included are mainstream fiction, mystery and romance novels, juveniles, religious tracts, dime novels, and other marginal or popular genre literature. Omitted are short stories, poetry, drama, screenplays and pageants, and serially published novels with no subsequent separate publication. Through its six indexes, Michigan in the Novel provides literary and cultural access to Michigan novels, classifying novels by to title, series, setting, chronology, subject and genre, and Michigan imprints. Intended to serve as a guide for students, teachers, scholars, and readers to explore Michigan's vast, varied, and rich literary landscape, Michigan in the Novel is the most expansive compilation of its kind.

Horror is one of the most enduringly popular genres in cinema. The term “horror film” was coined in 1931 between the premiere of Dracula and the release of Frankenstein, but monsters, ghosts, demons, and supernatural and horrific themes have been popular with American audiences since the emergence of novelty kinematographic attractions in the late 1890s. A Place of Darkness illuminates the prehistory of the horror genre by tracing the way horrific elements and stories were portrayed in films prior to the introduction of the term “horror film.” Using a rhetorical approach that examines not only early films but also the promotional materials for them and critical responses to them, Kendall R. Phillips argues that the portrayal of horrific elements was enmeshed in broader social tensions around the emergence of American identity and, in turn, American cinema. He shows how early cinema linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties, Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre, which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since.