By the author of "Trammel's Trace-The First Road to Texas from the North."Houston oilmen. A TV repairman. Some tough Texas lawmen. An MIT-educated electrical engineer, and the self-proclaimed "world's greatest underwater treasure hunter." These are just some of the men who believed the treasure legend of Hendricks Lake in east Texas enough to search for silver there.For over 150 years, people have heard the tale that Jean Lafitte plundered the Spanish brig Santa Rosa in Matagorda Bay in 1816. His caravan of six wagonloads of silver headed north along Trammel's Trace but was overtaken by soldiers. Rather than give up the silver, the wagons were cut loose and rolled into Hendricks Lake. At least that what the legend says.By combining meticulous historical research with personal accounts, this work brings the story of these characters to life. W.C. Jameson (author of The Lost Canyon of Gold), says "this book is a compelling history artfully wrought by an excellent writer with an intimate connection to the land and the people." The book is supported by a website (www.hendrickslake.com) and a Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hendrickslake/) to keep readers engaged in the ongoing stories around the Hendricks Lake treasure.

Trammel’s Trace tells the story of a borderlands smuggler and an important passageway into early Texas. Trammel’s Trace, named for Nicholas Trammell, was the first route from the United States into the northern boundaries of Spanish Texas. From the Great Bend of the Red River it intersected with El Camino Real de los Tejas in Nacogdoches. By the early nineteenth century, Trammel’s Trace was largely a smuggler’s trail that delivered horses and contraband into the region. It was a microcosm of the migration, lawlessness, and conflict that defined the period. By the 1820s, as Mexico gained independence from Spain, smuggling declined as Anglo immigration became the primary use of the trail. Familiar names such as Sam Houston, David Crockett, and James Bowie joined throngs of immigrants making passage along Trammel’s Trace. Indeed, Nicholas Trammell opened trading posts on the Red River and near Nacogdoches, hoping to claim a piece of Austin’s new colony. Austin denied Trammell’s entry, however, fearing his poor reputation would usher in a new wave of smuggling and lawlessness. By 1826, Trammell was pushed out of Texas altogether and retreated back to Arkansas Even so, as author Gary L. Pinkerton concludes, Trammell was “more opportunist than outlaw and made the most of disorder.”

Harry E. Rieseberg's autobiographical writings include stories like being attacked by a giant octopus while recovering sunken treasure, defending himself from an attack by a 15-foot shark with only a diving knife, and surviving a hurricane and a severely broken leg while at sea--all captivating tales for audiences in the 1940s and 1950s, and all invented by a very successful charlatan. This is a biography of Harry E. Rieseberg, a shameless self-promoter who passed himself off as the world's greatest treasure salvor but who never got wet. His entire public persona was based on stories he retold in dozens of books and thousands of articles in which he made claims of feats that were fantasy but sold as fact. Despite the often-obvious facts of his fabrication, his books influenced a generation of legitimate divers and underwater archaeologists like Sir Robert Marx and Robert Stenuit. Thoroughly researched, this book uses sources including his personal records and letters to his agents to provide deep insight into the nature of his life and the way he created a false persona for popular consumption.

Frederick Douglass recounts early years of abuse, his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves. It is also the only of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.