Presents a series of historical anecdotes about little-known, miscellaneous events and personal experiences of the American Civil War.

Compiles stories of paranormal activities and other strange anomalies connected to the Civil War, including ghost sightings, unusual artifacts, battlefields and other historic sites, and other oddities.

Explores haunted places, local legends, crazy characters, and unusual roadside attractions found in New Jersey.

Explore the strange and shadowy side of the civil war . . . A fascinating collection of ghostly sightings, auspicious visions, audible manifestations, and uncanny premonitions. In 1872 a photographer who claimed he could capture the "essence' of dead relatives took an image purporting to show Mary Todd Lincoln with the protective ghost of Abraham Lincoln behind her. The spirit of George Washington who appeared to John C. Calhoun in the 1840s to persuade him not to dissolve the union. The nameless drummer boy from the Army of Ohio who still plays at the Shiloh battlefield The twentieth-century schoolchildren who heard the Irish brigade on the Antietam battlefield Teddy Roosevelt and First Lady Grace Coolidge who both claim to have enountered Abraham Linicoln in the White House Jefferson davis and his wife Varina who both have been seen at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he was imprisoned after the War

“It is well that war is so terrible,” Robert E. Lee reportedly said, “or we would grow too fond of it.” The essays collected here make the case that we have grown too fond of it, and therefore we must make the war ter­rible again. Taking a “freakonomics” approach to Civil War studies, each contributor uses a seemingly unusual story, incident, or phenomenon to cast new light on the nature of the war itself. Collectively the essays remind us that war is always about damage, even at its most heroic and even when certain people and things deserve to be damaged. Here then is not only the grandness of the Civil War but its more than occasional littleness. Here are those who profited by the war and those who lost by it—and not just those who lost all save their honor, but those who lost their honor too. Here are the cowards, the coxcombs, the belles, the deserters, and the scavengers who hung back and so survived, even thrived. Here are dark topics like torture, hunger, and amputation. Here, in short, is war.

This major addition to the history of the Civil War is a “fast-paced, fact-rich account” (The Wall Street Journal) offering a detailed look at President Abraham Lincoln’s use of clandestine services and the secret battles waged by Union spies and agents to save the nation—filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue. Veteran CIA correspondent Douglas Waller delivers a riveting account of the heroes and misfits who carried out a shadow war of espionage and covert operations behind the Confederate battlefields. Lincoln’s Spies follows four agents from the North—three men and one woman—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration after he learns of an assassination attempt from his agents working undercover as Confederate soldiers. But he proved less than competent as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Sharpe deployed secret agents throughout the South, planted misinformation with Robert E. Lee’s army, and outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets that she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of history. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. He assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, DC. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these operatives was Abraham Lincoln, one of our greatest presidents, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take whatever chances necessary to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies is a “meticulous chronicle of all facets of Lincoln’s war effort” (Kirkus Reviews) and an excellent choice for those wanting “a cracking good tale” (Publishers Weekly) of espionage in the Civil War.

Miri and Molly were not always sisters, but thanks to the time-travelling magic of their family's home, they are now twins, and about to start settling down to a normal life when the house unleashes another challenge that sends them back into the past. And this time around they've got twice as much to lose ... Brimming with lovable characters and spine-tingling magic, this book will bring new readers to Annie Barrows' highly acclaimed, wonderfully popular world of twin-inspired magic.