Keep together. Keep your eyes open. Keep your wits about you. The desert is unkind in the best of times. And the decade since the Civil War has been anything but the best of times for Daisy Wilcox—call her Willie—and her family. This tense, heart-pounding alternate history about a young woman fighting to survive the unthinkable will keep fans of Westworld and The Walking Dead reading late into the night. A horrifying sickness has spread across the West Texas desert. Infected people—shakes—attack the living, and the surviving towns are only as safe as their perimeter walls are strong. The state is all but quarantined from the rest of the country. Glory, Texas, is a near ghost town. Still, seventeen-year-old Willie has managed to keep her siblings safe, even after the sickness took their mother. But then her good-for-nothing father steals a fortune from one of the most merciless shake hunters in town, and Willie is left on the hook for his debt. With two young hunters as guides, Willie sets out across the desert to find her father. And the desert holds more dangers than just shakes. This riveting debut novel blends True Grit with 28 Days Later for an unforgettable journey.

"Entertaining is an understatement." — Horror Novel Reviews When traveling actors recruited his wife for a plum role, Cody Wilson had no idea they would murder her. Twelve-year-old Willet Black was just as devastated the night the fiends slaughtered everyone he loved. Now Cody and Willet are bent on revenge, but neither of them suspects what they’re really up against. For the actors are vampires. Their thirst for human blood is insatiable. Even if word of their atrocities were to spread, it would take an army to oppose them. But it is 1885 in the wilds of New Mexico, and there is no help for Cody and Willet. The two must battle the vampires—alone—or die trying. FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Robert Laxalt's new novella is an action-packed coming-of-age tale set in the violent and conflict-ridden days of the early 20th century.

Dayton Lummis has lived a unique American life--as museum director in a mountain ghost town 9,500 feet high, as caretaker of an abandoned ranch surrounded by endless desert, as an inveterate wanderer pulled through vast empty landscapes that most Americans have never heard of, and will never see. And always-always--on his journeys, he takes back roads. The characters Lummis has met and interacted with along the way form a vivid rogues' gallery of oddballs, misfits and losers, and he knows how to tell their stories. As a highly opinionated (his friends say grumpy) observer himself, Lummis gives trenchant insight into a region and a way of life that helped shape America, but now seems to be vanishing forever. Born in New York City, raised on Philadelphia's Main Line and educated in the Ivy League, Dayton Lummis was nevertheless drawn inexorably into the most remote regions of the American West, where he has lived and worked. It all started when his parents divorced, and his eccentric father left the East Coast for a primitive little ranch in a then-isolated section of the Malibu Mountains, half a century before the Hollywood stars got there. On his first trip out West as a teen-ager, Dayton Lummis came to love America's most desolate regions. Fifty years later, his ardor still burns hot. He divides his time between Santa Fe and Pennsylvania, but his wanderlust is insatiable, and he is always ready to hit the road again.

Dust Devil on a Quiet Street chronicles the remarkable life of Richard Bowes. Bowes's childhood and adolescent brushes with dramatic spirits and hustlers, large and small, paved the way for his encounters with the supernatural.

“A remarkable story that moves from nineteenth-century England to today’s global ecological concerns around fast fashion.” —Times Literary Supplement Starting in the early 1800s, shoddy was the name given to a new material made from reclaimed wool, and to one of the earliest forms of industrial recycling. Old rags and leftover fabric clippings were ground to bits by a machine known as “the devil” and then reused. Usually undisclosed, shoddy—also known as reworked wool—became suit jackets, army blankets, mattress stuffing, and much more. Shoddy is the afterlife of rags. And Shoddy, the book, reveals hidden worlds of textile intrigue. Hanna Rose Shell takes us on a journey from Haiti to the “shoddy towns” of West Yorkshire in England, to the United States, back in time to the British cholera epidemics and the American Civil War, and into agricultural fields, textile labs, and rag-shredding factories. The narrative is both literary and historical, drawing on an extraordinary range of sources from court cases to military uniforms, mattress labels to medical textbooks, political cartoons to high art, and bringing richly drawn characters and unexpected objects to life. Along the way, shoddy becomes equally an evocative object and a portal into another world. Shell exposes an interwoven tale of industrial espionage, political infighting, scientific inquiry, ethnic prejudices, and war profiteering, and shows how, over the past century, the shredding “devil” has moved from wool to synthetics such as nylon stockings and Kevlar. The use of the term “virgin” wool emerged as an effort by the wool industry to counter shoddy’s appeal: to make shoddy seem . . . well, shoddy. Over time, the word would become a synonym for “inferior” and describe a host of personal, ethical, commercial, and societal failings. And yet, there was always, within shoddy, the alluring concept of regeneration—of what we today think of as conscious clothing, eco-fashion, or sustainable textiles. “In a brilliantly quixotic, scholarly rich, fabulously illustrated trek, Shell guides readers through the history of the reprocessing of used clothing and textiles, reflecting on human ornament, fears of contagion (think of the associations of ‘shoddy’ versus ‘virgin’ wool), and the evolution of a vast industry.” —Harvard Magazine “The fascinating story of how a respectable textile product became synonymous with all things inferior . . . . a fun ride.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

Tornado or Dust Devil? Young readers will learn all about the differences between this weather like where they form, when they happen, and what causes them. Easy-to-read text is enhanced with stunning color photos. A Soapy Spinner funnel activity at the end of the book helps kids put their newfound knowledge to use! Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Super Sandcastle is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.