A visionary work from one of the most distinctive voices in independent literary fiction, The Ghosts of Hawthorn, Missouri takes James Peet's poetic prose and razor-sharp perceptivity into themes of identity, oppression, survival, and love, and blends them together to craft a story that is both accessible and esoteric. The first stand-alone novel in his Heroes of Hawthorn anthology, Peet recounts the victories and tragedies in the small town of Hawthorn, Missouri, and one boy's search for a sense of self through friendship. Eric Redmond and Daniel Wright were two adopted brothers who grew up together, and died a world apart. They met in the middle of an American heartland that seemed perpetually in decline: shambolic trailer parks, a meth epidemic, and indifference between neighbors, but with the refuge of religion. Here, communities of blue-collar workers resigned to a lifetime of beige depression, themselves descendants of two centuries of cultural calamities, armed only with the faint hope of one day living their dreams. They give up their anxieties and weekly tithes to the Lord as well as to a charismatic pastor, Eric's father Harold Redmond. On the surface, it seems Father Redmond leads Hawthorn to the prosperity of which the townsfolk had always dreamed. However, every dwelling has its secrets; secrets that the citizens of Hawthorn intertwine with their tired spirits. Even with these new positive developments, the underbelly of Hawthorn still thrives: crime, drugs, and wealth disparities. The fiercest rebel against this newly established version of Hawthorn resides in Father Redmond's own home: his son, Eric. After his best friend Daniel's mother dies, they become adopted brothers. Their bond carries them through a tumultuous life, weighed heavy with dark secrets. It endures even after Eric has grown up to be a respectable man, and Daniel has become a shadow of his former self. Their bond is broken somewhere in the murky depths of the dysfunctional family unit -- or does it continue to endure? Horrifying, humorous, irreverent and tragic, The Ghosts of Hawthorn, Missouri is a work that bursts with pain, and with life. It explores the deep valleys between love and lives well lived, the cyclical nature of time, bigotry, the cult of personality, and the complicated dynamics of subjection and dominance. While the story spans centuries and steps its toe into the near future that Peet has shrewdly predicted, it is a novel that is as timely as it is timeless. It delves headfirst into American anxieties of The Other. The Ghosts of Hawthorn, Missouri is a vibrant portrait of a mad world that shines a light in the darkest of places.

The Civil War tends to be remembered as a vast sequence of battles, with a turning point at Gettysburg and a culmination at Appomattox. But in the guerrilla theater, the conflict was a vast sequence of home invasions, local traumas, and social degeneration that did not necessarily end in 1865. This book chronicles the history of “guerrilla memory,” the collision of the Civil War memory “industry” with the somber realities of irregular warfare in the borderlands of Missouri and Kansas. In the first accounting of its kind, Matthew Christopher Hulbert’s book analyzes the cultural politics behind how Americans have remembered, misremembered, and re-remembered guerrilla warfare in political rhetoric, historical scholarship, literature, and film and at reunions and on the stage. By probing how memories of the guerrilla war were intentionally designed, created, silenced, updated, and even destroyed, Hulbert ultimately reveals a continent-wide story in which Confederate bushwhackers—pariahs of the eastern struggle over slavery—were transformed into the vanguards of American imperialism in the West.

The Hawthorne University Witch Series, Books 4-6, is now available in this three-book collection. This trilogy is a standalone series that can be enjoyed without having read the previous books. Witch Mirror, Book 4: Reflections of a wicked witch. Cadence Hawthorne's love life is threatened by a demon-witch, but she has her teacher’s magic to protect her. Actually, not only does she have her magic, she has Alondra’s spirit inside her, possessing her. Ravens, Book 5: When evil lands on my doorstep. Cadence’s friends believe she is fighting a curse. But Cadence feels like she has to do whatever it takes to save the town, even if it means teaming up with her archenemy witch, Enora. Evil empowers Cadence, but her dark spellcasting threatens to drive a stake right through her heart and the heart of Hawthorne University. Shadow Cast, Book 6: You can't cast shadows in darkness. Enora claims Cadence is haunting her coven’s dreams. A séance is performed. But during the séance, Cadence doesn’t just see ghosts or spirits, she sees evil. Her new revelation might be enough to protect Bryce and her unborn baby—or save her greatest adversary. Content warning: The Hawthorne University Witch Series is a new adult college paranormal romance containing profanity, sexual scenes, adult situations, and, of course, witchcraft.

The ghost story 1840-1920: A cultural history examines the British ghost story within the political contexts of the long nineteenth century. By relating the ghost story to economic, national, colonial and gendered contexts' it provides a critical re-evaluation of the period. The conjuring of a political discourse of spectrality during the nineteenth century enables a culturally sensitive reconsideration of the work of writers including Dickens, Collins, Charlotte Riddell, Vernon Lee, May Sinclair, Kipling, Le Fanu, Henry James and M.R. James. Additionally, a chapter on the interpretation of spirit messages reveals how issues relating to textual analysis were implicated within a language of the spectral. This book is the first full-length study of the British ghost story in over 30 years and it will be of interest to academics, graduate students and advanced undergraduates working on the Gothic, literary studies, historical studies, critical theory and cultural studies.

Although spectral Indians appear with startling frequency in US literary works, until now the implications of describing them as ghosts have not been thoroughly investigated. In the first years of nationhood, Philip Freneau and Sarah Wentworth Morton peopled their works with Indian phantoms, as did Charles Brocken Brown, Washington Irving, Samuel Woodworth, Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, William Apess, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others who followed. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Native American ghosts figured prominently in speeches attributed to Chief Seattle, Black Elk, and Kicking Bear. Today, Stephen King and Leslie Marmon Silko plot best-selling novels around ghostly Indians and haunted Indian burial grounds. RenŽe L. Bergland argues that representing Indians as ghosts internalizes them as ghostly figures within the white imagination. Spectralization allows white Americans to construct a concept of American nationhood haunted by Native Americans, in which Indians become sharers in an idealized national imagination. However, the problems of spectralization are clear, since the discourse questions the very nationalism it constructs. Indians who are transformed into ghosts cannot be buried or evaded, and the specter of their forced disappearance haunts the American imagination. Indian ghosts personify national guilt and horror, as well as national pride and pleasure. Bergland tells the story of a terrifying and triumphant American aesthetic that repeatedly transforms horror into glory, national dishonor into national pride.

Classic of American anthropology explores messianic cult behind Indian resistance, from Pontiac to the 1890s. Extremely detailed and thorough. Originally published in 1896 by the Bureau of American Ethnology. 38 plates, 49 other illustrations.