Ten-year-old Jared Millhouse and his dad plan to spend an uneventful summer on his grandfather s farm in Lone Jack, Missouri. Then Jared runs into the ghost of a Civil War innkeeper and wonders if he s lost his mind. With the help of his grandfather--and some local characters--Jared and the Crossroads Gang uncover the truth about the Civil War battle that trapped so many bloodthirsty ghosts in Lone Jack. They even recruit a pair of eccentric ghost hunters to help. When it comes to facing down the local bully, dodging the power-crazy sheriff, or escaping convicts, Jared can count on his friends. Together, they face haunted baseball diamonds, embattled cornfields and abandoned mines. But when Confederate and Union ghouls line up on the battlefield, the entire town relives the gruesome Battle of Lone Jack, as it was fought in 1862. Then only Jared can save the town from its ghosts.

One will not find the name of William Clarke Quantrill in the pantheon of noble Civil War personalities but rather listed near the top of the list of its notorious scoundrels. He has been demonized as the devil incarnate, and most historical accounts portray him as a sadistic, pitiless, bloodthirsty killer. That image, however, did not ring true to Paul R. Petersen when he weighed it against the man's wartime accomplishments. When he began researching Quantrill of Missouri, he found that much of the lore that has been accepted as fact had been recorded by those who fought against Quantrill. In short, the victors wrote the history. Petersen asks, "How could this so-called fiend have been a respected schoolteacher? How could he have organized and led up to four hundred men in the most noted band of guerrilla fighters known to history? How could he be so hated by his own men and still lead them in the most renowned battles through Missouri, winning victories over superior Union forces? Others entrusted their sons to him. Others served him as spies. Women willingly tended his wounded, and his followers even guarded him in battle. Most of his people were God-fearing farmers...God-fearing, righteous people would not have followed a depraved, degenerate, psychotic killer."

In this masterpiece of research, a splendid supplement to Ezra J. Warner's Generals in Gray, Bruce S. Allardice brings to light a neglected class of officers: the Confederacy's "other" generals -- men who attained their rank outside the usual avenue of appointment by President Jefferson Davis and who had been virtually forgotten as a consequence. Explaining that the process of becoming a general was fraught with politics, lobbying, intrigue, accident, mismanagement, and chance, Allardice identifies six main categories of legitimate claimants to the rank of Confederate General -- two more than historians have traditionally recognized. He presents a substantial biographical sketch of 137 generals not found in Warner's original and a short bibliography of each. For the vast majority, his is the first treatment ever published.

This book is a thorough study of all known guerrilla operations in Civil War Missouri in 1862, the year such warfare became the primary type of military action there and the year that the state saw almost constant fighting. An enormous variety of sources--military and government records, private accounts, county and other local histories, period and later newspapers, and secondary sources published after the war--are used to identify which Southern partisan leaders and groups operated in which areas of Missouri, and to describe how they operated and how their kinds of warfare evolved. The actions of Southern guerrilla forces and Confederate behind-enemy-lines recruiters are presented chronologically by region so that readers may see the relationship of seemingly isolated events to other events over a period of time in a given area. The counter-actions of an array of different types of Union troops are also covered to show how differences in training, leadership, and experiences affected behaviors and actions in the field.

Tracing the origins and history of Missouri Confederate units that served during the Civil War is nearly as difficult as comprehending the diverse politics that produced them. Deeply torn by the issues that caused the conflict, some Missourians chose sides enthusiastically, others reluctantly, while a number had to choose out of sheer necessity, for fence straddling held no sway in the state after the fighting began. The several thousand that sided with the Confederacy formed a variety of military organizations, some earning reputations for hard fighting exceeded by few other states, North or South. Unfortunately, the records of Missouri's Confederate units have not been adequately preserved—officially or otherwise—until now. James E. McGhee is a highly respected and widely published authority on the Civil War in Missouri; the scope of this book is startling, the depth of detail gratifying, its reliability undeniable, and the unit narratives highly readable. McGhee presents accounts of the sixty-nine artillery, cavalry, and infantry units in the state, as well as their precedent units and those that failed to complete their organization. Relying heavily on primary sources, such as rosters, official reports, order books, letters, diaries, and memoirs, he weaves diverse materials into concise narratives of each of Missouri's Confederate organizations. He lists the field-grade officers for battalions and regiments, companies and company commanders, and places of origin for each company when known. In addition to listing all the commanding officers in each unit, he includes a bibliography germane to the unit, while a supplemental bibliography provides the other sources used in preparing this unique and comprehensive resource.

Thomas C. Hindman, an ardent defender of slavery and state rights, was the most explosive force in Arkansas politics in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Energetic in championing a cause, fiery of temperament, and persuasively eloquent in speech, Hindman successfully led fights against Know Nothingism and the machine that had controlled the state's politics. He carried his fight against the abolitionists to Congress and vigorously campaigned for Arkansas' secession from the Union. Mindman raised a regiment at his own expense and drafted the ordinance that created Arkansas' military board. He quickly advanced from the rank of colonel to major general and for a time was commander of the Trans-Mississippi district. When he was reassigned east of the Mississippi, he participated in some of the most pivotal battles of the war, receiving injuries at Chickamauga and the Atlanta campaign. After the war, Hindman joined other Confederate refugees in Mexico. When Maximillian's government collapsed, Hindman returned to Arkansas, unpardoned and disenfranchised, and became the leader of the "Young Democracy, " a group willing to work within the bounds of the first Reconstruction Act. He had begun to build a biracial coalition to compete with the state's Republicans when he was shot at home by an unknown assassin on 27 September 1868.

A YA novel set in a seaside New England town in the 1920s, where twelve-year-old Clare discovers a mysterious glass house and falls in love with Jack, the ghost of a boy who can't remember how he died.