Town Histories

Perfect for fans of the musical Come From Away! When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17...

Watch a muddy river settlement explode into the ultimate global epicenter of European history and violent revolution. Perfect for your daily commute, this atmospheric journey sweeps you from enlightened grand salons to the barricaded streets of fierce insurrection. Experience the relentless...

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year...

"A powerfully doomy debut" (The Guardian), Shaun Prescott’s The Town is a novel of a rural Australian community besieged by modern day anxieties and threatened by a supernatural force seeking to consume the dying town. This is Australia, an unnamed, dead-end town in the heart of the...

“Provocative…terrific stories” (The New Yorker) of the people who transformed sports—in the span of a single generation—from a job that required even top athletes to work in the off-season to make ends meet into a massive global business. It started, as most business deals do, with a...

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the AIDS epidemic devastated communities across America, a small group of activists in Shreveport, Louisiana refused to remain silent. Small Town Rage: Fighting Back in the Deep South tells the story of ordinary people who challenged government indifference, medical neglect, religious condemnation, and public fear during one of the most turbulent periods in modern American history. What began as a struggle for survival grew into a movement that brought national attention to a city few expected to become a center of AIDS activism.

A genteel Border South town not far from the nation’s capital is shaken by a series of vicious slayings at historic sites. These include a Civil War cemetery for escaped slaves; a burial mound of Confederate soldiers; a church associated with George Washington; and a museum on the Antebellum Era. At the same time, violent break-ins take place at venerable banks and townhomes connected with the lives of Washington, Robert E. Lee, and civil rights figures.