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• CALIFORNIA DESPERADOS

  $15.95 $9.57 0 review(s)

  
  

  "I shot him in the left temple; the gun dropped from his hands; he quivered one instant, and Andy McGinnis climbed the Golden Stairs...." This was Chris Evans speaking. Evans, the killer, train robber and fugitive, was describing the famous shootout at Young's cabin when he and his partner John Sontag ambushed and killed two members of a posse that was pursuing them. In California Desperadoes, Evans and seven other early outlaws tell their own raw stories-tales of holdups, shootouts and desperate flights from the law. Witness the cruel confessions of the ruthless gang of California bandits who murdered a whole family-men, women, and children-in the opening days of the Gold Rush. Stand on the gallows with the notorious Jim Stuart as he is hanged by San Francisco vigilantes determined to retake their city from hordes of Australian convicts, robbers and killers. The ill-starred adventures of Tom Bell, Tiburcio Vasquez and Charles Dorsey will hold you spellbound as the outlaws themselves take you along the dangerous trails they rode. And stage robbers Jim Smith and Dick Fellows will shock you with their own tales of the harrowing and sometimes hilarious antics of the California highwaymen of another day. These are true stories told by true desperadoes and illustrated with many rare photographs. Here are first-person accounts you will not soon forget!

• WALKING SAN FRANCISCO'S 49 MILE SCENIC DRIVE

  $19.95 0 review(s)

  
  

  Explore the Famous Sites, Neighborhoods, and Vistas in 17 Enchanting Walks by Kristine Poggioli and Carolyn Eidson Every visitor to San Francisco has seen the classic roadside signs showing a seagull that beckons motorists to follow the famous 49 Mile Scenic Drive. Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive shows how walking—rather than driving—San Francisco’s famous scenic route gives both tourists and natives an active, funway to enjoy and fall in love with the most beautiful city in the world. Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive invites readers to explore quirky locales face-to-face, so they can fully savor the City’s beauty and cultural riches — while also enjoying a healthy urban hike. Written by two long-time San Franciscans who have explored every nook and cranny of the 49 Mile Drive, Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive presents 17 bite-size walks, complete with turn-by-turn instructions, maps, and historical facts and information. Each chapter introduces the sights, landmarks and secret treasures of a specific San Francisco neighborhood, while leading the reader along a route that will pro vide healthy exercise for both brisk and sedate walkers. Each chapter includes detailed maps, points of interest, info on bus routes and parking, recommendations for visiting hidden gems and must-see museums, plus plenty of tips and stats to help walkers, such as step counts and mile distances, hill steepness rating, weather tips and more. The perfect guidebook for today’s urban enthusiast who values walkable neighborhoods, hyperlocal culture and the pleasure and health benefits of walking, Walking San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive is the most intimate way to explore one of America’s greatest cities. Audience: San Francisco Bay Area residents, visitors to San Francisco, urban enthusiasts and hikers. About the Authors: Kristine Poggioli is a native San Franciscan, copywriter and storyteller. Carolyn Eidson is an award-winning filmmaker and comedian. Together, they are the first people to have walked the entire length of San Francisco’s 49 Mile Scenic Drive, resulting in a combined 75-pound weight loss. $19.95 • Trade Paperback • 6" x 9" • 180 pages ISBN 978-1-61035-279-6

• GOLD RUSH IN THE KLONDIKE: A Woman’s Journey in 1898–1899

  $22.95 $13.77 0 review(s)

  
  

  When Josephine Knowles left for the Klondike gold fields with her husband in 1898, she didn’t know she would be facing a constant battle with cold, disease, malnutrition and the ever-present possibility of death. Gold Rush in the Klondike is Knowles’s true story of her year in the Yukon territory, a revealing, never-before-published personal memoir of day-to-day life at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Written in a clear, forthright, nineteenth-century style, Gold Rush in the Klondike presents terrifying struggles against a hostile environment, picturesque descriptions of an untouched Arctic wilderness and Knowles’s keen observations of men and women on the frontier. A Victorian gentlewoman of refinement, Knowles found herself among swearing, whoring, sometimes violent miners, whom she won over with her grit and compassion. Deciding to never moralize or condemn, Knowles writes frankly of the intense hardships that drove miners into lives of drink and dissipation and the frontier women who were forced to make stark choices between prostitution and starvation. Knowles’s adventures include encounters with author Jack London (Knowles firmly disapproved of London’s cruel mistreatment of his sled dogs), nursing miners during a typhoid outbreak until she fell ill herself, witnessing savage fights among the miners, dangerous travel through the mountain passes and river rapids of the Yukon, and a daring surreptitious visit to a gambling saloon. Amid all hardships, Knowles formed warm relationships with the mining community, for, as she put it, “All the diseases and other troubles had knitted us into one large family.” Illustrated with period photographs, Gold Rush in the Klondike is an invaluable historical document of a lost time and place and an admirable portrait of one woman’s determination in the face of danger.

• DARK AND TANGLED THREADS OF CRIME

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  He came to California with the great Gold Rush, but instead of riches, Isaiah W. Lees discovered his great talent for solving crimes and catching criminals. He captured stage robbers in Missouri, tracked con men to New York and caught the notorious eastern bank robber, Jimmy Hope in the middle of a San Francisco heist. San Francisco in the 1850’s, was the gateway to the gold fields, a city filled with adventurers, outlaws, con men and desperadoes of every description. In 1853 Isaiah Lees was appointed the first Chief of Detectives on the new Police Force and during nearly fifty years he acquired an amazing record. An innovator of police methods, Lees easily eclipsed such legendary lawman as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp. When he retired as chief in 1900, the San Francisco Chronicle stated that “in point of service, no one has ever equaled the record of Lees.” He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, and this is his exciting, true story, told here for the first time.

• Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Ind

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  Even celebrities die — and he was the man who picked up the bodies! Allan Abbott ran the leading mortuary in Hollywood and got an unprecedented glimpse of how celebrities really live and die. The Forrest Gump of the funeral industry, Abbott was everywhere celebrities died, from helping to prepare Marilyn Monroe’s body to standing next to Christopher Walken at Natalie Wood’s funeral. Now in his new memoir Pardon My Hearse, Abbott tells the rags-to-shroud story of how he went from a young man with a hearse to the funeral director to the stars — a rollicking, unexpectedly hilarious story of glamorous funerals, mishaps with corpses and true-life glimpses of celebrities at their most revealing moments. When he wasn’t transporting celebrity corpses, Abbott used his funeral limos to transport living celebrities to Hollywood parties and rented his vast collection of cars and funeral props to movie and TV productions. Pardon My Hearse presents a dazzling A-List of celebrities, living and dead, whom Abbott encountered during his career, including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Joe DiMaggio, Robert Redford, Frank Sinatra and others. Pardon My Hearse takes readers behind the scenes to tell the secrets of Marilyn Monroe’s funeral (where Abbott acquired the most unlikely souvenir of Monroe’s falsies) and dishes the inside story of disgraced crematorium operator David Sconce, who ordered an attack on Abbott’s business partner Ron Hast to cover up Sconce’s criminal mishandling of bodies and remains. Abbott also shares gruesome details of removing corpses from the devastation of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, reburying corpses dislodged from the 1978 mudslide that swept through the Verdugo Hills Cemetery and more. A treasure trove of insight and gossip you can’t get anywhere else, Pardon My Hearse is an eye-opening look at secret Hollywood from the man who literally knows where the bodies are buried.

• 1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood’s Greatest Year

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  To commemorate the 75th anniversary of this amazing year in Hollywood history, “1939: The Greatest Year in Motion Picture History” profiles of six of the greatest films of the year: “Gone with the Wind,” “Stagecoach,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “The Wizard of Oz.”
  
  Each of these films was based on a great story, and “1939” reveals in detail how those stories came into being, how long they waited to find fame in film, and how the movies inspired by them eventually made motion picture history. “1939” also describes the behind-the-scenes story of how the film was made: how the story was adapted to a film script; the writers, producers, directors, actors, and technicians who made the film; how the film was received by critics and the public; and the later careers of the people who made the film.
  
  “1939” plunges deep into the reality behind the Hollywood dream factory. Besides giving a full account of the artistic creation of each film, “1939” also describes the business deals that made each film possible and the Hays Office censorship that mandated careful handling of social and sexual themes — plus the colorful personalities in front and behind the camera and their sometimes disordered personal lives. Hollywood in the 1930s was crass, commercial, restrictive, and frequently dysfunctional — but it produced immensely enjoyable films that are still watched with pleasure today.
  
  The perfect combination of film history, artistic appreciation, historical insight, and gossip, “1939: The Greatest Year in Motion Picture History” is a book that no movie fan should miss.