The Barnes & Noble library of essential reading

General Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888) was the most important Union cavalry commander of the Civil War, and ranks as one of America's greatest horse soldiers. From Corinth through Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, he made himself a reputation for courage and efficiency; after his defeat of J.E.B. Stuart's rebel cavalry, Grant named him commander of the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley. There he laid waste to the entire region, and his victory over Jubal Early's troups in the Battle of Cedar Creek brought him worldwide renown and a promotion to major general in the regular army. It was Sheridan who cut off Lee's retreat at Appomattox, thus securing the surrender of the Confederate Army. Subsequent to the Civil War, Sheridan was active in the 1868 war with the Comanches and Cheyennes, where he won infamy with his statement that the only good Indians I ever saw were dead. In 1888 he published his Personal Memoirs of P.H. Sheridan, one of the best first-hand accounts of the Civil War and the Indian wars which followed.

Frequently imitated and widely influential, Howard Phillips Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the twentieth century, discarding ghosts and witches and envisioning instead mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe.

The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley is the delightful tale of the bookseller Roger Mifflin, the advertising man Aubrey Gilbert, and the lovely Titania Chapman who comes to work at Mifflin's Brooklyn bookshop.

Padraic Colum retells the full cycle of Norse mythology starting with their creation myths, through the rise of the AEsir and Vanir gods, and their many adventures, which culminate in Ragnarok (a battle between good and evil), and, the rise of the world of men and women. Colum’s retelling is gripping, and, a wonderful introduction to an astoundingly complete mythology for readers of all ages.

In her diary, Mary Boykin Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general and aid to president Jefferson Davis, James Chestnut, Jr., presents an eyewitness account of the Civil War.