In the winter of 1692 something terrible and frightening began in Salem Village. It started with several villagers having strange fits, screaming, and unnaturally contorting themselves, and ended with almost two hundred people in jail, and at least twenty-five dead. Witchcraft accusations—claims that some inhabitants had forsaken God to become servants of the Devil—spread from Salem Village across Massachusetts, ensnaring innocent people from all strata of society under a burden of assumed guilt. One of the most significant accusations, and most unlikely, was against a seventy-one-year-old grandmother, Rebecca Nurse.
   The accusations against Nurse, a well-respected member in the community, seemed unbelievable. Unflinchingly, this ailing elderly woman insisted on her innocence and refused to falsely confess. Supported by many in Salem, Nurse’s family and neighbors challenged her accusers in court and prepared a thorough defense for her, yet nothing could surmount the fear of witchcraft, and she was sentenced to death. Nurse, seen as a martyr for the truth, later became the first person accused of witchcraft to be memorialized in North America.
    In A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse, the first full account of Nurse’s life, Daniel A. Gagnon vividly recreates seventeenth-century Salem, and in the process challenges previous interpretations of Nurse’s life and the 1692 witch hunt in general. Through primary source research, he reveals how the Nurse family’s role in several disputes prior to the witch hunt was different than previously thought, as well as how Nurse’s case helps answer the important question of whether the accusations of witchcraft were caused by mental illness or malicious intent. A Salem Witch reveals a remarkable woman whose legacy has transformed how the witch hunt has been remembered and memorialized.

Southern writer and folklorist Kelly Kazek’s collection of eerie and enigmatic Alabama ghost stories

Dark secrets lurk beneath the sleepy surface of Alabama. Ghosts and grisly creatures haunt the towns and forests. In the great Southern ghost-story tradition, famed Alabama storyteller Kelly Kazek weaves a gothic tapestry of ten stories drawn from real people and legendary creatures, cursed places, and harrowing events.

Each story or legend takes readers to a different place in Alabama. Read about the bestial Wolf Woman who terrified Mobilians in the haunted old port city. In the northern city of Huntsville, visit the Dead Children’s Playground in gloomy Maple Hill Cemetery. In Jacksonville, feel the cold grip of the Old Mill Witch, rumored to protect the workers at the rickety cotton yarn mill. Hear about the mysterious green light that drifts along the Alabama River in the Black Belt hamlet of Gee’s Bend and learn about the role the Gee’s Bend Ferry played in the Civil Rights Movement.

Unlike most ghost-story collections, Some Nightmares Are Real includes an appendix of facts, historical resources, and information about how to visit the locations. These contemporary stories embrace a beloved Southern folkloric tradition for a new generation of young readers. The tales will terrify and ensnare ghost-story lovers of all ages. So settle in, pull the covers up tight, and maybe turn on the light, because the truth is: Some Nightmares Are Real.

Digging up the eerie aftermath of America’s deadliest disasters—where ghost stories take root, history lingers in the shadows, and the past refuses to stay buried.

In this haunting follow-up to Some Nightmares Are Real: The Haunting Truth Behind Alabama’s Supernatural Tales, journalist and storyteller Kelly Kazek investigates supernatural folklore grounded in historical catastrophe. This time, she ventures far beyond Alabama, unearthing the eerie legends born from their aftermath of nine of America’s most infamous disasters. From the strangling suffocation of the Boston Molasses Flood and the terror of Galveston’s notorious Great Storm, to flames blasting from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, Some Nightmares Are True examines ghost stories that have haunted communities long after the news headlines stopped.

Each spooky story blends vivid storytelling with meticulous research, connecting real events to the ghostly lore they inspired. Kazek explores not just the moment of disaster, but how grief, resilience, and remembrance shape the way stories live on—through newspaper archives, folklore, and generations of retelling.

With both wry Southern sensibility and journalistic rigor, Kazek explores how moments of tragedy like the Dixie Tornado Outbreak in Alabama, the capsizing of the SS Eastland in Chicago, and the haunting aftermath of the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard in Nebraska leave lasting imprints on generational memory. These sites of devastation become more than historical footnotes; they transform into hallowed grounds where grief lingers, legends remain, and the line between fact and folklore dissolves.

For ghost hunters, or simply those brave enough to follow their curiosity into learning more about the stories’ historical facts, Kazek has compiled a robust appendix that provides context, source materials, and location details, making this a perfect pick to toss in the car for that late-night road trip adventure. But remember, Some Nightmares Are True.

Dialogue between a medical anthropologist and a Cherokee linguist about health, well-being, and environmental issues

Sounds of Tohi: Cherokee Health and Well-Being in Southern Appalachia is the result of almost two decades of work by medical anthropologist Lisa J. Lefler and Cherokee elder and traditionalist Thomas N. Belt. The narrative consists of a dialogue between them that displays traditional Indigenous knowledge as well as the importance of place for two people from cultures and histories that intersect in the mountains of Southern Appalachia. Together, Lefler and Belt decolonize thinking about health, well-being, and environmental issues through the language and experiences of people whose identity is inextricably linked to the mountains and landscape of western North Carolina.

Lefler and Belt discuss several critical cultural concepts that explain the science of relationships with this world, with the spirit world, and with people. They explore tohi, the Cherokee concept of health, which offers a more pervasive understanding of relationships in life as balanced and moving forward in a good way. They converse about the importance of matrilineality, particularly in light of community healing, the epistemologies of Cherokee cosmography, and decolonizing counseling approaches.

The discussions here offer a different way of approaching the issues that face Americans in this difficult time of division. Lefler and Belt share their urgency to take action against the wholesale exploitation of public lands and the shared environment, to work to perpetuate tribal languages, to preserve the science that can make a difference in how people treat one another, and to create more forums that are inclusive of Native and marginalized voices and that promote respect and appreciation of one another and the protection of sacred places. Throughout, they rely on the preservation of traditional knowledge, or Native science, via Native language to provide insight as to why people should recognize a connection to the land.
 

For any country that has a large and diverse migrant population, it is a struggle to connect these people to the country’s institutions, including the healthcare system, which can be overwhelming in its complexity. Cultural and language barriers often make it difficult for doctors to fully understand the symptoms of their migrant patients, reach accurate diagnoses, or properly treat their suffering. Thus, medical practitioners must attempt new, innovative practices in order to reach patients where they are and convince them to accept treatment from doctors they don’t totally understand. In France, Serge Bouznah and Catherine Lewertowski have pioneered one such practice—that of transcultural mediation. 
 
Drawn from two decades of their experience with transcultural mediation, Spirits in the Consulting Room tells the stories of eight patients—mainly migrants—and their families. Each chapter focuses on a different patient, and Christelle, Djibril, Moncef, Alhassane, Jacinthe, Amy, Cyril, Alice, and Pierre leap off the page as distinct people with unique situations. Together, these chapters reveal how patients’ comprehension of their symptoms is shaped by their cultural background, while recounting the challenges of translating that into terms the doctors can grasp. 
 
The book shows how trained transcultural mediators can help to redress the power imbalance between doctors and the migrants they treat, providing patients with advocates who respect the authority of their background and experiences and don’t just take the side of the medical professionals. The groundbreaking insights modeled in this book can be applied to any medical situation where doctors and patients find themselves speaking different languages. 
 

Astrology is the language in which all of existence speaks, says astrologer and tarotist Bess Matassa. In Star Charting, she leads readers on a vivid journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac as a poetic practice and transformative framework for befriending both the familiar and the strange. Matassa blends personal narrative, sensory immersion, inquiry exercises, and communal calls to action to reframe this ancient art as a modern manifesto for healing division by exalting the astounding complexity within this wild world. In contrast to more technical manuals on birth chart interpretation, this is magic-making as an exploratory treasure hunt, forging radical pathways to personal and collective evolution. Twelve modes of bearing witness to life and moving with its currents. Twelve styles of championing creative change. And twelve ways of never, ever losing heart.

A sweeping cultural history of our yearning for psychedelics to free us from both modern life and traditional religion.

In 1957, Life Magazine published an article called “Seeking the Magic Mushroom” about a Mexican healing ritual centered on an obscure psychedelic: Psilocybe mushrooms. Readers raced to experiment with the drug for their own spiritual, therapeutic, and recreational purposes until a psychedelic craze swept the nation. Today, though psilocybin has been transformed from a sacred fungus into a pharmaceutical product, many people still turn to the enigmatic mushroom to encounter profound spiritual experiences without the baggage of traditional religion.

In Still Seeking the Magic Mushroom, Hugh B. Urban examines the alluring promise of mysticism without religion. With psychedelics, one need not fast, flagellate, or even worship a god to encounter the transcendent; a carefully timed ingestion of psilocybin will suffice. But, Urban argues, stripping the trip from its religion came at a cost: the erasure of Indigenous culture and the eventual commercialization and scientification of the psychedelic underground. Urban shows that psychedelic mushrooms, far from the fringe or countercultural margins, have been central players in shaping American attitudes toward religion and science over the last century. He argues that our love affair with the intoxicating fungus reveals a deep frustration with a disenchanted world, desire for meaning beyond religion, yearning for nature amid ecological crisis, faith in science to save us, and the relentless power of capitalism to turn everything into commodities.