Washoe County Library System

In this tribute to the Sierra Nevada mountains, the author explores what makes this span of mountains one of the most compelling places on Earth and shares his own personal experiences to inspire other travel readers to prepare for a life-changing adventure.

Another fan-favorite Hazardous Tale gets BIG! This special edition of Donner Dinner Party features a larger trim size, a deluxe package, and 16 pages of bonus material, including research photos, sketches, and mini-comics from the author. The Donner Party expedition is one of the most notorious stories in all of American history, but it s also a fascinating snapshot of the westward expansion of the US, and the families and individuals who sacrificed...

The rags-to-riches American frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevadas Comstock Lodethe rich body of gold and silver so immensely valuable that it changed the destiny of the United States. Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When...

Over 157 years ago—before there was a Reno, Nevada; before there was a state of Nevada; and even before there was a Nevada Territory—there was a bridge over the Truckee River at a narrow, deeply rutted cattle and wagon trail that would one day become Virginia Street. There was also a small rustic inn and tavern occupying a plot of ground at the southern end of the log-and-timber bridge, catering to thirsty cowboys, drovers, and miners....

The flashing neon lights of Reno harbor a ghastly past. With its wide-open gambling, divorce laws and around-the-clock casinos and bars, the Biggest Little City in the World was a rough and wild town with a turbulent history. Victims of Priscilla Ford's Thanksgiving Day massacre haunt a downtown street. After a disappearance and death shrouded in mystery, the spirit of Roy Frisch still lingers near the location of George Wingfield's home. Lynched...

Twenty Miles From a Match, originally published in 1978, is the autobiography of an indomitable woman and her family's twenty years of adventures and misadventures in a desert wilderness. In 1908, a venturesome woman named Sarah Olds packed up her brood and went homesteading in the deserts north of Reno, west of Sutcliffe on Pyramid Lake. Her ailing husband said, welcoming her to their new home, "There, old lady. There's your home, and it's...