Recently in books Category

While I was helping to sort books for the annual York County Heritage Trust Book Blast, one of the other volunteers mentioned that she recently discovered that a best-selling author of horror novels lives in York County.

(Plug for book sale: Many thousands of books of all kinds for extremely low prices, August 14 & 15 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and August 16 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is held at YCHT's Agricultural & Industrial Museum, 217 W. Princess Street. Everyone is welcome.)

Other nationally known authors also have York County connections. Rita Mae Brown, who writes the mysteries with the helpful cats, was born near Hanover. When he spoke here a few years ago, David McCullough mentioned that he had ancestors in the Peach
Bottom area.

One of my favorites is Hanover native John Luther Long, whose novella Madame Butterfly was the basis for the Puccini opera, as well as the play Miss Saigon. See below for more on Long from my previous Sunday News column:

William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) was a professor of languages at Miami University in Ohio when he developed a series of enduring readers for children.

Truman and Smith, a small Cincinnati publishing firm, brought out the First Reader in 1836, followed by the Second Reader in 1837. The Third and Fourth were published in 1837. These volumes were used to teach untold numbers of children the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and other subjects up through the end of grammar school. McGuffey's brother Alexander was the compiler of the Fifth Reader (1844) and the Sixth (1855) for students of a higher level.