Books-A-Million Announces THE HOUR OF PERIL by Daniel Stashower As New Buyer's Pick

Books-A-Million, Inc. (Nasdaq/NM: BAMM) today announced that The Hour of Peril by Daniel Stashower, the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," a bold conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln before the Civil War, has been chosen as BAM's most recent "Buyer's Pick" by Mary Gallagher, Senior Vice President of Merchandising.

"Stashower's work of historical narrative captured me from the very beginning, and I know readers won't be able to put it down," said Mary Gallagher. "Despite being a work of non-fiction, The Hour of Peril reads like a suspense thriller."

In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and fully-matured" threat of assassination as he traveled by train from Springfield to Washington for his inauguration. Over a period of thirteen days, the legendary detective Allan Pinkerton worked fanatically to detect and thwart the plot, assisted by a captivating young widow named Kate Warne, America's first female private eye.

With Lincoln and his advisors refusing to believe that the danger was real, Pinkerton took a gamble, staking Lincoln's life and the future of the nation on a perilous feint that seemed to offer the only chance that Lincoln would survive to become president. This story was shrouded in secrecy and, later, mired in controversy.

The story of the "Baltimore Plot" is one of the great untold tales of the Civil War era, and Stashower has crafted this historical narrative with the pace and urgency of a real thriller.

Daniel Stashower, author of The Hour of Peril, is also the author of The Boy Genius, The Mogul and the Edgar Award-winning Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. He has also written five mystery novels. Stashower is a recipient of The Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing, and spent a year as a Visiting Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford. Stashower's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic Traveller and Connoisseur. He has been a freelance journalist since 1986 and currently lives in Washington, D.C.