Download or read book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher written by Kate Summerscale and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-04-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction.
Download or read book Mrs Robinson s Disgrace written by Kate Summerscale and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake...In one of the most notorious divorce cases of the nineteenth century, Isabella Robinson's scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife's longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality.
Download or read book The Queen of Whale Cay written by Kate Summerscale and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-05-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________ 'A biography that sparkles with enthusiastic research and empathetic writing' - Sunday Times 'A small jewel of a biography' - The New Yorker 'A fascinating, hilarious and deliciously subversive book' - Literary Review _______________ THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Born in 1900 to a promiscuous American oil heiress and a British army captain, Marion Barbara Carstairs realised very early on that she was not like most little girls. Liberated by war work in WWI, Marion reinvented herself as Joe, and quickly went on to establish herself as a leading light of the fashionable lesbian demi-monde. She dressed in men's clothes, smoked cigars and cheroots, tattooed her arms, and became Britain's most celebrated female speed-boat racer - the 'fastest woman on water'. Yet Joe tired of the limelight in 1934, and retired to the Bahamian Island of Whale Cay. There she fashioned her own self-sufficient kingdom, where she hosted riotous parties which boasted Hollywood actresses and British royalty among their guests. Although her lovers included screen sirens such as Marlene Dietrich, the real love of Joe's life was a small boy-doll named Lord Tod Wadley, to whom she remained devoted throughout her remarkable life. She died, aged 93, in 1993.
Download or read book The Wicked Boy written by Kate Summerscale and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book! From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy. At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.
Download or read book The Wicked Boy written by Kate Summerscale and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book! From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy. At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.
Download or read book The Mystery of a Hansom Cab written by Fergus Hume and published by LA CASE Books. This book was released on 2022-08-28 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of the classic work of nineteenth century mystery fiction, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, by Fergus Hume (1859-1932). Originally published in 1886, and set in Victorian-era Melbourne, Australia, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is the story of a mysterious body discovered in a hansom cab. The ensuing homicide investigation, led by our protagonist Detective Gorby, draws us into the long buried secrets of the rich and influential Frettlby family and the class struggles that divide the rich and poor in Victorian-era Melbourne, Australia. A lively and engaging novel, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is still a sensational read for lovers of mysteries stories, and is also a must-read for fans of the genre as a pivotal example of the evolution of the genre from sensationalist crime literature to complex detective thrillers. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was Australia's first international bestselling novel and remains one of the bestselling detective novels of the 19th century. Published one year prior to Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet, it was ground-breaking and genre-defining, and in fact old-sold this first of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.
Download or read book Pursuing an Ethic of Empathy in Journalism written by Janet Blank-Libra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advances a journalistic theory of empathy, challenging long-held notions about how best to do journalism. Because the institution of journalism has typically equated empathy and compassion with bias, it has been slow to give the intelligence of the emotions a legitimate place in the reporting and writing process. Blank-Libra’s work locates the point at which the vast, multidisciplinary research on empathy intersects with the work of the journalist, revealing a reality that has always been so: journalists practice empathy as a way to connect but also as a form of inquiry, as sincere and legitimate in its goals and aspirations as is objectivity.
Download or read book The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Volume One written by Gordon Dahlquist and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here begins an extraordinary alliance—and a brutal and tender, shocking, and electrifying adventure to end all adventures. It starts with a simple note. Roger Bascombe regretfully wishes to inform Celeste Temple that their engagement is forthwith terminated. Determined to find out why, Miss Temple takes the first step in a journey that will propel her into a dizzyingly seductive, utterly shocking world beyond her imagining—and set her on a collision course with a killer and a spy—in a bodice-ripping, action-packed roller-coaster ride of suspense, betrayal, and richly fevered dreams.
Download or read book The Invention of Murder written by Judith Flanders and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review In this fascinating exploration of murder in nineteenth century England, Judith Flanders examines some of the most gripping cases that captivated the Victorians and gave rise to the first detective fiction Murder in the nineteenth century was rare. But murder as sensation and entertainment became ubiquitous, with cold-blooded killings transformed into novels, broadsides, ballads, opera, and melodrama-even into puppet shows and performing dog-acts. Detective fiction and the new police force developed in parallel, each imitating the other-the founders of Scotland Yard gave rise to Dickens's Inspector Bucket, the first fictional police detective, who in turn influenced Sherlock Holmes and, ultimately, even P.D. James and Patricia Cornwell. In this meticulously researched and engrossing book, Judith Flanders retells the gruesome stories of many different types of murder in Great Britain, both famous and obscure: from Greenacre, who transported his dismembered fiancée around town by omnibus, to Burke and Hare's bodysnatching business in Edinburgh; from the crimes (and myths) of Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, to the tragedy of the murdered Marr family in London's East End. Through these stories of murder-from the brutal to the pathetic-Flanders builds a rich and multi-faceted portrait of Victorian society in Great Britain. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, and poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
Download or read book The Art of the English Murder written by Lucy Worsley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder—a dark, shameful deed, the last resort of the desperate or a vile tool of the greedy. And a very strange obsession. But where did this fixation develop? And what does it tell us about ourselves?Our fascination with crimes like these became a form of national entertainment, inspiring novels and plays, prose and paintings, poetry and true-crime journalism. At a point during the birth of the modern era, murder entered the popular psyche, and it’s been a part of us ever since.The Art of the English Murder is a unique exploration of the art of crime—and a riveting investigation into the English criminal soul by one of our finest historians.
Download or read book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher written by Kate Summerscale and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-06-05 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling account of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land. At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable--that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today . . . from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.
Download or read book The Murderer The Monarch and The Fakir written by Appu Esthose Suresh and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Murderer, the Monarch and the Fakir is a fresh account of one of the most controversial political assassinations in contemporary history-that of Mahatma Gandhi. Based on previously unseen intelligence reports and police records, this book recreates the circumstances of his murder, the events leading up to it and the investigation afterwards. In doing so, it unearths a conspiracy that runs far deeper than a hate crime and challenges the popular narrative about the assassination that has persisted for the past seventy years. The Murderer, the Monarch and the Fakir examines the potential role of princely states, hypermasculinity and a militant right-wing in the context of a nation that had just won her independence. It relies on investigative journalism and new evidence set in a strong academic framework to unpack the significance of this tumultuous event.
Download or read book Albion s Fatal Tree written by Douglas Hay and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the popular imagination, informed as it is by Hogarth, Swift, Defoe and Fielding, the eighteenth-century underworld is a place of bawdy knockabout, rife with colourful eccentrics. But the artistic portrayals we have only hint at the dark reality. In this new edition of a classic collection of essays, renowned social historians from Britain and America examine the gangs of criminals who tore apart English society, while a criminal law of unexampled savagery struggled to maintain stability. Douglas Hay deals with the legal system that maintained the propertied classes, and in another essay shows it in brutal action against poachers; John G. Rule and Cal Winslow tell of smugglers and wreckers, showing how these activities formed a natural part of the life of traditional communities. Together with Peter Linebaugh s piece on the riots against the surgeons at Tyburn, and E. P. Thompson s illuminating work on anonymous threatening letters, these essays form a powerful contribution to the study of social tensions at a transformative and vibrant stage in English history. This new edition includes a new introduction by Winslow, Hay and Linebaugh, reflecting on the turning point in the social history of crime that the book represents
Download or read book Bristol Murders written by Nicola Sly and published by Sutton True Crime History. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study brings together numerous murderous tales that shocked not only the city but also made national headlines. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Bristol. They include the murder and suicide of a brother and sister in 1842; the tragic death of 10-year-old Mabel Price in 1897; the killing of Ada James in a fit of jealous rage by her fiancé Ted Palmer in 1913; and the suspicious death of sexual deviant Cecil Cornock, which led to his wife Ann being charged with his murder before her subsequent acquittal in 1946. Nicola Sly's carefully researched, well-illustrated, and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Bristol's history, and should give much food for thought.
Download or read book Death in Perugia written by John Follain and published by Hodder Paperbacks. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive account of the killing of British student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia - the shocking case that appalled the world.
Download or read book The Maul and the Pear Tree written by P. D. James and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-12-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1811 John Williams was buried with a stake in his heart. Was he the notorious East End killer or his eighth victim in the bizarre and shocking Ratcliffe Highway Murders? In this vivid and gripping reconstruction P. D. James and police historian T. A. Critchley draw on forensics, public records, newspaper clippings and hitherto unpublished sources, expertly sifting the evidence to shed new light on this infamous Wapping mystery. This true crime novel begins amid the horror of a dark, wintry London in the year 1811. Using elegant historical detection P.D. James and police historian T.A. Critchley piece together new and unpublished sources in an original portrayal of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. P.D. James, the bestselling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men, here explores the mysterious and intense emotions responsible for the unique crime of murder, with authority and sensitivity. Her only work of true crime, this novel uses forensics, unpublished sources and forgotten documents to create a vivid image of early-nineteenth century London and a gripping reconstruction of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders.
Download or read book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher written by Kate Summerscale and published by NHB Modern Plays. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer 1860, an elegant country house, a young boy is found dead in an outside privy. All clues point towards the murderer being a member of the grieving household. Called to the scene is the most celebrated detective of his day, Jonathan Whicher from Scotland Yard. But this case challenges him in ways he's never been challenged before. Over twenty years later, still haunted by the case, Whicher visits the murderer. As they replay the past, they start to question the nature of truth, the desire for certainty and the possibility of redemption. This compelling stage adaptation of Kate Summerscale's gripping bestseller opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in May 2023. This ensemble piece provides rich opportunities for companies looking to intrigue their audiences with a fresh take on a dark Victorian mystery.
