Download or read book Murder on Shades Mountain written by Melanie S. Morrison and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on Birmingham's black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jennie Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death. In Murder on Shades Mountain Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.

Download or read book The Sinner and the Saint written by Kevin Birmingham and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * One of The East Hampton Star's 10 Best Books of the Year* From the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story—and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic. The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov. Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love. Dostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.

Download or read book The Murder of Mary Ashford written by Naomi Clifford and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical true crime comes to life with this fictionalized account of a nineteenth-century murder that changed the course of British legal history. England, 1817. In the small hours of May 27th, a young servant girl from the village of Erdington left a party in the company of a man with a bad reputation. A few hours later, Mary Ashford’s lifeless body was found drowned in a pond. Despite a seemingly solid alibi, Abraham Thornton is soon on trial for his life—only to be acquitted at the direction of the judge. Public opinion across the country is outraged, with everyone convinced that a murderer has evaded the gallows. In a last-ditch effort to find justice, Mary’s brother uses an archaic legal process to prosecute Thornton again, only to find himself confronted with an extraordinary challenge. In court, Thornton throws down a gauntlet and demands his legal right to trial by combat . . . and the outcome will alter the course of English legal history. A many-layered fictionalized account, The Murder of Mary Ashford examines the particulars of this famous case while exploring the birth of forensic investigation, the meaning of sexual consent, and the struggle of a modern state to emerge from its medieval heritage.

Download or read book The Most Dangerous Book written by Kevin Birmingham and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of the 2015 PEN New England Award for Nonfiction “The arrival of a significant young nonfiction writer . . . A measured yet bravura performance.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times James Joyce’s big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce’s inspiration in 1904 to the book’s landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say Yes to Ulysses.

Download or read book Murder and Crime Warwick written by Vanessa Morgan and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2013-08-05 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the shadier side of Warwick's history with this collection of true-life crimes from the town's past. Featuring all factions of the criminal underworld, this chilling selection include cases of murder, kidnap, poaching, theft, assault and infanticide, as well as the punishments and executions that were carried out. Cases featured here includes a daring robbery at a country house in 1846, the brutal murder of a woman in 1819, and the drowning of a wife by her husband in 1870. Vanessa Morgan's well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in true crime and the history of the town.

Download or read book The Sun Does Shine written by Anthony Ray Hinton and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--

Download or read book Rising Road written by Sharon Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive? The priest had married Stephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic. Sharon Davies's Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson's crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and "foreigners" as well. In one of the case's most unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson's defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black. Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow. "Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page." --Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice "This gripping history...has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. Drama aside, Rising Road also happens to be a fine work of history." --History News Network

Download or read book Blind Vengeance written by Ray Jenkins and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In-depth portraits of the victims and their killer show three men representative of the changing South: the privileged white man, Judge Robert Smith Vance of Birmingham, who saw the necessity of political changes; the black lawyer and city alderman, Robert Robinson of Savannah, who prevailed in a segregated society to become a respected professional figure; and the embittered lifelong criminal Roy Moody, who led a brooding, solitary life on the edges of society.

Download or read book Murder and Crime Birmingham written by Vanessa Morgan and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chilling collection brings together true-life historical murders that shocked not only the city but frequently made headline news throughout the country. Cases featured here include riots in 1791, a bank robbery in 1844 and an arson attack in 1912. Murder most foul also raises it’s ugly head, with John Thompson stabbed his common-law wife in a fit of drunken jealousy in 1861, and Mary Albion is murdered in her bed when a robbery went wrong in 1898. Vanessa Morgan’s well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in true crime and the shadier side of Birmingham’s past.

Download or read book Circumstantial Evidence written by Pete Earley and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1995 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of The Hot House once again combines the facts, the real people, and the location itself into this true story, a wide-ranging portrait of the interplay of race, sex, and justice in the American South, made all the more real because it takes place in the same small Alabama town that was the fictional "Maycomb" in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Optioned for film by MGM. Photos.

Download or read book Murderous Birmingham written by John J. Eddleston and published by Breedon Books Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book includes absorbing real life accounts of nearly every reported murder that took place around Birmingham during the twentieth century. It features well-known and lesser known cases but all arey fascinating tales of jealousy, revenge and tragedy. T

Download or read book Unhealthy Cities written by Kevin Fitzpatrick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to show the important role that space and place plays in the health of urban residents, particularly those living in high poverty ghettos. The book brings together research and writing from a variety of disciplines to demonstrate the health costs of being poor in America’s cities. Both authors are committed to raising awareness of structural factors that promote poverty and injustice in a society that proclaims its commitment to equality of opportunity. Our health is often dramatically affected by where we live; some parts of the city seem to be designed to make people sick. The book is intended for students and professionals in urban sociology, medical sociology, public health, and community planning.

Download or read book Wicked City written by Ace Atkins and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-10 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of the Quinn Colson series comes a “noir crime classic”(Mystery Ink) about one of the most notorious towns in American history. When crime-fighting attorney Albert Patterson is gunned down in a Phenix City, Alabama, alley in the spring of 1954, the entire town seems to pause for just a moment—and when it starts up again, there is something different about it. A small group of men meet and decide they have had enough, but what that means and where it will take them is something they could not have foreseen. Over the course of the next several months, lives will change, people die, and unexpected heroes emerge—like “a Randolph Scott western,” one of them remarks, “played out not with horses and Winchesters, but with Chevys and .38s and switchblades.” Peopled by an extraordinary cast of characters, both real and fictional, Wicked City is a novel of uncommon intensity, rich with atmosphere, filled with sensuality and surprise.

Download or read book Homicide and Organised Crime written by Mohammed Rahman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers rich ethnographic and narrative accounts of men who have been engaged in serious violence and organised crime in the West Midlands of England, using several theoretical paradigms. Through case study examples, it also considers contract killers and the nefarious position that ‘hitmen’ occupy in the criminal underworld. By charting insider perspectives from retired law enforcement agents, informants, ex-military personnel and ex-offenders, this book speaks to those who have a vested interest in violence, organised crime and ethnography.

Download or read book Alabama Noir Akashic Noir written by Don Noble and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alabama joins Mississippi as fertile Deep South soil for the Noir Series. “Banish any boredom with a descent into Alabama Noir.” —Southern Review of Books Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct location within the geographic area of the book. Brand-new stories by: Ace Atkins, Tom Franklin, Anita Miller Garner, Suzanne Hudson, Kirk Curnutt, Wendy Reed, Carolyn Haines, Anthony Grooms, Michelle Richmond, Winston Groom, Ravi Howard, Thom Gossom Jr., Brad Watson, Daniel Wallace, D. Winston Brown, and Marlin Barton.

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 My Husband s Murder written by Katie Lowe and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-07-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'So compulsive, chillingly suspenseful' LOUISE O'NEILL 'Brilliant - so atmospheric' DEBBIE HOWELLS 'Kept me gripped until the very last page' LINDSEY KELK Previously published as The Murder of Graham Catton It's time to hear the truth... Ten years ago, Hannah Catton's husband was brutally murdered in their home. The murderer was convicted. The case was closed. But now a podcast called Conviction is investigating this horrific crime - and they have Hannah in their sights. Someone knows more than they're letting on, and listeners are about to become judge, jury and executioner as they undercover the truth about the murder of Graham Catton. PRAISE FOR KATIE LOWE: 'Atmospheric' THE TIMES 'A guaranteed good read' STYLIST 'Compelling' LOUISE O'NEILL 'Brilliant' DEBBIE HOWELLS Previously published as The Murder of Graham Catton.