The London of the late nineteenth century was home to both Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous detective - Sherlock Holmes. This book looks at some of the many locations in both central and outer London that have connections to one or both of these famous names. In addition to examining the history this book also looks at some of the theories that have been woven over the years around Holmes and these locations. Views: 67
From the New York Times bestselling author of Fatal Vision comes a shocking true account of murder, family secrets, and final justice now available for the first time as an e-book...One hot summer night in 1988, Bonnie Von Stein's second husband was murdered in their bed, Bonnie herself stabbed, beaten, and left for dead beside him. It looked like a brutal but tragically typical case: Von Stein was newly wealthy, and Bonnie's troubled son Chris, seemed like the obvious suspect. But Chris turned out to have an air-tight alibi and new leads suggested the crime could be much more complex. The trail led to Chris's two strange new friends from college and a real-life enactment of a bizarre Dungeons and Dragons fantasy adventure, and it implicated Bonnie's teenage daughter as well. In Cruel Doubt, Joe McGinniss probes the dark heart of family life and small-town North Carolina society to uncover a fascinating and terrifying story... Views: 67
A total and groundbreaking reassessment of the life of Adolf Eichmann--a superb work of scholarship that reveals his activities and notoriety among a global network of National Socialists following the collapse of the Third Reich and that permanently challenges Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil." Smuggled out of Europe after the collapse of Germany, Eichmann managed to live a peaceful and active exile in Argentina for years before his capture by the Mossad. Though once widely known by nicknames such as "Manager of the Holocaust," in 1961 he was able to portray himself, from the defendant's box in Jerusalem, as an overworked bureaucrat following orders--no more, he said, than "just a small cog in Adolf Hitler's extermination machine." How was this carefully crafted obfuscation possible? How did a central architect of the Final Solution manage to disappear? And what had he done with his time while in hiding? Bettina Stangneth, the first to... Views: 67
First published as a feuilleton in a left-wing newspaper in 1850, The Salt Smugglers provides a political satire of the waning days of France's short-lived Second Republic. With nods to Diderot and Sterne, this shaggy-dog story deals less with contraband salt smugglers than with the subversive power of fiction to transgress legal and esthetic boundaries. By writing what he claimed was a purely documentary account of his picaresque adventures in search of an elusive book recording the true history of a certain seventeenth-century swashbuckler, Nerval sought to deride the press censors of the day who forbade the serial publication of novels in newspapers -- and in the process he provocatively deconstructed existing distinctions between fact and fiction. Never before translated into English and still unavailable as a separately published volume in French, The Salt Smugglers is a pre-postmodern gem of experimental prose. Richard Sieburth's vibrant translation and illuminating... Views: 67
May 2045. England has become a minor region of the European superstate, politically correct but inert, weighed down by bureaucracy and unaware of past glories. With British culture diluted to near extinction by European influence, the nation having lost its Crown and its Parliament, nationalistic pride is liable to land you in prison, or even worse... Oxford don Horatio Lestoq finds the dead body of a prominent politician and is immediately tagged as prime suspect. On the run and desperate to clear his name, can he free himself from the tangled web of an EU government conspiracy, or will he become ensnared like those before him who tried to reveal fiercely guarded hidden truths? Views: 67
Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Read"Scientific American Recommended" feature reviewA masterful balance of science, history and rich narrative." —Discover magazineHirshfeld tells this climactic discovery of the expanding universe with great verve and sweep, as befits a story whose scope, characters and import leave most fiction far behind." —Wall Street JournalStarlight Detectives is just the sort of richly veined book I love to read—full of scientific history and discoveries, peopled by real heroes and rogues, and told with absolute authority. Alan Hirshfeld's wide, deep knowledge of astronomy arises not only from the most careful scholarship, but also from the years he's spent at the telescope, posing his own questions to the stars." —DAVA SOBEL, author of A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos and... Views: 67
EDITORIAL REVIEW: Acclaimed historian Alan Brinkley gives us a sharply realized portrait of Henry Luce, arguably the most important publisher of the twentieth century.As the founder of *Time*, *Fortune, *and *Life *magazines, Luce changed the way we consume news and the way we understand our world. Born the son of missionaries, Henry Luce spent his childhood in rural China, yet he glimpsed a milieu of power altogether different at Hotchkiss and later at Yale. While working at a Baltimore newspaper, he and Brit Hadden conceived the idea of *Time*: a “news-magazine” that would condense the week’s events in a format accessible to increasingly busy members of the middle class. They launched it in 1923, and young Luce quickly became a publishing titan. In 1936, after *Time*’s unexpected success—and Hadden’s early death—Luce published the first issue of *Life,* to which millions soon subscribed.Brinkley shows how Luce reinvented the magazine industry in just a decade. The appeal of *Life* seemingly cut across the lines of race, class, and gender. Luce himself wielded influence hitherto unknown among journalists. By the early 1940s, he had come to see his magazines as vehicles to advocate for America’s involvement in the escalating international crisis, in the process popularizing the phrase “World War II.” In spite of Luce’s great success, happiness eluded him. His second marriage—to the glamorous playwright, politician, and diplomat Clare Boothe—was a shambles. Luce spent his later years in isolation, consumed at times with conspiracy theories and peculiar vendettas. *The Publisher* tells a great American story of spectacular achievement—yet it never loses sight of the public and private costs at which that achievement came. Views: 67
In late 1944, under rather mysterious circumstances, aspiring writer Jack Kerouac lost a novella-length manuscript titled The Haunted Life. Set in Galloway, a fictionalized version of Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, the coming-of-age story of Peter Martin—a character based on the author's recently departed friend Sebastian Sampas—tackles the pressing issues of the day.At home in the working-class town the summer before his sophomore year at Boston College, Peter finds himself conflicted. Like many Americans, Peter is unsure, suspended between the economic crisis of the previous decade and the impending US entry into World War II. In The Haunted Life, Peter struggles to define what he believes to be intellectually true and worthy of his life and talents.Skillfully edited by Todd F. Tietchen, assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell,The Haunted Life is rounded out by sketches, notes, and... Views: 66
A Chillmaster Spy Thriller Views: 66
Benjamin Daniels is back. He may be older, wiser and more experienced, but his patients are no less outrageous. Drawing on his time working as a medical student, a locum, and a general practitioner, Dr Daniels would like to introduce you to ... The old age pensioner who can't keep his hands to himself. The teenager convinced that he lost his virginity and caught HIV sometime between leaving a bar and waking up in a kebab shop. A female patient Dr Daniels recognises from his younger, bachelor years. The woman whose mobile phone turns up in an unexpected place. A Jack Russell with a bizarre foot fetish. Crackhead Kenny. Not to mention the super nurses, anxious parents, hypochondriacs, jumpy medical students and kaleidoscope of care workers that make up Dr Daniels' daily shift. Further Confessions of a GP is the eagerly anticipated... Views: 66
She was beautiful, she was ruthless. She was Vera Atkins, legendary spy of the 1930s and 1940s. Here is the extraordinary account of the woman whose intelligence, beauty and unflagging dedication proved the key in turning the tide of WWII. Recruited at age 23 by legendary spymaster William Stephenson (known as Intrepid) Vera Atkins undertook countless perilous missions on her own in the 1930s. Her fierce intellect, personal courage, and facility with languages quickly propelled her to the leadership echelon of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by Winston Churchill. During World War II... Views: 66
Late in the afternoon of 16 October 1977, seventy-eight year-old Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered. Her killer was never found.The mystery surrounding Florence's death is in keeping with the elegant artifice of her life. Born in rural Australia, Florence soon decided Queensland was too small a stage. She travelled the world, changing her name and business as she went—a performing arts academy in Shanghai, a fashion salon in London and a husband or two until finally, in 1949, she returned to Australia. This time Broadhurst claimed to be an English woman escaping post-war London for the sunshine of the 'promised land'.1959 saw her drawing on images she had gathered from her travels to create a flourishing business, Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers. By the time of her death Florence Broadhurst was a successful socialite—and a wealthy woman. But who was she, this generous, ferociously autocratic and evasive woman? In A Life by Design we get a... Views: 66
