Book picks similar to
Sundown at Sunrise: A Story of Love and Murder, Based on One of the Most Notorious Ax Murders in American History by Marty Seifert
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historical-fiction
crime
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft
Ulrich Boser - 2009
“A tantalizing whodunit” (Boston Globe) and a “riveting, wonderfully vivid account [that] takes you into the underworld of obsessed art detectives, con men, and thieves” (Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting), The Gardner Heist is true crime history at its most spellbinding.
Thunderstruck
Erik Larson - 2006
Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect crime. With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of séances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.
Cat Out of Hell
Lynne Truss - 2014
Overcome by grief, he searches for clues about her disappearance in a file of interviews between a man called "Wiggy" and a cat, Roger. Who speaks to him. It takes a while for Alec to realize he’s not gone mad from grief, that the cat is actually speaking to Wiggy . . . and that much of what we fear about cats is true. They do think they’re smarter than humans, for one thing. And, well, it seems they are! What’s more, they do have nine lives. Or at least this one does – Roger’s older than Methuselah, and his unblinking stare comes from the fact that he’s seen it all. And he’s got a tale to tell, a tale of shocking local history and dark forces that may link not only the death of Alec’s wife, but also several other local deaths. But will the cat help Alec, or is he one of the dark forces?In the deft and comedic hands of mega-bestseller Lynne Truss, the story is as entertaining as it is addictive” (The Sunday Telegraph) – an increasingly suspenseful and often hysterically funny adventure that will please cat lovers and haters alike. And afterwards, as one critic noted, “You may never look at a cat in quite the same way again” (The Daily Mail).
Nutshell
Ian McEwan - 2016
A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.
The Tilted World
Tom Franklin - 2013
As rains swell the Mississippi, the mighty river threatens to burst its banks and engulf everything in its path, including federal revenue agent Ted Ingersoll and his partner, Ham Johnson. Arriving in the tiny hamlet of Hobnob, Mississippi, to investigate the disappearance of two fellow agents who’d been on the trail of a local bootlegger, they are astonished to find a baby boy abandoned in the middle of a crime scene.Ingersoll, an orphan raised by nuns, is determined to find the infant a home, and his search leads him to Dixie Clay Holliver. A strong woman married too young to a philandering charmer, Dixie Clay has lost a child to illness and is powerless to resist this second chance at motherhood. From the moment they meet, Ingersoll and Dixie Clay are drawn to each other. He has no idea that she's the best bootlegger in the county and may be connected to the agents’ disappearance. And while he seems kind and gentle, Dixie Clay knows full well that he is an enemy who can never be trusted.When Ingersoll learns that a saboteur might be among them, planning a catastrophe along the river that would wreak havoc in Hobnob, he knows that he and Dixie Clay will face challenges and choices that they will be fortunate to survive. Written with extraordinary insight and tenderness, The Tilted World is that rarest of creations, a story of seemingly ordinary people who find hope and deliverance where they least expect it—in each other.
Shepherds & Butchers
Chris Marnewick - 2008
At nineteen, he is a Death Row warder at Maximum Security Prison in Pretoria, South Africa: a shepherd who cares for the condemned - and a butcher who escorts them to the gallows. In the summer of 1987, after thirty-two men were hanged in two weeks (all real cases), Leon loses control, with tragic results. And now he's the one facing the death penalty. Only the most precarious line of legal argument stands between Leon and the gallows. Chasing a defense, his advocate trawls the deepest recesses of life in the Pot - the twilight world of Death Row - in order to determine the effect of multiple executions on his young client. In 1987, 164 people were executed at Maximum Security. Two years later, the last man went to the gallows, after more than four thousand hangings in Pretoria in that century. Shepherds & Butchers portrays legal execution in unprecedented detail, revealing its devastating impact on all those involved. At the same time, it exposes the callous violence on the other side of the noose, where murderers reign. Chris Marnewick's first novel is a gripping courtroom drama steeped in the factual.
Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime
Roger Housden - 2004
In it, Roger Housden offers us poems on life and death, happiness, seeing ourselves in relation to the world, and, of course, the ineffable--the things that really matter when the chips are down. He describes these passionate poems as "bread for the soul and fire for the spirit."The poets Housden has chosen are Billy Collins, Hayden Carruth, Dorianne Laux, James Wright, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver from the United States, D. H. Lawrence and John Keats from England, Rainer Maria Rilke from Germany, Fleur Adcock from New Zealand, and Seng-Ts'an from sixth-century China. And yes, that adds up to eleven, not ten. Housden decided to include a bonus poem for his faithful readers in this, the final volume of the series. As before, Housden's luminous essays provide an elegant and easy passage into the sometimes daunting world of poetry, enabling readers to feel that in him they have found a trusted guide and mentor.
Accused (Kindle Single)
Paul Alexander - 2011
The district attorney had boasted, "Anyone can convict a guilty person, but it takes someone really good to convict an innocent one." Did Harris apply a naked choke-hold, or did the district attorney and his forensics team set up Harris?
Lawyer X
Patrick Carlyon - 2020
It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel and their accomplices. When the police finally closed the case file, just how they really won the war, with the help of an unlikely police informer, would become a closely guarded secret and its exposure, the biggest legal scandal of our time.Lawyer X is the scandalous, true story of how a promising defence barrister from a privileged background broke all the rules - becoming both police informer and her client's lover - sharing their secrets and shaping the gangland war that led to sensational arrests and convictions. The story of how Nicola Gobbo became Lawyer X, and why, is a compelling study in desperation and determination.Lawyer X is the definitive story of Melbourne's gangland wars and its most glamorous and compelling central character, based on the ground-breaking work of investigative journalists Anthony Dowsley and Patrick Carlyon, who broke the story for the Herald Sun in 2014, and their five-year struggle to reveal the truth about the identity of Lawyer X.
Underbelly: True Crime Stories
John Silvester - 1997
This book delves into the crimes that police have to deal with day after day. Murderers, hitmen, kidnappers, and drug dealers all feature in this collection of true crime stories. Take the drug dealer who walked out of a restaurant bragging that he's killed a man—unaware that his fellow diner was an undercover policeman. Or the young mother, whose death was written off as suicide, but which subsequent investigation proved to be something much more sinister.
Secrets of the Heart
Gilda O'Neill - 2008
They hoped it would be over by Christmas...
Britain is at war and the proximity of the docks means that life in and around London's Turnbury Buildings is hard and dangerous. Chances are taken, people have secrets, hearts are broken. And feelings about foreigners are running high.
Sixteen-year-old Freddie Jarrett is secretly seeing a girl from the local Chinese community - a relationship that would be frowned on by both families, despite the fact that they all support the fight for freedom from oppression. And his sister Grace has her own secret to hide. A secret that no one outside the immediate family must ever know.
As the threat of the Luftwaffe looms over the docks, the community is threatened with being torn apart by prejudice, fear and separation, and the disturbing loss of stability that brings with it the feeling that it is only what happens today that counts for anything...
You Know When the Men Are Gone
Siobhan Fallon - 2011
You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life. There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches. When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.
The Oracle of Stamboul
Michael David Lukas - 2011
"They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth. Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy. When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life—the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul—a city at the crossroads of the world—intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles? The Oracle of Stamboul is a marvelously evocative, magical historical novel that will transport readers to another time and place—romantic, exotic, yet remarkably similar to our own.
The Bowl with Gold Seams
Ellen Prentiss Campbell - 2016
During the summer of 1945, the State Department selected the resort to serve as the detainment center for the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, his staff, and their families.The novel tells Hazel Shaw’s story of unexpected personal transformation — both as a young woman working at the hotel among the Japanese, and the further story of the reverberating lifelong consequences of that experience. The final events of the war challenge Hazel’s beliefs about enemies and friends, victory and defeat, love and loyalty. In the ensuing years she remains haunted by memories. Long after the end of the war, an unexpected encounter causes Hazel to return to the hotel and she must confront her past, come to terms with her present life, and determine her future.
The Paris Winter
Imogen Robertson - 2013
Maud Heighton came to Lafond's famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris eats money. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling joys of the Belle Époque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, Maud takes a job as companion to young, beautiful Sylvie Morel. But Sylvie has a secret: an addiction to opium. As Maud is drawn into the Morels' world of elegant luxury, their secrets become hers. Before the New Year arrives, a greater deception will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light.