Deadly Greed: The Riveting True Story of the Stuart Murder Case, Which Rocked Boston and Shocked the Nation


Joe Sharkey - 1991
      On October 23, 1989, affluent businessman Charles Stuart made a frantic 911 call from his car to report that he and his seven-months-pregnant wife, Carol, a lawyer, had been robbed and shot by a black male in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. By the time police arrived, Carol was dead, and the baby was soon lost as well. The attack incited a furor during a time of heightened racial tension in the community.   Even more appalling, while the injuries were real, Stuart’s story was a hoax: He was the true killer. But the tragedy would continue with the arrest of Willie Bennett, a young man Stuart identified in a line-up. Stuart’s deception would only be exposed after a shocking revelation from his brother and, finally, his suicide, when he jumped into the freezing waters of the Mystic River.   As the story unraveled, police would put together the disturbing pieces of a puzzle that included Stuart’s distress over his wife’s pregnancy, his romantic interest in a coworker, and life insurance fraud. In an account that “builds and grips like a novel” (Kirkus Reviews), New York Times journalist Joe Sharkey delivers “a picture of a man consumed by naked ambition, unwilling to let anyone or anything get in his way” (Library Journal).  Revised and updated, this ebook also includes photos and a new epilogue by the author.

4:09:43: Boston 2013 Through the Eyes of the Runners


Hal Higdon - 2013
    The book's title refers to the numbers on the finish-line clock when the first bomb exploded.In "4:09:43," Higdon views Boston 2013 through the eyes of those running the race. You will meet George, a runner from Athens, birthplace of the modern marathon, who at sunrise joins the eerie march of silent runners, all aimed at their appointments in Hopkinton, where the marathon starts. You will meet Michele, who at age 2 helped her mother hand water to runners, who first ran the marathon while a student at Wellesley College, and who decided to run Boston again mainly because her daughter Shannon was now a student at Boston University. You will meet Tracy, caught on Boylston Street between the two explosions, running for her life. You will meet Heather, a Canadian, who limped into the Medical Tent with bloody socks from blisters, soon to realize that worse things exist than losing a toenail.In what may be a first, Hal Higdon used social media in writing "4:09:43." Sunday, not yet expecting what might happen the next day, Higdon posted a good-luck message on his popular Facebook page. "Perfect weather," the author predicted. "A 'no-excuses' day." Within minutes, runners in Boston responded. Neil suggested that he was "chilling before the carb-a-thon continues." Christy boasted from her hotel room: "Bring it!"Then, the explosions on Monday! Like all runners, Higdon wondered whether marathoners would ever feel safe again. Beginning Tuesday, runners told him. They began blogging on the Internet, posting to his Facebook page, offering links to their stories, so very similar, but also so very different. Over the next several hours, days, and weeks, Higdon collected the tales of nearly 75 runners who were there, whose lives forever would be shadowed by the bombs on Boylston Street.In" 4:09:43," Higdon presents these stories, condensing and integrating them into a smooth-flowing narrative that begins with runners boarding the buses at Boston Common, continues with the wait at the Athletes' Village in Hopkinton, and flows through eight separate towns. The story does not end until the 23,000 participants encounter the terror on Boylston Street. "These are not 75 separate stories," says Higdon. "This is one story told as it might have been by a single runner with 75 pairs of eyes."One warning about reading "4:09:43" You will cry. But you will laugh, too, because for most of those who covered the 26 miles 385 yards from Hopkinton to Boylston Street, this was a joyous journey, albeit one that ended in tragedy. This is a book as much about the race and the runners in the race as it is about a terrorist attack. In future years as people look back on the Boston Marathon bombings, "4:09:43" will be the book that everyone will need to have read.

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England


Carol F. Karlsen - 1987
    A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was "taken with very strange Fits," fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem.More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.

Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston


Howard Bryant - 2002
    With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author, updating John Henry's first year of ownership after nearly six decades of the Yawkey dynasty, the legacy of the late Will McDonough, and the author's return to his native Boston after a seventeen-year absence, Shut Out has reopened the discussion of baseball, race, and Boston with a new candor.

Rebel Puritan (A Scandalous Life book 1)


Jo Ann Butler - 2011
    SCARLETT O'HARA MEETS THE SCARLET LETTER:Impulsively wed as a teenager to a husband she did not love, and she married three men, all for the wrong reasons.Scarlett O'Hara?Prosecuted and humiliated in public for an out-of-wedlock love affair.Hester Prynne?No, this was Herodias Long of 17th century Rhode Island.Rebel Puritan is a 2012 winner of the Indie BRAG Medallion! To read an excerpt, go to http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Book.html

Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England


John Putnam Demos - 1982
    Focusing on witchcraft reports and trials outside of Salem and utilizing case histories and psychological analyses, this study evaluates the incidents and trials within the context of late-seventeenth-century New England.

The Salem Witch Trials Reader


Frances Hill - 2000
    Within two years, twenty men and women are hanged or pressed to death and over a hundred others imprisoned and impoverished. In The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill provides and astutely comments upon the actual documents from the trial--examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of "Satanic influence," as well as the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness. Always drawing on firsthand documents, she illustrates the historical background to the witchhunt and shows how the trials have been represented, and sometimes distorted, by historians--and how they have fired the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. For those fascinated by the Salem witch trials, this is compelling reading and the sourcebook.

American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy


C. David Heymann - 2007
    Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy, the bestselling author of RFK brings to light new evidence that reveals, as never before, the contrasting lives of the children of Camelot. of b & w photos.

The Wolves of Andover


Kathleen Kent - 2010
    Thomas Carrier labors for the family and is known both for his immense strength and size and mysterious past. The two begin a courtship that suits their independent natures, with Thomas slowly revealing the story of his part in the English Civil War. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger is ever present, whether it be from the assassins sent from London to kill the executioner of Charles I or the wolves -- in many forms -- who hunt for blood. A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent's ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history.

Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience


Richard Francis - 2005
    Biographer and novelist Richard Francis looks at the familiar drama with fresh eyes, grasping the true significance of this cataclysm through the personal story of Samuel Sewall, New England Puritan, Salem trial judge, antislavery agitator, defender of Native American rights, utopian theorist, campaigner against periwigs, family man, gallant wooer.Sewall's life encompassed the tensions that faced the second-generation colonists, caught between the staunch conservatism of the Puritans and the possibilities their new world offered. Everywhere there was conflict, schism, and violence; the new Americans were pitted against the Native Americans, whose pagan ways terrified them, and a hostile mother country intent on imposing her control over the colony. Out of the struggle to maintain unity emerged the forces that drove the Salem tragedy. For the first time, Francis reveals the nature and scale of the threat the authorities believed they were facing.Five guilt-wracked years after pronouncing judgment at the trials, Sewall walked into his church in Boston and recanted the guilty verdicts, praying for forgiveness. This extraordinary act not only proved a turning point for Sewall, it marked the moment when modern American values and attitudes came into being -- the shift from an almost medieval and allegorical view of good and evil to a respect for the mysteries of the human heart.Drawing on Sewall's copious diaries, Francis enables us to see the early colonists not as grim ideologues but as flesh and blood idealists, striving for a new society while coming to terms with the desires and imperfections of ordinary life. Through this unsung hero of conscience, we gain access to the first lost frontier of the New World.

You Wouldn't Want to Be a Salem Witch!: Bizarre Accusations You'd Rather Not Face


Jim Pipe - 2008
    - Humorous Handy Hints that relate directly to the text are provided on each spread- High interest topic for children of all ages- Draws in even the most reluctant reader with a lighthearted tone and hilarious illustrations- The cultures and traditions from ancient civilizations through modern times throughout the history of the world spring to life in the pages of this series- Includes glossary and index- Perfect for struggling readers

Killing Season: The Unsolved Case of New England's Deadliest Serial Killer


Carlton Smith - 1994
    Over the course of seven months in 1988, eleven women disappeared off the streets of New Bedford, Massachusetts, a gloomy, drug-addled coastal town that was once the whaling capital of the world. Nine turned up dead. Two were never found. And the perpetrator remains unknown to this day.   How could such a thing happen? How, in what was once one of America’s richest cities, could the authorities let their most vulnerable citizens down this badly? As Carlton Smith, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the Green River Killer case, demonstrates in this riveting account, it was the inability of police officers and politicians alike to set aside their personal agendas that let a psychopath off the hook.   In Killing Season, Smith takes readers into a close-knit community of working-class men and women, an underworld of prostitution and drug abuse, and the halls of New England law enforcement to tell the story of an epic failure of justice.

The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America


Louis P. Masur - 2008
    This one took 1/250th of a second. The photograph strikes us with visceral force, even years after the instant it captured. A white man, rage written on his face, lunges to spear a black man who is being held by another white. The assailant's weapon is the American flag. Boston, April 5, 1976: As the city simmered with racial tension over forced school busing, newsman Stanley Forman hurried to City Hall to photograph that day's protest, arriving just in time to snap the image that his editor would title The Soiling of Old Glory. The photo made headlines across the U.S. and won Forman his second Pulitzer Prize. It shocked Boston, and America: Racial strife had not only not ended with the 1960s, it was alive and well in the cradle of liberty.Louis P. Masur's evocative biography of a photograph unpacks this arresting image in a tour de force of historical writing. He examines the power of photography and the meaning of the flag, asking why this one picture had so much impact. Most poignantly, Masur recreates the moment and its aftermath, drawing on extensive interviews with Forman and the figures in the photo to reveal not just how the incident happened, but how it changed the lives of the men in it. The Soiling of Old Glory, like the photograph it is named for, offers a dramatic window onto the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane


Katherine Howe - 2009
    But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.(katherinehowe.com)

Chappaquiddick: Power, Privilege, and the Ted Kennedy Cover-Up


Leo Damore - 2018
    It is a tale of death, intrigue, obstruction of justice, corruption and politics." —People Magazine  A young woman leaves a party with a wealthy U.S. senator. The next morning her body is discovered in his car at the bottom of a pond. This is the damning true story of the death of campaign strategist Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and of the senator—37-year-old Senator Ted Kennedy—who left her trapped underwater while he returned to his hotel, slept, and made phone calls to associates. It is the story of a powerful, privileged American man who was able to treat a woman's life as disposable without facing real consequences. And it is the story of a shameful political coverup involving one of the nation's most well-connected families and its network of lawyers, public relations people, and friends who ensured Ted Kennedy remained a respected member of the Senate for forty more years. Originally published in 1988 under the title Senatorial Privilege, this book almost didn't make it into print after its original publisher, Random House, judged it too explosive and backed out of its contract with author Leo Damore. Mysteriously, none of the other big New York publishers wanted to touch it. Only when small independent publisher Regnery obtained the manuscript was the book's publication made possible and the true story of the so-called "Chappaquiddick Incident" finally told. This new edition, Chappaquiddick, is being released 30 years after the original Senatorial Privilege to coincide with the nationwide theatrical release of the movie Chappaquiddick starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, Bruce Dern, and Jim Gaffigan.