The Altar Boys


Suzanne Smith - 2020
    A community betrayed ... The whistle-blower priest who paid the ultimate price Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Shortland, on the outskirts of Newcastle, New South Wales. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' highs schools: Glen to Marist Brothers and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But when Glen discovered another priest was sexually abusing boys, he reported the offending to police, breaking Canon Law and his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process. Just weeks before he was due to give evidence at a key trial against the highest cleric to ever be charged with covering up child abuse, Father Glen Walsh was dead. Two months later, his friend Steven also died, only weeks before he was to marry the love of his life. Ensuing investigations revealed that at least 60 men in the region had taken their own lives. Why? What had happened, and why were so many from the three Catholic high schools in the area?By six-time Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter Suzanne Smith, The Altar Boys is the powerful expose of widespread and organised clerical abuse of children in an Australian city, and how the cover-up in the Catholic Church in Australia extended from parish priests to every echelon of the organisation. Focusing on two childhood friends, their families and community, this gripping and explosive story is backed by secret documents, diary notes and witness accounts, and details a deliberate church strategy of using psychological warfare against witnesses in key trials involving paedophile priests.

Khushwant Singh's Big Book of Malice


Khushwant Singh - 2000
    This book brings together some of his nastiest and most irreverent pieces. Witty, sharp and brutally honest, this collection is certain to delight and provoke readers of all ages.

Cherokee America


Margaret Verble - 2019
    A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as "Check," a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check's mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community--and painfully expel one of their own.Cherokee America vividly, and often with humor, explores the bonds--of blood and place, of buried histories and half-told tales, of past grief and present injury--that connect a colorful, eclectic cast of characters, anchored by the clever, determined, and unforgettable Check.

The DeLorean Story: The car, the people, the scandal


Nick Sutton - 2013
    The short life of the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car – a vision of the future with its gullwing doors and stainless steel body – began after John DeLorean secured financial backing from the British government for his car-making venture in Northern Ireland. Four years and nearly 9,000 cars later the company went bust and DeLorean faced questions about fraud against the British taxpayer, and his big ally, Colin Chapman of Lotus, also drew scrutiny. As an insider’s account, this book contains a great deal of new information about the DeLorean scandal.

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War


Drew Gilpin Faust - 2008
    During the war, approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. This Republic of Suffering explores the impact of this enormous death toll from every angle: material, political, intellectual, and spiritual. The eminent historian Drew Gilpin Faust delineates the ways death changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation and its understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. She describes how survivors mourned and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the slaughter with its belief in a benevolent God, pondered who should die and under what circumstances, and reconceived its understanding of life after death. Faust details the logistical challenges involved when thousands were left dead, many with their identities unknown, on the fields of places like Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. She chronicles the efforts to identify, reclaim, preserve, and bury battlefield dead, the resulting rise of undertaking as a profession, the first widespread use of embalming, the gradual emergence of military graves registration procedures, the development of a federal system of national cemeteries for Union dead, and the creation of private cemeteries in the South that contributed to the cult of the Lost Cause. She shows, too, how the war victimized civilians through violence that extended beyond battlefields-from disease, displacement, hardships, shortages, emotional wounds, and conflicts connected to the disintegration of slavery.

The Darkest Places: Unsolved Mysteries, True Crimes, and Harrowing Disasters in the Wild


Outside Magazine - 2019
    The Darkest Places chronicles mysterious disappearances, unsolved murders, and deadly disasters, taking us to far-flung places no sane person would want to go.

Women Who Kill: A Chilling Casebook of True-Life Murders


Al Cimino - 2019
    But this disproportion can make their crimes seem all the more shocking. In this chilling casebook, Al Cimino explores 34 female murderers. We meet 'Angel of Death' Kristen Gilbert who induced multiple cardiac arrests among her patients while working as a hospital nurse, Enriqueta Mart�, the 'Vampire of Barcelona' who killed children to make cosmetics, and many more. These case studies give riveting insight into the lives and motives of women who decided to commit the ultimate transgression. In many of these cases, the women had suffered years of abuse and psychological breakdown before their eventual crimes. Other times their heinous acts seemed to spring from nowhere, with an unpredictability that is haunting. The gruesome details within these pages are not for the faint hearted.

The Beatles Are Here!: 50 Years after the Band Arrived in America, Writers, Musicians Other Fans Remember


Penelope Rowlands - 2014
    Through the voices of those who witnessed it or were swept up in it indirectly, The Beatles Are Here! explores the emotional impact—some might call it hysteria—of the Fab Four’s February 1964 dramatic landing on our shores. Contributors, including Lisa See, Gay Talese, Renée Fleming, Roy Blount, Jr., and many others, describe in essays and interviews how they were inspired by the Beatles. This intimate and entertaining collection arose from writer Penelope Rowlands’s own Beatlemaniac phase: she was one of the screaming girls captured in an iconic photograph that has since been published around the world—and is displayed on the cover of this book. The stories of these girls, who found each other again almost 50 years later, are part of this volume as well. The Beatles Are Here! gets to the heart of why, half a century later, the Beatles still matter to us so deeply.

Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws: Incredible True Stories of Wild West Showdowns and Frontier Justice


William MacLeod Raine - 1929
    Get swept back to a time when sheriffs did their best to keep order in a lawless land. Read about the likes of Tom Horn, the “Apache Kid,” “Bucky” O’Neill, Tom Nickson, and many more!  Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a classic for everyone interested in history and what is was like in the Old West. The detail of every story grabs the attention of the reader and doesn't let go. Learn the early stories of famous foes like Billy the Kid and what he was like from both a personal and business standpoint. If you like stories of heroes and the people who tried to take them down, then you are in for a wild ride.  Novelist William MacLeod Raine recalls standoffs, shootouts, rowdy saloons, brave men who protected innocent townspeople, and villains who put the “wild” in Wild West. Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws is a sure shot for anyone interested in the history and romance of the Old West.

Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains


William F. Drannan - 1903
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

F*ck That Cape: The Grown Woman's Unapologetic Guide to Putting Herself First


Jennifer Arnise - 2018
    You’ll never read another self-help book ever again. The narrative around being strong has been a crown of thorns for African American women since shewe were brought to this country as slaves. Being smart and clever and efficient was a matter of life and death. Now in present time, being a smart, educated and successful African American woman doesn't determine if we live or die but it often creates an isolating and lonely world because more times than not she is we are hustling to prove herour worth to everyone. You’ve been accommodating all your life. You’ve been willing to set aside your own interests, needs and desires “for the greater good.” You’ve been playing the sacrificial lamb on the altar selflessness for far too long. It’s time to stop trying to be everyone’s hero, putting the needs of others above your own. It is making you miserable and you know it. Deep within you, you know your Superwoman complex leaves a bad taste in your mouth more often than not, leaving you feeling exhausted, unfulfilled, alone and angry at the world… and at the people you love. All your life you’ve been told to be a tough, strong, self-reliant, inscrutable Black woman without a chink in her armor, without an ounce of weakness, so you plod on, isolated and lonely because you’re not being true to yourself. You’re suffering, and whether you’re complaining or not. It’s time to stop. With soul-baring stories and anecdotes from her own life, Jennifer gives a detailed account of her journey to healing and shows you how stop “Caping” and begin to have a more compassionate view of yourself and begin making yourself the number one priority in your life and trust your own instincts and abilities without having to compromise to please anyone else. F*ck That Cape is a book that will show you how to trust your inner voice and intuition, a natural talent that we’ve crushed underneath the weight of societal expectations. Here’s what you’re going to learn in this no-fluff, definitive guide to self-care: • How to go from meeting everyone else's needs to getting your own needs met first • Figuring out what you really want, firmly asking for it and getting it without being an asshole • How to build an awesome support system of people that encourage you and boost your confidence • How to give yourself permission to relentlessly pursue your dreams and live the life you've always wanted • Why you should stop trying to please and make everyone happy and practical steps to go about it • …and much more! Deeply insightful, intuitive and even life changing, F*ck that Cape is the ultimate blueprint to crafting your life the way you want it. On your own terms.

George Washington


William Roscoe Thayer
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Age of Victoria


Alston Sleet - 2019
    She wanted to explore the world and escape from the strict etiquette of British nobility. With her father fighting in India, the governess assigned to raise her controlled every aspect of her life. The financial downturn of a friend of the family would lead to her sister's longtime engagement turning into an immediate marriage. Victoria's thirst for adventure and tomboy ways would not prepare her for the sudden advent of the apocalypse. Can Victoria and her friends survive this new world of Classes and Skills? Join Victoria and her family on a LitRPG adventure, unlike any other!

For Adam's Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England


Allegra Di Bonaventura - 2013
    Joshua Hempstead was a well-respected farmer and tradesman in New London, Connecticut. As his remarkable diary—kept from 1711 until 1758—reveals, he was also a slave owner who owned Adam Jackson for over thirty years. In this engrossing narrative of family life and the slave experience in the colonial North, Allegra di Bonaventura describes the complexity of this master/slave relationship and traces the intertwining stories of two families until the eve of the Revolution. Slavery is often left out of our collective memory of New England’s history, but it was hugely impactful on the central unit of colonial life: the family. In every corner, the lines between slavery and freedom were blurred as families across the social spectrum fought to survive. In this enlightening study, a new portrait of an era emerges.

Infinite Baseball: Notes from a Philosopher at the Ballpark


Alva Noë - 2019
    Because of this, despite ever greater profits, Major League Baseball is bent on finding ways to shorten games, and to tailor baseball to today's shorter attention spans. But for the true fan, baseball is always compelling to watch -and intellectually fascinating. It's superficially slow-pace is an opportunity to participate in the distinctive thinking practice that defines the game. If baseball is boring, it's boring the way philosophy is boring: not because there isn't a lot going on, but because the challenge baseball poses is making sense of it all.In this deeply entertaining book, philosopher and baseball fan Alva No� explores the many unexpected ways in which baseball is truly a philosophical kind of game. For example, he ponders how observers of baseball are less interested in what happens, than in who is responsible for what happens; every action receives praise or blame. To put it another way, in baseball - as in the law - we decide what happened based on who is responsible for what happened. Noe also explains the curious activity of keeping score: a score card is not merely a record of the game, like a video recording; it is an account of the game. Baseball requires that true fans try to tell the story of the game, in real time, as it unfolds, and thus actively participate in its creation.Some argue that baseball is fundamentally a game about numbers. Noe's wide-ranging, thoughtful observations show that, to the contrary, baseball is not only a window on language, culture, and the nature of human action, but is intertwined with deep and fundamental human truths. The book ranges from the nature of umpiring and the role of instant replay, to the nature of the strike zone, from the rampant use of surgery to controversy surrounding performance enhancing drugs. Throughout, Noe's observations are surprising and provocative.Infinite Baseball is a book for the true baseball fan.