"As I lie there in my bed with those visions of what I have seen over and over in my dreams, it shakes me from sleep. The names, the faces, the details...they were so vivid and...familiar. It's as if I was there or had been there before. She was calling my name from the shadows. Just beckoning me into a surreal world of utter fear and danger.But, the more and more I fought the temptation, the more I had the urge to give in. I had a longing of that unfamiliar but somehow familiar voice. The voice of beauty. The voice of an angel.I have never seen her face until now. I know that this may sound like I am crazy or am living in a fantasy world, but wow.That was yesterday, well late last night. It had to be because the moon was full and it was a clear sky. Tonight, my story begins and the questions you have burning in the recesses of your mind will be answered."
A 2006 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Fact Crime. With intimate access to the families, award-winning journalist Diane Fanning's Written in Blood spins a heart-wrenching true crime tale that's been the subject of an acclaimed documentary, "The Staircase", and an HBO TV miniseries starring Colin Firth. An army brat-turned-marine, Michael Peterson saw combat in Vietnam, and returned a decorated soldier. An avid reader, his dreams of being an acclaimed novelist came true. His desire to find love was fulfilled when he married brilliant executive Kathleen Atwater, the first female student accepted at Duke University's School of Engineering. The Petersons seemed the ideal academic couple- well-respected, prosperous, and happy. All that came crashing down in December of 2001, when Kathleen apparently fell to her death in their secluded home in an exclusive area of Durham, North Carolina. But blood-spattered evidence and a missing fireplace poker suggested calculated, cold-blooded murder. Her trusted husband stood accused. Prosecutors introduced evidence at trial that sixteen years earlier, Peterson was one of the last people to see his neighbor alive before she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her home in Germany. A dramatic trial followed in the explosive final chapter of a life that no novelist could ever have conceived...
Vampires, Witches, and Venice! Ivan Lockhart cheated death for the last time. Tormented by his past, Ivan flees to the Grand Tour. But amidst the seventeenth-century grandeur of the Venetian lifestyle, he stumbles upon the Old World’s darkest secrets. Vampires are real. Witches are real. Monsters lurk in the shadows. A blood drinker longs to claim him. A witch has stolen his heart. And the love of his life plunges his soul into fathomless despair. Entangled in this web of shadows, Ivan plummets into the unknown—and the only way out of darkness might be the one to seal his doom. Will Ivan escape the monsters that lurk in La Serenissima… or will he become a monster himself? Don't miss the beginning of this thrilling Paranormal Romance series by USA TODAY bestselling author Silvana G. Sánchez. One-click now and start reading today! Written in Love is the first installment in the Unnatural Brethren series, packed with immortals, feisty witches, and morally grey heroes. If you like Vampire Romance, Love Triangles, Enemies to Lovers, and Fated Mates, then you’ll LOVE Written in Blood! Trigger Warning: *** Contains some mature situations, (self-harm, incest, death, blood) and is recommended for 18+ *** ________________________________________________________________________________________________ ◆ What readers are saying about The Unnatural Brethren: ★★★★★ Where do I start? It's gonna be a challenge, I want to gush a fountain of spoilers! This book should be filed away under "Guilty Pleasures." Our hero, Ivan, is a field of wild oats, begging to be sown. While his sister Alisa is the calm and the storm. There were so many minor characters with unforgettable personalities, I found myself getting attached to every new person that popped up. (Except one, he knows who he is, and take it from me, he had it coming) The writing style is solid. The author's style was passionate and fast-paced, I sailed through this book... partly because of the pace, and partly because the drama and intrigue kept me hooked all the way through. I especially appreciated all of the traveling in this book. I enjoyed taking a tour of London, Paris, and Venice all from the comfort of my couch. ☆☆☆☆☆, I loved this book! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sequel to buy. ★★★★★ Ivan Lockhart is the definition of a romantic anti-hero. His heart is the right place, his life is a constant strife to do the right thing, yet circumstances have shaped him into something he abhors. There's a sense of cruel fate that haunts him. Even as a child, surviving death becomes a curse of sorts, and, in his need to be loved and accepted, he forges unconventional relationships, dragging those who hold near and dear into his dark world. And this all happens before the supernatural even shows up in this story. ★★★★★ An amazing read from an amazing author. I love how she combines the paranormal with the historical. So perfect and I can't wait for her next read!! __________________________________________________________________________________________ ◆ Excerpt from Written in Blood: “It haunted me from a distance. Swathed in a thick veil of fog, with but a few old trees looming above, the island appeared desolated and dead. An overwhelming sense of despair crept behind my neck as we reached the shore. Thousands of men, women, and children had been condemned to live the last of their days here, infected by the plague. Dragged away from their homes, here, they suffered their agonizing illness, shunned by society, exiled from everything they knew and held dear.” Fans of the Vampire Chronicles and A Discovery of Witches will love The Unnatural Brethren series!
Extraordinary accounts of forensic crime detection—from poisoners in ancient Rome to modern day serial killers—by the bestselling author of The Outsider. In 44 BC, a Roman doctor named Antistius performed the first autopsy recorded in history—on the corpse of murder victim Julius Caesar. However, not until the nineteenth century did the systematic application of scientific knowledge to crime detection seriously begin, so that the tiniest scrap of evidence might yield astonishing results—like the single horsehair that betrayed the murderer in New York’s 1936 puzzling and sensational Nancy Titterton case. Many such dramatic tales appear in this updated edition of the most gripping catalog of crimes by acclaimed criminologist Colin Wilson. The book follows the progress of forensic science from the first cases of suspected arsenic poisoning right up to investigations using an impressive armory of high-tech methods: ballistic analysis, blood typing, voice printing, textile analysis, psychological profiling and genetic fingerprinting. “Colin Wilson has made himself the Philosopher-King of forensic speculation, the Diderot of the path labs.” —The Times Literary Supplement “Will enthrall connoisseurs of violent crime.” —The Glasgow Herald
Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster tell the stories of thirteen of those early lawmen, starting with Tarrant County Sheriff John B. York in 1861 and going through Fort Worth Police Officer William Ad Campbell in 1909. York died in a street fight; Campbell was shot-gunned in the back while walking his beat in Hells Half-Acre. This is also the story of law enforcement in the days when an assortment of policemen and marshals, sheriffs and deputies, and special officers and constables held the line and sometimes crossed over it.
Written in Blood features the work of Appalachia’s leading scholars and activists making available an accurate, ungilded, and uncensored understanding of our history. Combining new revelations from the past with sketches of a sane path forward, this is a deliberate collection looking at our past, present, and future. Sociologist Wess Harris (When Miners March) further documents the infamous Esau scrip system for women, suggesting an institutionalized practice of forced sexual servitude that was part of coal company policy. In a conversation with award-winning oral historian Michael Kline, federal mine inspector Larry Layne explains corporate complicity in the 1968 Farmington Mine disaster which killed seventy-eight men and became the catalyst for the passage of major changes in U.S. mine safety laws. Mine safety expert and whistleblower Jack Spadaro speaks candidly of years of attempts to silence his courageous voice and recalls government and university collaboration in covering up details of the 1972 Buffalo Creek flooding disaster, which killed over a hundred people and left four thousand homeless. Moving to the next generation of thinkers and activists, attorney Nathan Fetty examines current events in Appalachia and musician Carrie Kline suggests paths forward for people wishing to set their own course rather than depend on the kindness of corporations.
In 2010 "Written in Blood Volume 1" told the stories of thirteen law officers who died in the line of duty between 1861 and 1909. Now Selcer and Foster are back with Volume 2 covering more line-of-duty deaths. This volume covers 1910 to 1928, as Fort Worth experiences a race riot, lynchings, bushwhacking, assassinations and martial law imposed by the U.S. Army.
Full of provocative facts and true stories of courage, rebellion and survival, this book will encourage young people to examine their own beliefs and values.
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.
