Some people won’t believe any of this story. You might be one of them. But every single word is true. Tony DiMarco does catch a murderer, solve a mystery, and find a treasure—all in the first few days he moves, unexpectedly, to 13 Hangman’s Court in Boston. The fact that he also turns thirteen at the same time is not a coincidence. So begins the story of Tony and his friends—five thirteen-year-old boys, all living in the same house in the same attic bedroom, but at different times in history! None are ghosts, all are flesh and blood, and somehow all have come together in the attic room, visible only to one another. And all are somehow linked to a murder, a mystery, and a treasure.
A Handbook on Hanging is a Swiftian tribute to that unappreciated mainstay of civilization: the hangman. With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great. This coruscating and, in contemporary America, very relevant polemic makes clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be--justice, vengeance, a deterrent--it is certainly killing.
Nicky Flynn’s life just got a whole lot harder. His parents are going through a messy divorce, and as a result he’s starting a new life, in a new city, in a new school. Now his mom has brought home Reggie, an eighty-pound German shepherd fresh from the animal shelter, who used to be a seeing-eye dog. At first Nick isn’t sure about this canine intrusion—it’s just another in a series of difficult changes. Soon, however, Nick is on the path to finding out why a seeing-eye dog would be left at an animal shelter, and along the way discovers that Reggie is a true friend that Nick can rely on. But when he tries to reconnect with his dad, Nick puts everything on the line, including the life of his new best friend. Art Corriveau is a brilliant new voice for middle-grade fiction. How I, Nicky Flynn, Got a Life (and a Dog) is a heartfelt and honest look at the effects of divorce and the wonders of friendship. F&P Level: T F&P Genre: RF
The Doors, James Brown, the Grateful Dead, the Sir Douglas Quintet, David Bowie—the list goes on. . . . From 1967 to 1973, Michael Oberman interviewed more than three hundred top musical artists. Collected together for the first time, Fast Forward, Play and Rewind presents more than one hundred interviews Oberman conducted with the most important musical artists of the day Along the way, Oberman touches on the influence of his brother, who interviewed the Beatles and other top artists from 1964 to 1967. He also recounts stories from his later career working for the major Warner-Elektra Atlantic recording company and producing concerts for Cellar Door Productions and managing recording artists. Want to know the true story of how David Bowie became Ziggy Stardust? That and dozens more true tales that might seem like fiction are waiting inside the pages of Fast Forward, Play and Rewind. Each short interview is an invitation for readers to relive (or live for the first time) one of the greatest periods in rock 'n' roll history.
Take a thrill-packed ride with the outlaw bikers of the Hangmen Motorcycle Club during the wild days of the '60s and '70s, and experience what it feels like to live on the edge. When 15-year-old Dale drops out of school, he's not sure if he wants to be a Marine or a biker. Neither of them pays well, but both fulfill his need for adventure and excitement. As soon as he gets his first Harley, the decision comes easily and the young man falls into the dangerous life of a 1% outlaw biker in Southern California. For almost a decade, Hangmen Motorcycle Club becomes his family, and passionate yet kind-hearted Dale experiences true brotherhood with this extraordinary group of men. Caught up in gang brawls, run-ins with the law, partying and some romance, there is never a dull moment in his day. Perennial values such as honor, loyalty, and freedom also become part of his life. For Hangmen Motorcycle Club-a modern version of the gunfighters of the Old West-is all about living life to the fullest as free spirits, preserving one's liberties, and protecting one's kin. With hundreds of raving reviews, Hangmen is a page-turner to be enjoyed from beginning to end whether or not you are a biker. It is packed with unexpected twists and turns and the author's sense of humor brightens up even the bleakest situations. Ultimately, Hangmen is a book about humanity and probably the most authentic and raw immersion in the motorcycle club subculture of the '60s and '70s.
It is easy to forget that the death penalty was an accepted aspect of Canadian culture and criminal justice until 1976. The Practice of Execution in Canada is not about what led some to the gallows and others to escape it. Rather, it examines how the routine rituals and practices of execution can be seen as a crucial social institution. Drawing on hundreds of case files, Ken Leyton-Brown shows that from trial to interment, the practice of execution was constrained by law and tradition. Despite this, however, the institution was not rigid. Criticism and reform pushed executions out of the public eye, and in so doing, stripped them of meaningful ritual and made them more vulnerable to criticism.
When an ex-commando, a man seeking celebrity status, prepares to rob the Louvre Museum of the Mona Lisa, his wife discovers that she is his mistress. In the eye of a cyclone, her son and she base their lives on hope. With a business proposal is another murderer prophesied as a demon in human form. At the Vatican, he once aspired to be the first black pope. He is angry with God and his eyes are set on a billion-dollar heist. The ex-priest baits his archenemy and makes his way to a scaffold. Of the happiness he found after cursing God, he is tired. Scars disfigure his manhood. The two men are fugitives lethally dangerous to the other. While the ex-priest desires to honour the same gods and spirits that wrecked his priesthood, the ex-commando must rise above his limitations or he risks total ruin.
On the snowy morning of February 8, 1897, the Petersburg secret police were following Tolstoy's every move, and he was always in the company of a man named Certkov. At sixty-nine, Russia's most celebrated writer was being treated like a major criminal, and had abandoned his literary pursuits and become a spiritual mystic, angering the Orthodox church and earning both the admination and ire of his countrymen. Tolstoy was recognizable enough, with his peasant garb and beard, but who was the man who towered over Tolstoy, twenty years younger, with a cold, impenetrable look on his face?This man, Chertkov, was a relative to the Tsars and nephew to the chief of the secret police and represented the very things Tolstoy had renounced—class privilege, unlimited power, and wealth—and yet Chertkov fascinated and attracted Tolstoy. He would become the writer's closest confidant, reading even his diary, and at the end of Tolstoy's life, Chertkov had him in his complete control, preventing him from even seeing his own wife on his deathbed.
A true-crime history of 20th-century, British judicial hangings from 1900 to 1964, and a look at the overall history of executions in Great Britain. It is a sobering thought that until the closing years of the twentieth century, Britain’s courts were technically able to impose the death penalty for several offenses, both civil and military. Although the last judicial hangings took place in 1964, the death penalty, in theory at least, remained for a number of crimes. During the twentieth century, 865 people were executed in Britain. This book examines each and every one of those executions, and in many cases highlights the crimes that brought these men and women to the gallows. The book also details the various forms of capital punishment used throughout British history. During past centuries people were burned at the stake, had the skin flayed from their bodies, were beheaded, garroted, hung, drawn and quartered, stoned, disemboweled, buried alive—and all under the guidance of a vengeful law, or at least what passed for law at any given period. The author, Gary M. Dobbs, has painstakingly collected together every available piece of evidence to provide as clear a picture as possible of a time when the law operated on the principle of an eye for an eye. Dobbs is a true-crime historian and has spent many hours researching the cases featured herein to bring the reader a definitive history of judicial punishment during the twentieth century, and this carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the darker side of history. “A brilliant read.” —Books Monthly (UK)
The story of a rope, a symbol, and rough justice in America. The hangman's knot is a simple thing to tie, just a rope carefully coiled around itself up to thirteen times. But in those thirteen turns lie a powerful symbol, one that is all too deeply connected to America's past -- and present. The last man to be hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, who was executed in Delaware in 1996 for committing a double murder. Even today, hanging is still legal, in certain situations, in New Hampshire and Washington. And the noose remains a potent cultural symbol. An incident in Jena, Louisiana, in 2006, in which nooses were used to menace black students, made national news. Yet little has changed: according to author Jack Shuler, there have been nearly 100 "noose incidents" just in the last two years. The Thirteenth Turn unravels these stories, from Judas Iscariot, perhaps the most infamous hanged man, to the killing of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the murderers at the heart of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and beyond. In his travels across America, Shuler traces the evolution of this dark practice. As he investigates the death of John Brown, or the 1930 lynching that inspired the song "Strange Fruit," he finds that the very places that perpetrated these acts now seek to forget them. Shuler's account is a kind of shadow history of America: a reminder that vigilantes and hangmen play a crucial role in our national story. The Thirteenth Turn is a courageous and searching book that reminds us where we come from, and what is lost if we forget.
