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Blessin Adams (Author)

Great and Horrible News: Murder and Mayhem in Early Modern Britain

'Grimly fascinating ... engrossing' Daily Mail NINE HISTORIC CRIMES. ONE FAMILIAR OBSESSION. In early modern England, murder truly was most foul. Trials were gossipy events packed to the rafters with noisome spectators. Executions were public proceedings which promised not only gore, but desperate confessions and the grandest, most righteous human drama. Bookshops saw grisly stories of crime and death sell like hot cakes.This history unfolds the true stories of murder, criminal investigation, early forensic techniques, high court trials and so much more.In thrilling narrative, we follow a fugitive killer through the streets of London, citizen detectives clamouring to help officials close the net. We untangle the mystery of a suspected staged suicide through the newly emerging science of forensic pathology. We see a mother trying to clear her dead daughter's name while other women faced the accusations - sometimes true and sometimes not - of murdering their own children.These stories are pieced together from original research using coroner's inquests, court records, parish archives, letters, diaries and the cheap street pamphlets that proliferated to satisfy a voracious ...

Magdalena J. Zaborowska (Author)

James Baldwin: The Life Album

1,An intimate portrait of James Baldwin, offering a new understanding of his life and works as seen through his close relationships and private life "Baldwin authority Zaborowska's gracefully impassioned biography. . . . A creatively conceived appreciation for a decorated life and its far-flung influences on race, queer culture, and art."--Kirkus Reviews James Baldwin (1924-1987) was a pivotal figure of the twentieth century, an influential author, intellectual, and activist who led a celebrated public life--and whose words and image and persona remain current in our culture. Baldwin's many incarnations--"son of Harlem," "Black icon," "great twentieth-century writer," "race man," "prophet," "witness"--have reemerged in the digital age as Baldwin's work becomes a touchstone for a new generation. It is the private, vulnerable, and messier Baldwin--the man behind the prophet and the online meme--who is the focus of this book. Magdalena J. Zaborowska draws on Baldwin's archives and material legacy--from his unpublished papers to his books to his house in France--to offer a fresh look at the writer's understated and obscured private life. Taking a cue from Baldwin's own love of the ...

Kenneth Turan (Author)

Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation

2,Kenneth Turan brings to life the extraordinary partnership of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and their role in creating the film industry as we know it "Sharply observant."--Farran Smith Nehme, Wall Street Journal A New Yorker Best Book of the Year One was a tough junkman's son, the other a cosseted mama's boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry. Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg's ...