The story of Eugene Ely’s life is the stuff of myth and legend. Much of what has been written about him relies on sensationalized newspaper accounts from an era when early twentieth century reporters unabashedly fabricated stories to increase newspaper circulation. Those accounts portray Ely as a reckless daredevil and are essentially historical fiction. Eugene Ely: Pioneer of Navigation cuts through the sensationalism by relying on primary sources and photographic records and tri...

The shocking true story of America's first female serial killer, half of a husband and wife team who terrorized Charleston, SC, in the early 19th century.On February 18th, 1820, John and Lavinia Fisher were executed in front of some two thousand South Carolinians. To this day, legends of the husband-and-wife serial killers range from the fearsome to the fantastical—and many swear they have encountered Lavinia's ghost haunting the Old Charleston Ja...

Explore the grizzly tale of Charleston's most infamous serial killers from the beginning of their reign of horror till their eventual incarceration and execution.In 1819, a young man outwitted death at the hands of John and Lavinia Fisher and sparked the hunt for Charleston's most notorious serial killers. Former homicide investigator Bruce Orr follows the story of the Fishers, from the initial police raid on their Six Mile Inn with its reportedly grisly cellar to ...

In Bloody Crimes, James L. Swanson—the Edgar® Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt —brings to life two epic events of the Civil War era: the thrilling chase to apprehend Confederate president Jefferson Davis in the wake of the Lincoln assassination and the momentous 20 -day funeral that took Abraham Lincoln's body home to Springfield. A true tale full of fascinating twists and turns, and lavishly illustrated with dozens of rare his...

In The Assassin's Accomplice, historian Kate Clifford Larson tells the gripping story of Mary Surratt, a little-known participant in the plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, and the first woman ever to be executed by the federal government of the United States. Surratt, a Confederate sympathizer, ran the boarding house in Washington where the conspirators-including her rebel son, John Surratt-met to plan the assassination. When a military tribunal convicted her for her crimes and sentenc...

"It's history that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller." — Harlan CobenDaniel Stashower, the two-time Edgar award–winning author of The Beautiful Cigar Girl, uncovers the riveting true story of the "Baltimore Plot," an audacious conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War in THE HOUR OF PERIL.In February of 1861, just days before he assumed the presidency, Abraham Lincoln faced a "clear and...

Named a New York Times Notable BookNamed A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction BookBestselling author Tony Horwitz tells the electrifying tale of the daring insurrection that put America on the path to bloody war.Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperat...

For sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or South rivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O’Neale Greenhow. Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographer Ann Blackman tells the surprising true story of a unique woman in history.“I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins,” Rose once declared–and...

From Midnight to Dawn presents compelling portraits of the men and women who established the Underground Railroad and traveled it to find new lives in Canada. Evoking the turmoil and controversies of the time, Tobin illuminates the historic events that forever connected American and Canadian history by giving us the true stories behind well-known figures such as Harriet Tubman and John Brown. She also profiles lesser-known but equally heroic figures such as Mary Ann Shadd, who bec...

A startling and superbly researched book demythologizing the North’s role in American slavery“The hardest question is what to do when human rights give way to profits. . . . Complicity is a story of the skeletons that remain in this nation’s closet.”—San Francisco ChronicleThe North’s profit from—indeed, dependence on—slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now. Complicity reveals the c...

It is a tale as familiar as our history primers: A deranged actor, John Wilkes Booth, killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, escaped on foot, and eluded capture for twelve days until he met his fiery end in a Virginia tobacco barn. In the national hysteria that followed, eight others were arrested and tried; four of those were executed, four imprisoned. Therein lie all the classic elements of a great thriller. But the untold tale is even more fascinating.Now, in American Bru...

In 1836, the murder of a young prostitute made headlines in New York City and around the country, inaugurating a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting that haunts us today. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett.From her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. She invented life stories for herself...