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Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy
by Edward MuirNobles were slaughtered and their castles looted or destroyed, bodies were dismembered and corpses fed to animals-the Udine carnival massacre of 1511 was the most extensive and damaging popular revolt in Renaissance Italy (and the basis for the story of Romeo and Juliet). Mad Blood Stirring is a gripping account and analysis of this event, as well as the social structures and historical conflicts preceding it and the subtle shifts in the mentality of revenge it introduced. This new reader's edition offers students and general readers an abridged version of this classic work which shifts the focus from specialized scholarly analysis to the book's main theme: the role of vendetta in city and family politics. Uncovering the many connections between the carnival motifs, hunting practices, and vendetta rituals, Muir finds that the Udine massacre occurred because, at that point in Renaissance history, violent revenge and allegiance to factions provided the best alternative to failed political institutions. But the carnival massacre also marked a crossroads: the old mentality of vendetta was soon supplanted by the emerging sense that the direct expression of anger should be suppressed-to be replaced by duels.
Mad Boy: An Account of Henry Phipps in the War of 1812
by Nick ArvinColorado Book Award Winner for Literary Fiction: &“The colorful characters make this account of the War of 1812 a rollicking page-turner&” (Publishers Weekly). In the early nineteenth century, young Henry Phipps is on a quest to realize his dying mother&’s last wish: to be buried at sea, surrounded by her family. Not an easy task considering Henry&’s ne&’er-do-well father is in debtors&’ prison and his comically earnest older brother is busy fighting the redcoats on the battlefields of Maryland. But Henry&’s stubborn determination knows no bounds. As he dodges the cannon fire of clashing armies and picks among the ruins of a burning capital, he meets looters, British defectors, renegade slaves, a pregnant maiden in distress, and scoundrels of all types. Mad Boy is at once an antic adventure and a thoroughly convincing work of historical fiction that recreates a young nation&’s first truly international conflict and a key moment in the history of the emancipation of African American slaves. Entertaining, atmospheric, and touching, it is &“a wartime coming-of-age story filled with nonstop action and genuine pathos&” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). &“This brilliant musket blast of a novel—in which the lucky reader will encounter falling cows, repurposed pickle barrels, fascinating schemes and fabulous schemers—is alive with humor, heat and heart. Mad Boy is a tremendous accomplishment. Nick Arvin is the real thing.&” —Laird Hunt, author of Neverhome
Mad Dog Killers: The Story of a Congo Mercenary
by Ivan SmithThis soldier of fortune’s “superb [and] harrowing” memoir of joining the fight against Africa’s Simba rebellion “cuts to the core” (The Weekend Post, South Africa). In the summer of 1964, young and cocky Ivan Smith volunteered as a mercenary in the Armée Nationale Congolaise. Armed with a naïve invulnerability and a promise of “exciting work” and “high rewards” Ivan signed a six-month contract in hell. The “danger money” was for warding off Simba rebels in Africa’s bloody Congo-Léopoldville revolt. A member of “Mad Mike” Hoare’s Five Commando Group he and his companions were nominally soldiers—but there was little in the way of campaigns, tactics, or discipline. This was not conventional warfare. Loyalty to country or unit did not exist. For Ivan, the greatest dangers came from within his own band of fellow mercenaries, more of whom would die from accidental discharges, drunken shoot-outs, or stray bullets in the back than were ever killed in action by Simba rebels. More than half a century later, Ivan relives the nightmare that was his time in the Congo, where he’d come to understand that there was no law of the jungle—just a lust for killing, and a true abject fear that helped to keep him alive.
Mad Dogs and Englishmen
by Ranulph FiennesRanulph Fiennes tells the story of his unconventional, exceptional family, and reveals the ingredients for the man described by the Guinness Book of Records as 'the world's greatest living explorer'.Discover Sir Ranulph Twistelton-Wykham-Fiennes's personal expedition to trace his extraordinary family through history. From Charlemagne - himself a direct ancestor of the author - to the count who very nearly persuaded William the Conqueror to retreat at Hastings, many members of this unique clan have lived close to the nerve centre of the ruler of their day.They number in their ranks a murderer, a wife poisoner, a poacher, England's greatest female traveller of the 17th century, and an extortionist Lord High Treasurer, teen cousins who eloped, a noble lord hanged for manslaughter, another hanged for adultery with the King's wife, and many who, as admirals or major-generals, won famous battles. The Fiennes' behind Cromwell provided the castle in which the Parliamentarians made their first secret moves, the same building in which twenty-one successive generations of the family have lived for 600 unbroken years . . . And that is just a taster.A whirlwind romp through the annals of time, peopled with the good, the bad and downright mad among the Fiennes clan. - Sunday Telegraph
Mad Dogs and Englishmen
by Ranulph FiennesRanulph Fiennes tells the story of his unconventional, exceptional family, and reveals the ingredients for the man described by the Guinness Book of Records as 'the world's greatest living explorer'.Discover Sir Ranulph Twistelton-Wykham-Fiennes's personal expedition to trace his extraordinary family through history. From Charlemagne - himself a direct ancestor of the author - to the count who very nearly persuaded William the Conqueror to retreat at Hastings, many members of this unique clan have lived close to the nerve centre of the ruler of their day.They number in their ranks a murderer, a wife poisoner, a poacher, England's greatest female traveller of the 17th century, and an extortionist Lord High Treasurer, teen cousins who eloped, a noble lord hanged for manslaughter, another hanged for adultery with the King's wife, and many who, as admirals or major-generals, won famous battles. The Fiennes' behind Cromwell provided the castle in which the Parliamentarians made their first secret moves, the same building in which twenty-one successive generations of the family have lived for 600 unbroken years . . . And that is just a taster.A whirlwind romp through the annals of time, peopled with the good, the bad and downright mad among the Fiennes clan. - Sunday Telegraph
Mad Dogs and Englishmen
by Ranulph FiennesSir Ranulph Fiennes can trace his lineage back to Charlemagne and he's related to Jane Austen. Eustache Fiennes fought for William the Conqueror - but other Fiennes' were on Harold's side. One of his relatives, Geoffrey de Saye, was at the signing of the Magna Carta. Thomas Fiennes sat on the Jury at Anne Boleyn's trial, and was later hanged for deer poaching.Celia Fiennes wrote a journal of her horseback exploration of England and inspired the nursery rhyme 'Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross to see a Fiennes [fine] lady upon a white horse'. Ranulph's grandfather, was a fur trapper, a Canadian Mountie and later served as Private Secretary to Winston Churchill. Ranulph's father was killed in Italy in 1943, four months before he was born.MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN is Sir Ranulph's personal expedition to trace the roots of this extraordinary family, which has been intimately involved in the major events of English history. His often eccentric ancestors have been an inspiration for his own life of adventure, and this personal history reveals another side to Ranulph himself.(P)2009 Hodder & Stoughton
Mad Dogs and Englishmen: A Grand Tour of the British Empire at its Height
by Ashley JacksonAt its peak the British Empire covered approximately one quarter of the Earth's total land area and ruled over the same proportion of the world's population: its boundaries stretched from Birmingham to Bombay, from Cairo to Cape Town, and from Winnipeg to Wagga-Wagga. In this unique book, Ashley Jackson takes the reader on a richly informative tour of the empire 'on which the sun never set', examining the representations of empire that informed the world view of hundreds of millions of people. In a sequence of elegantly written chapters Mad Dogs and Englishmen examines every aspect of the largest imperium the world has seen, from its district commissioners to dependent territories, from its armed forces to its architecture, and from its music to its monarchy. Ashley Jackson's text is as accessible as it is scholarly, and is amplified and embellished by imperial imagery from an exceptionally wide range of media. Authoritative, sumptuous, and written by a scholar who is steeped in knowledge of the period, Mad Dogs and Englishmen evokes the fascinating sights and sounds that the British Empire presented to its citizens, and thereby brings a unique period of British and world history unforgettably to life.
Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840–1920 (Animals, History, Culture)
by Jessica WangHow rabid dogs, the struggles to contain them, and their power over the public imagination intersected with New York City's rise to urban preeminence.Rabies enjoys a fearsome and lurid reputation. Throughout the decades of spiraling growth that defined New York City from the 1840s to the 1910s, the bone-chilling cry of "Mad dog!" possessed the power to upend the ordinary routines and rhythms of urban life. In Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers, Jessica Wang examines the history of this rare but dreaded affliction during a time of rapid urbanization. Focusing on a transformative era in medicine, politics, and urban society, Wang uses rabies to survey urban social geography, the place of domesticated animals in the nineteenth-century city, and the world of American medicine. Rabies, she demonstrates, provides an ideal vehicle for exploring physicians' ideas about therapeutics, disease pathology, and the body as well as the global flows of knowledge and therapeutics. Beyond the medical realm, the disease also illuminates the cultural fears and political contestations that evolved in lockstep with New York City's burgeoning cityscape.Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers offers lay readers and specialists alike the opportunity to contemplate a tumultuous domain of people, animals, and disease against a backdrop of urban growth, medical advancement, and social upheaval. The result is a probing history of medicine that details the social world of New York physicians, their ideas about a rare and perplexing disorder, and the struggles of an ever-changing, ever-challenging urban society.
Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts
by Ben PobjieNed Kelly’s tin helmet looms large over Australia’s bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Morgan who set out to write his name in blood on history’s ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging’s greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery?In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear.
Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts
by Ben PobjieNed Kelly's tin helmet looms large over Australia's bushranging past, but what about all the unsung outlaws of the Australian bush? What about Black Caesar, who escaped his tyrannous British overlords four times and indeed invented the great Australian tradition of bushranging? Or Mad Dog Morgan who set out to write his name in blood on history's ledger, the dynamic Captain Thunderbolt and his loyal wife Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging's greatest queen, and Matthew Brady, the gentleman bushranger, who showed us all the cilivised side of armed robbery?In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben Pobjie celebrates the derring-do and revolutionary passion of all the wild colonial boys and girls who raided our towns and stole our hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear.
Mad Ducks and Bears: Football Revisited
by Steve Almond George PlimptonGeorge Plimpton's follow-up to Paper Lion, one of his personal favorites among his classic books--now repackaged and including a foreword from Steve Almond and photographs from the Plimpton archives.In MAD DUCKS AND BEARS, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates--Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap book than Plimpton's other work, MAD DUCKS AND BEARS is no less truthful and searching. In this fond exploration of football's values and follies, Plimpton rejoins his two teammates to discuss their careers in this brutal but captivating game. The result is an astute exploration into the fascinating lives and motivations of the players at home, in the locker room, and on the field.
Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lillies
by Ross KingAcclaimed historian Ross King paints the most nuanced, riveting and humane portrait yet of Claude Monet, arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century.We have all seen--live, in photographs, on postcards--some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world, and are among the most admired paintings of our time. Yet nobody knows the extraordinarily dramatic story behind their creation. Telling that story is the brilliant historian, Ross King--and in the process, he presents a compelling and original portrait of perhaps the most beloved artist in history. As World War I exploded within hearing distance of his house at Giverny, Monet was facing his own personal crucible. In 1911, his adored wife, Alice, had died, plunging him into deep mourning at age 71. A year later he began going blind. Then, his eldest son, Jean, fell ill and died of syphilis, and his other son was sent to the front to fight for France. Within months, a violent storm destroyed much of the garden that had been his inspiration for some 20 years. At the same time, his reputation was under attack, as a new generation of artists, led by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, were dazzling the art world and expressing disgust with Impressionism. Against all this, fighting his own self-doubt, depression and age, Monet found the wherewithal to construct a massive new studio, 70 feet long and 50 feet high, to accommodate the gigantic canvases that would, he hoped, revive him. Using letters, memoirs and other sources not employed by other biographers, and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Ross King reveals a more complex, more human, more intimate Claude Monet than has ever been portrayed, and firmly places his water lily project among the greatest achievements in the history of art.From the Hardcover edition.
Mad Flight?: The Quebec Emigration to the Coffee Plantations of Brazil (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History #45)
by John ZucchiOn 15 September 1896, nearly a thousand people prepared to board a steamer in the port of Montreal, headed for Santos, Brazil, and on to the coffee plantations of São Paulo, while a crowd of a few thousand pleaded with them to stay. <p><p> Families were split as wives boarded without husbands, or husbands without wives. While many prospective migrants were convinced to get off the boat, close to five hundred people departed for South America. Ultimately the experience was a disaster. Some died on board the ship, others in Brazil; yet others became indigent labourers on coffee plantations or beggars on the streets of São Paulo. The vast majority returned to Canada, many of them helped back by British consular representatives. While the story was widely covered in the international press at the time, a century later it is virtually unknown. In Mad Flight? John Zucchi consults a range of primary and secondary sources, including archival material in Canada, Brazil, France, and the United Kingdom, to recreate the stories of the migrants and open up an important research question: why do some people migrate on impulse and begin a journey that will almost inevitably end up in failure? <p> Historical studies on migration most often account for successful outcomes but rarely consider why some immigrant experiences are destined to fail. Mad Flight? uncovers the history of an otherwise little-known episode of Canadian migration to Brazil and provokes further discussion and debate.
Mad For Glory: A Heart of Darkness in the War of 1812
by Robert BoothWhat if an American naval captain went rogue with his battleship? What if an American spy-turned-ambassador organized a revolutionary state on a distant continent and led its armies into the field? And what if these two self-anointed instruments of American policy were thrust together by chance, with rulers and republics hanging in the balance? It sounds implausible even for Hollywood, but two men played out this drama two hundred years ago. In June of 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain, in effect aligning itself with Napoleon and his allies in a global conflict. With an army of 6,000 men and a navy comprising just seventeen deepwater vessels, the U.S. was no match for imperial Britain. Still, any war, no matter how ill-advised, could make the career and fortune of an enterprising commander, and Captain David Porter was determined not to miss the chance. Putting to sea with orders to join a three-vessel squadron and harass the British in the Atlantic, he chose instead to sail his thirty-two-gun frigate Essex around Cape Horn and invade the Pacific Ocean, initiating the longest, strangest naval adventure in American history. Operating far beyond the influence of military planners, Porter led his ship and its 300 men off America's strategic map and into a personal war of privateering, pillaging, and orgies. To his dismay, one of his first encounters was with Joel Roberts Poinsett, a U.S. agent sent to South America by the State Department to foil the British and to influence revolutionary movements. Cut off from Washington by the Andes, Poinsett had written an American-style constitution for revolutionary Chile and helped lead the rebels against the royalist forces of Spain. He thought Porter's frigate was the answer to his prayers. Porter had other ideas. Drawing on Porter and Poinsett's own writings and the accounts of eyewitnesses, Booth memorably recounts Porter's heart-of-darkness journey and the doomed efforts of Poinsett--lacking the crucial assistance Porter could have provided--to sustain the republic of Chile and align a liberated South America with the United States. These two men--one of them dangerously ungoverned and the other dangerously idealistic--laid the unstable foundation for their fledgling nation's relations with South America and became the godfathers of U.S. imperialism and nation-building.
Mad For Glory: A Heart of Darkness in the War of 1812
by Robert BoothWhat if a naval captain went rogue with an American battleship? In October, 1812, as the 32-gun U.S. frigate Essex ventured out against the British enemy, only one man had any idea that this cruise would turn into the longest, strangest naval adventure in American history. That man was Captain David Porter, who had decided to run off with the navy's ship and its three hundred men to fight a separate Pacific war--one of privateering, pillaging, and orgies. Drawing on Porter's own writings and the accounts of eyewitnesses, the author memorably recounts the events of a dark and fatal voyage in which David Porter crosses the line from commander to cult-leader, from improbable fantasy to disastrous reality. In a tale so amazing that it reads like fiction, Porter, impelled by his own demons and by rivalry with the ghostly British buccaneer Lord Anson, took his men and boys on a seventeen-month mystery tour that did not end until he had disrupted the Chilean revolution, captured the entire English whaling fleet (manned mainly by Americans), vanished into the enchanted Galapagos, and re-emerged in Polynesia, where he made himself the conqueror-chief of the stone-age Nukuhivans. In the end, when he sought redemption with a glorious victory over a British opponent, he failed terribly and sacrificed the lives of one-third of his crew to his personal notions of heroism. Robert Booth tells the story of the ill-fated Essex with accuracy, immediacy, and a broad vision of its meanings as an epic of war, a gripping tale of the sea, a brilliant portrait of a disturbed and disturbing American hero, and a geo-political thriller that sheds new light on the origins of U.S. imperialism, the tragedy of missed opportunities, and the disastrous and permanent impact of Porter's rampage on the peoples of the Pacific.
Mad For The Plaid: Princes of Oxenburg 3
by Karen HawkinsThe third captivating, sizzling Scottish historical romance in New York Times bestseller Karen Hawkins's Princes of Oxenburg series. Fans of Julia Quinn, Monica McCarty and Julie Garwood will be enchanted by this dazzling read. A loyal Prince. A Scottish fair lady. A partnership of honour and passion. Prince Nikolai Romanovin has journeyed to the deepest wilds of Scotland to rescue his abducted grandmother. Hiding his royal identity, the prince slips into enemy territory disguised as a groom. Ailsa Mackenzie is in charge of Castle Cromartie - and her unruly grandmother - in her father's absence. Clever and pragmatic, nothing gets past her and she's certain her new groom isn't who he says he is. But she can't deny he stirs her senses...After confronting her imposter, Ailsa agrees to help - for she, too, would do anything for family. Their secret partnership turns into searing kisses and soon danger awaits them. Facing an unknown enemy, Ailsa and Nik must also battle something far more perilous ... their own unruly hearts.Don't miss the previous sublime Princes of Oxenburg books: The Prince Who Loved Me, The Prince And I and The Princess Wore Plaid. And for more unmissable Scottish historical romance, catch her amazing Duchess Diaries series.
Mad Hatter Summer: A Lewis Carroll Nightmare
by Donald ThomasThe man the world knew as Lewis Carroll, author of the adventures of Alice, was known to his colleagues in the Christ Church Common Room as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a middle-aged Oxford don. His hobby was photography, especially of pubescent girls 'in their favourite dress of nothing to wear'. When evidence of the Reverend's pastime falls into the hands of Charles Augustus Howell, the infamous Victorian blackmailer, and a murder victim is fished out of the Isis, Inspector Swain is called to investigate the case that casts the shadow of doom over Dodgson. 'One of the most entertaining mysteries of the year' Julian Symons'Catches the authentic whiff of steaming sexuality behind the Victorian whiskers'Guardian
Mad Hatter Summer: A Lewis Carroll Nightmare (Inspector Swain)
by Donald ThomasThe man the world knew as Lewis Carroll, author of the adventures of Alice, was known to his colleagues in the Christ Church Common Room as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a middle-aged Oxford don. His hobby was photography, especially of pubescent girls 'in their favourite dress of nothing to wear'. When evidence of the Reverend's pastime falls into the hands of Charles Augustus Howell, the infamous Victorian blackmailer, and a murder victim is fished out of the Isis, Inspector Swain is called to investigate the case that casts the shadow of doom over Dodgson. 'One of the most entertaining mysteries of the year' Julian Symons'Catches the authentic whiff of steaming sexuality behind the Victorian whiskers' Guardian
Mad Hatter's Holiday: The Fourth Sergeant Cribb Mystery (Sergeant Cribb #4)
by Peter LoveseyThe beloved Sergeant Cribb series by Peter LoveseyIt's 1882 and Albert Moscrop, who is spending his holiday in Brighton observing human nature through a telescope, gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, who he has been fascinated by - especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. But through this connection, he becomes involved in a sensational murder. All of Brighton is horrified by the gruesome crime, and the local police seek the help of Scotland Yard's Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray, who soon find themselves challenged by the strangest case of their careers, one as mystifying as it is macabre.
Mad Hatter's Holiday: The Fourth Sergeant Cribb Mystery (Sergeant Cribb #4)
by Peter LoveseyThe beloved Sergeant Cribb series by Peter LoveseyIt's 1882 and Albert Moscrop, who is spending his holiday in Brighton observing human nature through a telescope, gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, who he has been fascinated by - especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. But through this connection, he becomes involved in a sensational murder. All of Brighton is horrified by the gruesome crime, and the local police seek the help of Scotland Yard's Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray, who soon find themselves challenged by the strangest case of their careers, one as mystifying as it is macabre.
Mad Jack: Bride Series (Bride Series #4)
by Catherine CoulterA historical romance set in 1811 England from #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. To hide from her abusive stepfather, Winifrede Levering Bascombe disguises herself as male valet Jack. She arrives in London with Grayson St. Cyre’s aunts, Mathilda and Maude, to beg his assistance. He welcomes the aunts, briefly spots Jack, and proceeds very quickly after their arrival to fall down the rabbit hole. He catches Jack stealing his horse, Durban; chases her down; and then all sorts of interesting things happen. Amidst all the laughter, however, there lurks a deadly secret that’s ready to leap out and crush both Jack and Gray. . . . “Coulter is excellent at portraying the romantic tension between heroes and heroines and she manages to write explicitly but beautifully about sex as well as love.”—Milwaukee Journal
Mad Joy
by Jane BaileyA heart-warming and passionate tale from the author of Tommy Glover's Sketch of HeavenAt the age of five I ran into a wood, and nearly two years later I walked out of it and into the nearest house.In 1927, Gracie returns to her house to find a young girl curled up on her armchair: a feral, rather grubby gift of fate. With no knowledge of the child's origins and no children of her own, Gracie adopts her and names her 'Joy'. Despite the endless speculation about Joy's unusual ways, Gracie is happy to remain ignorant about her past in case anyone should come forward to reclaim her as their own. Time passes and Joy grows into a young woman at the advent of World War II. But when she becomes romantically involved with a fighter pilot the mystery of her past slowly unravels . . .Praise for Jane Bailey'A vivid and involving novel that reaches a truly page-turning climax' Barbara Trepido'Absorbing, compelling and intensely moving' Lesley Glaister, author of As Far as You Can Go'A gentle, poignant, achingly funny tale of displaced children, first love and the tragic secrets hidden behind so many respectable facades' Serena Mackesy, author of The Temp
Mad Kings & Queens: History's Most Famous Raving Royals
by Alison Rattle Allison ValeA frank and fascinating history of forty of Europe’s most loony, deluded, and downright dangerous monarchs.In Mad Kings & Queens co-authors Alison Rattle and Allison Vale reveal a legion of kings and queens who have abused the pedestal of power in spectacular style. The respectability of the royal position is well and truly tossed aside by the whimsy and wanton depravity of these mad European monarchs, including:The queen who murdered her husband with a red-hot spit.The bloodthirsty monarch who impaled tens of thousands of his subjects.The vampiric ruler who bathed in the blood of young women.The king of excess who beheaded his wives.Mad Kings and Queens explores seven hundred years of royal eccentricity, detailing a catalogue of madness and exploring the finer intricacies of royal breeding that lay at its root.
Mad Madame LaLaurie: New Orleans' Most Famous Murderess Revealed (True Crime Ser.)
by Lorelei Shannon Victoria Cosner LoveThe truth behind the legend of New Orleans&’ infamous slave owner, madwoman, and murderess, portrayed in the anthology series, American Horror Story. On April 10, 1834, firefighters smashed through a padlocked attic door in the burning Royal Street mansion of Creole society couple Delphine and Louis Lalaurie. In the billowing smoke and flames they made an appalling discovery: the remains of Madame Lalaurie&’s chained, starved, and mutilated slaves. This house of horrors in the French Quarter spawned a legend that has endured for more than one-hundred-and-fifty years. But what actually happened in the Lalaurie home? Rumors about her atrocities spread as fast as the fire. But verifiable facts were scarce. Lalaurie wouldn&’t answer questions. She disappeared, leaving behind one of the French Quarter&’s ghastliest crime scenes, and what is considered to be one of America&’s most haunted houses. In Mad Madame Lalaurie, Victoria Cosner Love and Lorelei Shannon &“shed light on what is fact and what is purely fiction in a tale that&’s still told nightly on the streets of New Orleans&” (Deep South Magazine).
Mad Mary: A Bad Girl from Magdala, Transformed at His Appearing
by Liz Curtis HiggsCome meet the genuine Mary Magdalene of the Bible -- not the scarlet-draped legend -- and follow her one-of-a-kind story of deliverance and dedication, despair and declaration. Like my previous "Bad Girls" books, "Mad Mary" begins with the fictional journey of Mary Margaret Delaney, a bad woman-or was it madwoman? -- adrift in contemporary Chicago, desperate for someone to save her from herself. Once Mary Delaney's story has prepared our hearts for learning, we'll leave the Windy City and go verse by verse through Mary of Magdala's ancient biblical tale, tossing aside modern misconceptions as we embrace the real Mary M. Prepare to be amazed by this eye-opening sister who was transformed twice when You-Know-Who showed up and spoke her name.