Death of a Gossip

Death of a Gossip PDF Author: M.C. Beaton
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849011788
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book Here

Book Description
The very first Hamish Macbeth crime mystery, from internationally bestselling author M.C.Beaton When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joins the local fishing class she wastes no time in ruffling the feathers - or should that be fins? - of those around her. Among the victims of her sharp tongue is Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth, yet not even Hamish thinks someone would seriously want to silence Lady Jane's shrill voice permanently - until her strangled body is fished out of the river. Now with the help of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, Hamish must steer a course through the choppy waters of the tattler's life to find a murderer. But with a school of suspects who aren't willing to talk, and the dead woman telling no tales, Hamish may well be in over his head for he knows that secrets are dangerous, knowledge is power, and killers when cornered usually do strike again. Praise for the Hamish Macbeth series: 'First rate ... deft social comedy and wonderfully realized atmosphere.' Booklist 'It's always a treat to return to Lochdubh.' New York Times 'Readers will enjoy the quirks and unique qualities of the cast ... Beaton catches the beauty of the area's natural geography and succinctly describes its distinct flavour.' Library Journal 'Befuddled, earnest and utterly endearing, Hamish makes his triumphs sweetly satisfying.' Publishers Weekly

Death of a Gossip

Death of a Gossip PDF Author: M.C. Beaton
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849011788
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book Here

Book Description
The very first Hamish Macbeth crime mystery, from internationally bestselling author M.C.Beaton When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joins the local fishing class she wastes no time in ruffling the feathers - or should that be fins? - of those around her. Among the victims of her sharp tongue is Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth, yet not even Hamish thinks someone would seriously want to silence Lady Jane's shrill voice permanently - until her strangled body is fished out of the river. Now with the help of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, Hamish must steer a course through the choppy waters of the tattler's life to find a murderer. But with a school of suspects who aren't willing to talk, and the dead woman telling no tales, Hamish may well be in over his head for he knows that secrets are dangerous, knowledge is power, and killers when cornered usually do strike again. Praise for the Hamish Macbeth series: 'First rate ... deft social comedy and wonderfully realized atmosphere.' Booklist 'It's always a treat to return to Lochdubh.' New York Times 'Readers will enjoy the quirks and unique qualities of the cast ... Beaton catches the beauty of the area's natural geography and succinctly describes its distinct flavour.' Library Journal 'Befuddled, earnest and utterly endearing, Hamish makes his triumphs sweetly satisfying.' Publishers Weekly

Rumors

Rumors PDF Author: Mladen Dolar
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509561714
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 53

Get Book Here

Book Description
When Socrates was standing before the Athenian tribunal in 399 BC, he said in his defence that the opponents he feared most were the invisible ones, those who had been spreading rumors against him for years but none of whom were being brought to court – it was like fighting shadows. The moment was iconic: Socrates, the harbinger of logos and true knowledge, was eventually defeated by rumors and mendacious slander. Where does the strange power of rumors come from? Everyone knows that rumors are unfounded and based on thin air, but still they pass them on: rumors spread, and what appeared as a small breeze can grow into a mighty whirlwind and produce serious effects, ruin people’s lives and change the course of events. This book scrutinizes the mysterious power of rumors and seeks to analyse it philosophically, examining along the way some key moments of our cultural history concerning rumors, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Gogol and Kafka. It also underlines the fact that, although rumors are as old as humankind, the advent of the internet and social media has raised the spreading of rumors to an entirely new level, to the point where we could speak of the rumorization of the social. The more communication there is, the more the social fabric threatens to fall apart – and the more urgent it becomes to find strategies to counteract this.

Killed Strangely

Killed Strangely PDF Author: Elaine Forman Crane
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471443
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
"It was Rebecca's son, Thomas, who first realized the victim's identity. His eyes were drawn to the victim's head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he 'clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.' James Moills, a servant of Cornell... described Rebecca 'lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.' He recognized her only 'by her shoes.'"—from Killed Strangely On a winter's evening in 1673, tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother, Rebecca, was found close to her bedroom's large fireplace, dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells' hundred acres along Narragansett Bay, Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family, a servant, and a lodger. A coroner's panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident," but before summer arrived, a dark web of events—rumors of domestic abuse, allusions to witchcraft, even the testimony of Rebecca's ghost through her brother—resulted in Thomas's trial for matricide. Such were the ambiguities of the case that others would be tried for the murder as well. Rebecca is a direct ancestor of Cornell University's founder, Ezra Cornell. Elaine Forman Crane tells the compelling story of Rebecca's death and its aftermath, vividly depicting the world in which she lived. That world included a legal system where jurors were expected to be familiar with the defendant and case before the trial even began. Rebecca's strange death was an event of cataclysmic proportions, affecting not only her own community, but neighboring towns as well. The documents from Thomas's trial provide a rare glimpse into seventeenth-century life. Crane writes, "Instead of the harmony and respect that sermon literature, laws, and a hierarchical/patriarchal society attempted to impose, evidence illustrates filial insolence, generational conflict, disrespect toward the elderly, power plays between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, [and] adult dependence on (and resentment of) aging parents who clung to purse strings." Yet even at a distance of more than three hundred years, Rebecca Cornell's story is poignantly familiar. Her complaints of domestic abuse, Crane says, went largely unheeded by friends and neighbors until, at last, their complacency was shattered by her terrible death.

Rumors That Changed the World

Rumors That Changed the World PDF Author: Eugen O. Chirovici
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498500846
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
The aim of the book is to explore the social and cultural impact of rumor from Antiquity to the mid-1990s, examining it as one of the most important contributing factors to violence and discrimination. Usually defined as an unverified account that circulates from one person to another and refers to an object, event, or matter of public interest, rumor and its impact have largely been ignored by scholars and authors. Eugen O. Chirovici has tried not only to describe a number of major historic events, but also to explain how the rumors that influenced them came into being and to account for the collective desires or fears that nurtured them. Merely to conclude that the human mind has always been vulnerable to rumors, sometimes with lethal consequences, is not enough; it is important to understand not only what happens, but also why it happens. For at least three reasons, Chirovici thinks that it is important—particularly in this era of explosive development in mass communications—to understand the complex mechanisms whereby rumors emerge and spread. The first is that history has taught us that in certain circumstances rumors can be extremely dangerous, being employed as tools of manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda. The second relates to a deeper understanding of the way in which the most recent inventions—the Internet, social networks, digital landscape—affect and will go on affecting our lives; the virtual world is a historically unprecedented vehicle for the dissemination of rumors. And the third has to do with the wider and more nebulous idea of progress. In other words, are we less vulnerable to rumors today than we were, for example, in the Middle Ages?

Truth and Rumors

Truth and Rumors PDF Author: Bill Brioux
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313084785
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
When you first heard it, you couldn't believe it: Jerry Mathers, from TV's Leave It To Beaver, had been killed in Vietnam. Then word came that Abe Vigoda, the actor who played the curmudgeonly cop Fish on Barney Miller, was dead; and that Mikey, who would eat anything as the Life Cereal tyke, had eaten too many Pop Rocks and exploded. Besides exposing us to things we couldn't otherwise believe, television can convince us of things that never actually happened. But how did these outrageous TV legends get started? How did they spread from classrooms to boardrooms across North America and beyond? And, most important, what do these rumors, so quickly transformed into facts and common knowledge, reveal about our relationship to reality through the medium of television? Put in other words, what exactly is it that were doing when were dealing in these fabulous rumors—are we chasing after surprising truths or simply more incredible entertainment? To take one telling example: Jerry Mathers was not actually killed in Vietnam—but the basic sense of this lie wasn't far removed from the emotions factually expressed in the two-page spread of the faces of the dead in Time magazine. In the course of this compelling work—which is supplemented with interviews with many of the people implicated in these rumors—author Bill Brioux exposes the reality behind the many stories that currently circulate in our culture. Through these stories (both true and false), he sheds a revealing light on just what role these rumors play in contemporary society—and what role our society plays in regard to these rumors as well.

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes]

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes] PDF Author: Christopher R. Fee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

Get Book Here

Book Description
This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions. Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations. These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.

Blood Sisters

Blood Sisters PDF Author: Sarah Gristwood
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465060986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Wars of the Roses, which tore apart the ruling Plantagenet family in fifteenth-century England, was truly a domestic drama, as fraught and intimate as any family feud before or since. But as acclaimed historian Sarah Gristwood reveals, while the events of this turbulent time are usually described in terms of the men who fought and died seeking the throne, a handful of powerful women would prove just as decisive as their kinfolks’ clashing armies. A richly drawn, absorbing epic, Blood Sisters reveals how women helped to end the Wars of the Roses, paving the way for the Tudor age—and the creation of modern England.

The Library Magazine

The Library Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Periodicals
Languages : en
Pages : 648

Get Book Here

Book Description


Rumor of Evil

Rumor of Evil PDF Author: Gary Braver
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
ISBN: 1608095940
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
A 16-year-old exchange student accused of witchcraft— dark circumstances and sick rumors lead to her brutal death, a cover-up, and more murders two decades later Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are charged with investigating a reported suicide of a Cambridge woman in her backyard. The death came as a shock— the woman was considered a pillar of her community and was well-liked by everyone. After further investigation, the hanging appears staged. Once Kirk and Mandy' s suspicions are confirmed, they make a list of suspects. Clues begin to connect the recent murder to the decades-old mysterious death of a beautiful 16-year-old Romany exchange student who perished when a treehouse she was sleeping in caught fire. The girl, Vadima Lupescu, had done “ odd” things among her American peers that stirred up prejudices and suspicions, leading to her brutal death— and cover-up. As Kirk and Mandy investigate the bizarre rumors— that Vadima had “ gypsy powers” and put curses on those around her— they discover a cauldron of dark secrets. Will they uncover the true cause of this tangled web of deaths and horrors before it spirals out of control? Perfect for fans of Stephen King and Tess Gerritsen

The Vanishing Evangelist

The Vanishing Evangelist PDF Author: Lately Thomas
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1789120500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 573

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the afternoon of May 18, 1926, and auburn-haired woman whose name was virtually an American household word went for a swim in the Pacific. She was not seen to come out of the water. Thousands of Californians who had thronged to hear the dynamic Aimee Semple McPherson preach at her floodlit Angelos Temple were stunned at the news of her disappearance. Two people died in the attempt to find her body. Services were held for her at the Temple and a memorial fund was collected. Meanwhile, however, letters had begun to come in, demanding $500,000 ransom for the return of Sister Aimee. And five weeks after the vanished, Aimee turned up in a Mexican border town with a circumstantial story of having been kidnapped and then imprisoned in a desert shack, and of having escaped on foot across miles of sandy wastes. The missing shepherd was welcomed back to life with great rejoicing by the Temple flock. But certain skeptics—among them the Los Angeles district attorney—had doubts about her story. Why was no shack to be found that would fit her description? Why was she neither sunburned nor thirsty when she returned? And who was the mysterious “Miss X,” so remarkably like the evangelist, who had occupied, with a “Mr. McIntyre,” a rented honeymoon cottage at Carmel-by-the-Sea while Aimee was gone? These questions led to a grand-jury investigation with sensational surprised of its own, and eventually brought the evangelist and certain others into court, where the disclosures made were as startling—and as hilarious—as anything that had preceded... “The whole story is one of the funniest episodes from the harebrained 1920s....It has been told in great and amusing detail....”—GILBERT HIGHET “It’s more fun than a barrel of—well, Holy Rollers.”—LESLIE HANSCOM, New York Telegram and Sun “It is a story far too fantastic for fiction; nobody would believe it if it appeared between the covers of a novel...”—FREDERIC BABCOCK, Chicago Tribune