Summary of Susan Jonusas's Hell's Half-Acre

Summary of Susan Jonusas's Hell's Half-Acre PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN: 1669381137
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Kansas Territory was formed in 1854, and in 1855, the settlers there voted to allow slavery. This became known as Bleeding Kansas, as the territory was constantly being threatened by pro-slavery settlers from Missouri. #2 The violence between the Jayhawkers and the Bushwhackers continued to escalate, and it was not uncommon for towns like Fort Scott to be raided and terrorized by either side. #3 When Kansas declared itself a free state in 1861, the country descended into civil war. The experience left communities with a strong sense of localized justice and a tendency to take matters into their own hands. #4 When white settlers arrived in Kansas from the East Coast and parts of Europe, they did so at a devastating cost to its Indigenous peoples. The tribes were forced to cede more and more land to white settlers, who used the land to hunt and farm.

Summary of Susan Jonusas's Hell's Half-Acre

Summary of Susan Jonusas's Hell's Half-Acre PDF Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN: 1669381137
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 37

Get Book Here

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Kansas Territory was formed in 1854, and in 1855, the settlers there voted to allow slavery. This became known as Bleeding Kansas, as the territory was constantly being threatened by pro-slavery settlers from Missouri. #2 The violence between the Jayhawkers and the Bushwhackers continued to escalate, and it was not uncommon for towns like Fort Scott to be raided and terrorized by either side. #3 When Kansas declared itself a free state in 1861, the country descended into civil war. The experience left communities with a strong sense of localized justice and a tendency to take matters into their own hands. #4 When white settlers arrived in Kansas from the East Coast and parts of Europe, they did so at a devastating cost to its Indigenous peoples. The tribes were forced to cede more and more land to white settlers, who used the land to hunt and farm.

Hell's Half-Acre

Hell's Half-Acre PDF Author: Susan Jonusas
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879847
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
One of NPR's "Books We Love" New York Times Book Review's "The Best True Crime of 2022" "Rich in historical perspective and graced by novelistic touches, grips the reader from first to last.”—Wall Street Journal A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war. In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America, Hell’s Half-Acre explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell’s Half-Acre is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.

Groundhog's First Shadow

Groundhog's First Shadow PDF Author: Francis D'Autrechy
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN: 1645363775
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
This warm-hearted story tells of a very young groundhog who emerges from his burrow on a sunny February day. He discovers a new friend to play with--his own shadow.

The Man from the Train

The Man from the Train PDF Author: Bill James
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476796270
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
An Edgar Award finalist for Best Fact Crime, this “impressive…open-eyed investigative inquiry wrapped within a cultural history of rural America” (The Wall Street Journal) shows legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applying his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together, faces covered with cloth. Some of these cases, like the infamous Villasca, Iowa, murders, received national attention. But few people believed the crimes were related. And fewer still would realize that all of these families lived within walking distance to a train station. When celebrated baseball statistician and true crime expert Bill James first learned about these horrors, he began to investigate others that might fit the same pattern. Applying the same know-how he brings to his legendary baseball analysis, he empirically determined which crimes were committed by the same person. Then after sifting through thousands of local newspapers, court transcripts, and public records, he and his daughter Rachel made an astonishing discovery: they learned the true identity of this monstrous criminal. In turn, they uncovered one of the deadliest serial killers in America. Riveting and immersive, with writing as sharp as the cold side of an axe, The Man from the Train paints a vivid, psychologically perceptive portrait of America at the dawn of the twentieth century, when crime was regarded as a local problem, and opportunistic private detectives exploited a dysfunctional judicial system. James shows how these cultural factors enabled such an unspeakable series of crimes to occur, and his groundbreaking approach to true crime will convince skeptics, amaze aficionados, and change the way we view criminal history.

A Treasury of Victorian Murder

A Treasury of Victorian Murder PDF Author: Rick Geary
Publisher: NBM
ISBN: 1561633097
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Provides a collection of comic strip versions of murders in Great Britain during the Victorian era.

Operation Jungle

Operation Jungle PDF Author: John Shobbrook
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702265020
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
A gripping blend of memoir, true crime and corruption in the tropics. In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountain-top airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed 'Operation Jungle', his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. What he discovered unwittingly set in motion a chain of events that not only destroyed his own career, but led to the disbanding of the Narcotics Bureau. Operation Jungle is a gripping true story about the high cost of truth and the far-reaching tentacles of greed and corruption that cross state borders and legal jurisdictions.

Scoundrel

Scoundrel PDF Author: Sarah Weinman
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062899791
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
A Recommended Read from: The Los Angeles Times * Town and Country * The Seattle Times * Publishers Weekly * Lit Hub * Crime Reads * Alma From the author of The Real Lolita and editor of Unspeakable Acts, the astonishing story of a murderer who conned the people around him—including conservative thinker William F. Buckley—into helping set him free In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again. From the people Smith deceived—Buckley, the book editor who published his work, friends from back home, and the women who loved him—to Americans who were willing to buy into his lies, Weinman explores who in our world is accorded innocence, and how the public becomes complicit in the stories we tell one another. Scoundrel shows, with clear eyes and sympathy for all those who entered Smith’s orbit, how and why he was able to manipulate, obfuscate, and make a mockery of both well-meaning people and the American criminal justice system. It tells a forgotten part of American history at the nexus of justice, prison reform, and civil rights, and exposes how one man’s ill-conceived plan to set another man free came at the great expense of Edgar Smith’s victims.

The Devil's Half Acre

The Devil's Half Acre PDF Author: Kristen Green
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1541675622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs In The Devil’s Half Acre, New York Times bestselling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre.” When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre,” a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams. It still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of America’s first Historically Black Colleges and Universities. A sweeping narrative of a life in the margins of the American slave trade, The Devil’s Half Acre brings Mary Lumpkin into the light. This is the story of the resilience of a woman on the path to freedom, her historic contributions, and her enduring legacy.

The Battle of Junk Mountain

The Battle of Junk Mountain PDF Author: Lauren Abbey Greenberg
Publisher: Running Press Kids
ISBN: 0762462965
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
For fans of Rebecca Stead and Jennifer L. Holm, this is the perfect middle grade summer beach read. Twelve-year-old Shayne Whittaker has always spent summers on the Maine coast, visiting her grandmother Bea and playing with her BFF Poppy. Both Shayne and Bea are collectors, in their own ways: Shayne revels in golden memories of searching for sea glass and weaving friendship bracelets with Poppy, while Bea scours flea markets for valuable finds, much of which she adds to a growing pile in her house that Shayne jokingly calls Junk Mountain. This summer, though, everything has changed. Poppy would rather talk about boys than bracelets, and Bea's collecting mania has morphed into hoarding. Only Linc, the weird Civil War-obsessed kid next door, pays attention to her. Turns out Linc's collected a secret of his own, one that could enrage the meanest lobsterman on the planet, his grandpa. What begins as the worst summer of Shayne's life becomes the most meaningful, as she wages an all-out battle to save her friendships, rescue her grandmother, and protect the memories she loves the most.

Field Trip Mysteries: The Crook Who Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge

Field Trip Mysteries: The Crook Who Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge PDF Author: Steve Brezenoff
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1434298779
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Book Description
In San Francisco on a field trip, Gum Shoo and his friends get caught up in a wave of pickpocketing.