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Books > Fiction > True stories
This is a story of an independent gangster named Joe Pastronoco (Joe, Jr.) aka Joe Thomas who was raised from childhood in a criminal environment. His father Joe, Sr., and his father's brother Salvatore were bootleggers during the 1900's and they both were gangsters involved in a secret organization similar to the Mafia in Italy when Benito Mussolini was dictator. Salvatore was shot and left for dead in Italy but he managed to escape, and he came to America as a stowaway, lived on a farm and sent for his brother Joe, Sr. who left Italy with his wife and five siblings to live with him.
Derrick Rivas is a hardworking man who enjoys a successful career in Arizona. But his life comes crashing to a halt when he discovers his wife of seventeen years is having an affair. At first, he hopes to repair his marriage, but he soon realizes that his wife, Estella, has no intention of fixing things. After finding out he wants a divorce, she delivers a dire warning: He will pay for leaving her. Her threat becomes clear soon after when she accuses him of assault. Derrick knows the charges are false, but he takes them seriously because his wife has an uncle that retired from the sheriff's department and an aunt in magistrate court that wields an influential gavel. More disturbing, however, is Estella's threat that things are about to get worse. Derrick is soon facing officers of the court who want to harm and humiliate him by any means possible. They do everything they can to bring about his downfall in "Disintegrating Justice," a story based on actual events.
In 1573 there occurred a murder which would leave today's tabloid editors salivating. George Saunders, a respected merchant tailor, was killed by his wife's lover. Involved in the conspiracy were Saunders' wife, her best friend, and a servant. All were found guilty and hanged, but not before a suspended clergyman fell in love with Mrs. Saunders and sought to have her pardoned. Murder was relatively rare in Tudor times. When it did occur, especially if it involved a female perpetrator and a love affair, it generated widespread interest. The rise of Protestantism, and its accompanying rise in literacy, had provided a strong impetus to read about crime and to ponder the spiritual consequences of breaking both the civil and the divine law. The English system of criminal justice was open and popular, and familiar elements--detection, investigation, the laying of charges, the trial, verdict, sentence--were all well understood and closely followed in the 16th century. Today, people are riveted by crime and violence. But the obsession is not new, as this book shows in vivid and exciting detail. John Bellamy's new book provides a fascinating view of life in Tudor England and offers a new angle on our love affair with murder as a literary form. It was in the Tudor period, he argues, that popular attention was focused on the crime of murder, for edification as well as entertainment. A 16th-century murder inquiry was in many ways a community affair, capable of arousing the interest of a substantial local audience, with the members of the inquest often collecting evidence and statements for twenty or thirty days. Detection, investigation, the laying of charges, the trial, verdict, sentence--all ofthese familiar elements were established in the 16th century. Strange, Inhuman Deaths describes four well-documented cases that occurred between 1538 and 1573. Each of them is deeply rooted in source material, whether legal records or pamphlets, plays or ballads, giving a rich background and a wealth of local colour. The human stories they contain are powerful and lively, and the motivations and personalities that are revealed speak to us directly across the centuries. Murder most foul, murder most English--the tradition begins.
Five firefighters took off running for cover behind the fire engine and the other gold/black trailer, a few closed their eyes as they ran blindly into the darkness with flames chasing behind them saying one prayer that seems to come to mind at a time like this.... "Our Father Who..."
"Fishing's Greatest Misadventures" presents twenty-six true stories which cover the spectrum from terrifying to comical to downright bizarre. In these pages everyday fishermen, pros, and journalists tell their stories of freak accidents, fishy attacks, pranks, idiotic decisions, eerie or unexplained incidents, and other jaw dropping, adrenalin-pumping calamities. The stories bring to life the strange possibilities that await us once we cast our lines into known and unknown waters.Inside these pages you'll meet: a sport fisherman who gets taken on harrowing underwater ride by an angry white shark; an adventure angler whose boat is over turned by a 200 lb Amazon-river catfish; a group of ice fishermen who lose their cabin, gear and pride to a single sturgeon; a teenager who sabotages a fish farm and frees 300,000 salmon; and a charter boat operator who gets speared through the chest by a leaping marlin. From lakes to rivers to the ocean, this book covers every form of angling, and all that can go wrong.
BABY-PROOF-CHILDPROOF-BULLETPROOF, THE ROLE OF PARENTS HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER. Roaming unabated, a serial pedophile spent every waking moment pacifying his inner demons. Combatting illicit sexual cravings, like self-medicating an incurable disease, required daily heavy doses of hardcore pornography. A chilling account of an eight-year-old child kidnapped and brutally murdered. Rising up from a rural California town and striking back, a world-wide chase ensued for a sociopath gone mad. No respecter of human rights-a child's life. Leaving the United States and spanning half the globe, the hunt would never end until coming face-to-face with every parent's worst nightmare. A harrowing true-crime story grippingly told by a team of detectives left standing. The story of Maria Piceno is a testament of courage and faith-under fire. This special child wouldn't go quietly into the night. Out of life's hardest lessons, comes unforgettable sweet tender moments. Anyone that has loved a child-this is a must read, no one can afford to miss. You'll never be same: WHEN TOUCHED BY A CHILD
This book contains actual 911 emergency and non-emergency calls that came into the San Diego Police Department Communications Division during my 19 years as a Police 911 Dispatcher. This book represents the calls received as accurately as possible. I did not embellish them to make the calls funnier or more exciting. These are actual calls, often unbelievable, but they are real calls. This book is a way for me to portray the "real world" of a 911 dispatcher. As you read through the book, I hope you can get a sense of the many emotions that I felt during the course of my shift. The Dark Side is the chapter I devoted to the more serious, violent type of calls we get on a daily basis. I hope you enjoy the book.
Principally an abridgement of the transcript of the trial as published in: The Sacco-Vanzetti case. 2nd ed. Mamaroneck, N.Y.: P. P. Appel, 1969; followed by a collection of remarks over the past 80 years about the trial and its significance.
July 8, 1932, 11 PM. East Austin, an African-American district in Jim Crow Texas. Sixty-year-old Charles Johnson is driving home from Bible study when a car full of young white men swerves in front of him. A brief altercation ensues. Convinced that his life is threatened, Johnson fires his pistol and drives away. Johnson's shot kills the unarmed, eighteen-year-old son of Albert Allison, a prominent cotton landlord, influential in politics, and an advocate for racial justice. Although devastated, Allison personally thwarts a lynch mob and then insists that Austin's courts treat Johnson fairly. Nonetheless, Allison expects fairness to execute his son's killer. Johnson himself expects to be lynched, either by the mob or by the court. "To Defy the Monster" shows how the confluence of unique cultural and historical factors determines Johnson's fate and why Allison orders his family never to speak of the matter.
Told through the eyes of current and former Navy SEALs, EYES ON
TARGET is an inside account of some of the most harrowing missions
in American history-including the mission to kill Osama bin Laden
and the mission that wasn't, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic
outpost in Benghazi where a retired SEAL sniper with a small team
held off one hundred terrorists while his repeated radio calls for
help went unheeded.
In 1980 in Toledo, Ohio--on one of the holiest days of the church calendar--the body of a nun was discovered in the sacristy of a hospital chapel. Seventy-one-year-old Sister Margaret Ann had been strangled and stabbed, her corpse arranged in a shameful and stomach-churning pose. But the police's most likely suspect was inexplicably released and the investigation was quietly buried. Despite damning evidence, Father Gerald Robinson went free. Twenty-three years later the priest's name resurfaced in connection with a bizarre case of satanic ritual and abuse. It prompted investigators to exhume the remains of the slain nun in search of the proof left behind that would indelibly mark Father Robinson as Sister Margaret Ann's killer: the sign of the Devil. When Satan Wore a Cross is a shocking true story of official cover-ups, madness, murder and lies--and of an unholy human monster who disguised himself in holy garb.
On May 5, 1993, second-graders Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore disappeared from their West Memphis, Arkansas, homes. The following afternoon, their nude, beaten, and bound bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch less than a mile away. After a troublesome confession, three local teenagers, later dubbed the "West Memphis Three," were arrested, tried, and convicted in early 1994. Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley received life sentences, while ringleader Damien Echols went to death row. Three years later, the documentary film "Paradise Lost" premiered on HBO, and the effect on viewers was dramatic. Many became skeptical of the verdicts and also felt one of the fathers of the victims was a better suspect-John Mark Byers. In "Untying the Knot," author Greg Day tells the true story of John Mark Byers and the about-face he made to free the men convicted of the crime. Day exposes the propaganda campaign used to convince a gullible public that Byers was complicit in the deaths of his wife and son. Based on court transcripts and hours of personal interviews, "Untying the Knot" explores all the case evidence while interweaving dialogues and statements. It traces the life of Byers from his roots in rural Arkansas, to his son's murder and the death of his wife, to his ultimate imprisonment in 1999. It reveals a man redeemed by prison and whose change of heart changed his life. "Day has captured the essence of a towering personality engulfed by an impossible situation. John Mark Byers is an immensely complex character, and Untying the Knot pulls no punches in revealing the man in all his seeming contradictions." -John Douglas, "Mindhunter" |
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