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THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANIACS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE
TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR AND DAILY MAIL A WATERSTONES BEST
POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2022 Plunge into this rich and surprising A-Z
compendium to discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the
Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate
Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present,
the psychological and social, the personal and the political.
'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias create a magical space between
us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill, author of the No. 1 bestseller
The Ruin of All Witches 'Fascinating' Observer 'An endlessly
intriguing book ... All the bibliomanes (book nutters) I know will
love it' Daily Mail
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANES A TIMES BOOK OF THE
YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE
YEAR A WATERSTONES BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2022 AS HEARD ON BBC
RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR AND START THE WEEK Plunge into this rich,
surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how
our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present
day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the
threads between the past and present, the psychological and social,
the personal and the political. 'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias
create a magical space between us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill,
author of the No. 1 bestseller The Ruin of All Witches
'Fascinating' Observer 'An endlessly intriguing book ... All the
bibliomanes (book nutters) I know will love it' Daily Mail 'A new
book from Summerscale is always a treat ... Her sub-title might
echo Neil MacGregor, but this reads more like a book by Oliver
Sacks, with dashes of Roald Dahl' Spectator
From the winner of the Edgar Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize, a
cultural history of "everyday madness" The Book of Phobias and
Manias is a thrilling compendium of 99 obsessions that have shaped
us all, the rare and the familiar, from ablutophobia (a horror of
washing) to syllogomania (a compulsion to hoard) to zoophobia (a
fear of animals). Phobias and manias are deeply personal
experiences, and among the most common anxiety disorders of our
time, but they are also clues to our shared past. The award-winning
author Kate Summerscale uses rich and riveting case studies to
trace the origins of our obsessions, unearthing a history of human
strangeness, from the middle ages to the present day, and a wealth
of explanations for some of our most powerful aversions and
desires.
Summer 1860, an elegant country house, a young boy is found dead in
an outside privy. All clues point towards the murderer being a
member of the grieving household. But which one? Called to the
scene is the most celebrated detective of his day, Jonathan Whicher
from Scotland Yard. Faced with an inept local police force, a
middle-class family ravaged by secrets, and a lack of evidence,
will he be able to solve the case? This original Victorian whodunit
becomes a battle of wits between the professional detective and the
only one who knows what really happened. In this fresh re-telling,
fact and fiction bleed into each other, and the Truth becomes
something to be fought over. Alexandra Wood's stage adaptation of
Kate Summerscale's vivid and gripping bestselling non-fiction
thriller, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, is premiered at the
Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in May 2023.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A page-turner with
the authority of history' PHILIPPA GREGORY 'As gripping as a novel.
An engaging, unsettling, deeply satisfying read' SARAH WATERS
London, 1938. Alma Fielding, an ordinary young woman, begins to
experience supernatural events in her suburban home. Nandor Fodor -
a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the
International Institute for Psychical research - begins to
investigate. In doing so he discovers a different and darker type
of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss - and the foreshadowing of a
nation's worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over
Europe, and as Fodor's obsession with the case deepens, Alma
becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the
award-winning pioneer of historical narrative non-fiction Kate
Summerscale shadows Fodor's enquiry, delving into long-hidden
archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting. 'An
empathetic, meticulous account of a spiritual unravelling; a
tribute to the astonishing power of the human mind - but also a
properly absorbing, baffling, satisfying detective story' AIDA
EDEMARIAM A PICK OF THE AUTUMN IN THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER
AND THE GUARDIAN
_______________ WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
_______________ 'A remarkable achievement' - Sunday Times 'A
classic, to my mind, of the finest documentary writing' - John le
Carre 'Absolutely riveting' - Sarah Waters, Guardian
_______________ On a summer's morning in 1860, the Kent family
awakes in their elegant Wiltshire home to a terrible discovery;
their youngest son has been brutally murdered. When celebrated
detective Jack Whicher is summoned from Scotland Yard he faces the
unenviable task of identifying the killer - when the grieving
family are the suspects. The original Victorian whodunnit, the
murder and its investigation provoked national hysteria at the
thought of what might be festering behind the locked doors of
respectable homes - scheming servants, rebellious children,
insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing. _______________
'Nothing less than a masterpiece' - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
'Terrific' - Ian Rankin 'A triumph' - Observer 'Gripping,
unputdownable' - Sunday Telegraph 'A terrific read in the Wilkie
Collins tradition' - Susan Hill 'The best whodunnit of the year -
and it's all true ... Agatha Christie, eat your heart out' -
Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler
_______________ 'A biography that sparkles with enthusiastic
research and empathetic writing' - Sunday Times 'A small jewel of a
biography' - The New Yorker 'A fascinating, hilarious and
deliciously subversive book' - Literary Review _______________ THE
SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Born in 1900 to a promiscuous American oil
heiress and a British army captain, Marion Barbara Carstairs
realised very early on that she was not like most little girls.
Liberated by war work in WWI, Marion reinvented herself as Joe, and
quickly went on to establish herself as a leading light of the
fashionable lesbian demi-monde. She dressed in men's clothes,
smoked cigars and cheroots, tattooed her arms, and became Britain's
most celebrated female speed-boat racer - the 'fastest woman on
water'. Yet Joe tired of the limelight in 1934, and retired to the
Bahamian Island of Whale Cay. There she fashioned her own
self-sufficient kingdom, where she hosted riotous parties which
boasted Hollywood actresses and British royalty among their guests.
Although her lovers included screen sirens such as Marlene
Dietrich, the real love of Joe's life was a small boy-doll named
Lord Tod Wadley, to whom she remained devoted throughout her
remarkable life. She died, aged 93, in 1993.
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR ALL BIBLIOMANES A TIMES BOOK OF THE
YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE
YEAR A WATERSTONES BEST POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK 2022 AS HEARD ON BBC
RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR AND START THE WEEK Plunge into this rich,
surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how
our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present
day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the
threads between the past and present, the psychological and social,
the personal and the political. 'Fascinating ... Phobias and manias
create a magical space between us and the world' Malcolm Gaskill,
author of the No. 1 bestseller The Ruin of All Witches
'Fascinating' Observer 'An endlessly intriguing book ... All the
bibliomanes (book nutters) I know will love it' Daily Mail 'A new
book from Summerscale is always a treat ... Her sub-title might
echo Neil MacGregor, but this reads more like a book by Oliver
Sacks, with dashes of Roald Dahl' Spectator
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * The Sunday Times * The New
Statesman * The Times * The Spectator * The Telegraph Shortlisted
for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize * A New York Times Book Review
Editors' Choice * A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row
Selection "Prepare not to see much broad daylight, literal or
metaphorical, for days if you read this.... The atmosphere evoked
is something I will never forget."-The Times (London) London, 1938.
In the suburbs of the city, a young housewife has become the eye in
a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding's modest home, china flies off
the shelves and eggs fly through the air; stolen jewelry appears on
her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear
from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a turtle
materializes on her lap. The culprit is incorporeal. As Alma cannot
call the police, she calls the papers instead. After the
sensational story headlines the news, Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian
ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical
Research, arrives to investigate the poltergeist. But when he
embarks on his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case
is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma's peculiar
history, Fodor finds a different and darker type of haunting, a
tale of trauma, alienation, loss and revenge. He comes to believe
that Alma's past has bled into her present, her mind into her body.
There are no words for processing her experience, so it comes to
possess her. As the threat of a world war looms, and as Fodor's
obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed.
With characteristic rigor and insight, Kate Summerscale brilliantly
captures the rich atmosphere of a haunting that transforms into a
very modern battle between the supernatural and the subconscious.
When the married Isabella Robinson was introduced to the dashing
Edward Lane at a party in 1850, she was utterly enchanted. He was
‘fascinating’, she told her diary, before chastising herself
for being so susceptible to a man’s charms. But a wish had taken
hold of her, and she was to find it hard to shake... In one of the
most notorious divorce cases of the nineteenth century, Isabella
Robinson’s scandalous secrets were exposed to the world. Kate
Summerscale brings vividly to life a frustrated Victorian wife’s
longing for passion and learning, companionship and love, in a
society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female
sexuality.
Shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction 2017 The
gripping, fascinating account of a shocking murder case that sent
late Victorian Britain into a frenzy, by the number one
bestselling, multi-award-winning author of The Suspicions of Mr
Whicher 'Her research is needle-sharp and her period detail richly
atmospheric, but what is most heartening about this truly
remarkable book is the story of real-life redemption that it brings
to light' John Carey, Sunday Times Early in the morning of Monday 8
July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old
brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow brick terraced
house in east London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their
father had gone to sea the previous Friday, leaving the boys and
their mother at home for the summer. Over the next ten days Robert
and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning family valuables to fund
trips to the theatre and the seaside. During this time nobody saw
or heard from their mother, though the boys told neighbours she was
visiting relatives. As the sun beat down on the Coombes house, an
awful smell began to emanate from the building. When the police
were finally called to investigate, what they found in one of the
bedrooms sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and
Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the
outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved
to read. In The Wicked Boy, Kate Summerscale has uncovered a
fascinating true story of murder and morality - it is not just a
meticulous examination of a shocking Victorian case, but also a
compelling account of its aftermath, and of man's capacity to
overcome the past.
Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book! From the
internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and
atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London In the
summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age
12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London
-- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took
trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they
had been left home alone while their mother visited family in
Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually
forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly
decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and
Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old
Bailey. Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his
lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave
evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about
Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals
and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day.
He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the
prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The
judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor,
the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet
Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for
Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought
they understood the Wicked Boy. At a time of great tumult and
uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary
anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers
of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood,
and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate
Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath,
uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the
past.
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