Return to Smuttynose Island

Return to Smuttynose Island PDF

Author: Emeric Spooner

Publisher:

Published: 2009-04-23

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9781441485878

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This is a true account of Maine's most famous historical murder cases. The first two chapters look into Maine's first axe murders the Purington Massacre. Then every aspect of the Smuttynose case is covered from the murders, arrest, trial, jailbreak, sentencing and double hanging on the gallows of Maine State Prison at Thomaston. Louis Wagner was joined on the Gallows with another Maine Axe murderer, John True Gordon of Thorndike. Wagner in one of the most charismatic psychopaths I have ever heard of. After his conviction, he convinced everyone he met, reporters, prison officials, even the Warden that he was completely innocent of his crimes. Louis swore that one day the truth would come out and the next year a deathbed confession was printed across the nation, if true would exonerate him of his crimes. This is the intensely bizarre true account of the axe murders that shocked a nation.

The Weight of Water

The Weight of Water PDF

Author: Anita Shreve

Publisher: Little Brown

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0316789976

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A tale of marital intrigue. The protagonist is a woman photographer sent to investigate an old murder on an island. She takes along her husband, the husband's brother and the brother's girlfriend. Problems arise when the husband develops an interest in the other woman. By the author of Resistance.

Cold Water Crossing

Cold Water Crossing PDF

Author: David Faxon

Publisher: David Faxon

Published: 2012-03-24

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1440493693

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This is the true story of a double murder that occurred in March, 1873 off the New England coast. The event was followed closely by newspapers across the country for months. It is unique because of the circumstances surrounding the crime and the controversy it raised. Reconstructed from old newspaper articles, court transcripts, the Internet and other source materials, it is as factual as I have been able to make it. Names and places are real, as is trial testimony. Where facts and dialogue were available from research and documented sources, they are accurate. Where they were scant or sustained by rumor yet necessary for the flow of the story and capture of emotions, the interpretations are mine. --author.

Striking Back

Striking Back PDF

Author: J. Dennis Robinson

Publisher: Capstone

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 0756542979

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In 1790 the first water-powered mill in America was run by children, some as young as 7 years old. They were paid pennies for a work day that might last more than 10 hours. As America grew, the children's plight grew worse. Exhausted by six-day work weeks and harsh conditions, millions of young workers had no time to play or go outdoors. They had no childhood. In time children and adults fought back, and the children went on strike to protest harsh conditions. Finally, during the last years of the Great Depression, the government took action, passing the Fair Labor Act.

Boon Island

Boon Island PDF

Author: Stephen A. Erickson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0762790792

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The wreck of the Nottingham Galley on Boon Island and the resultant rumors of insurance fraud, mutiny, treason, and cannibalism was one of the most sensational stories of the early 18th century. Shortly after departing England with Captain John Deane at the helm, his brother Jasper and another investor aboard, and a skeleton crew, the ship encountered French privateers on her way to Ireland, where she then lingered for weeks picking up cargo. They eventually headed into the North Atlantic later in the season than was reasonably safe and found themselves shipwrecked on the notorious Boon Island, just off the New England coast. Captain Deane offered one version of the events that led them to the barren rock off the coast of Maine; his crew proposed another. The story contains mysteries that endure to this day, yet no contemporary non-fiction account of the story exists. In the hands of skilled storytellers Andrew Vietze and Stephen Erickson, this becomes a historical adventure-mystery that will appeal to readers of South and The Perfect Storm.

The Watery Part of the World

The Watery Part of the World PDF

Author: Michael Parker

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2012-06-05

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1616201576

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Calling all Hamilton fans! Spend more time with the remarkable Theodosia Burr by reading this fascinating novel inspired by a little-known incident in her life. It's the stuff of song. Michael Parker’s vast and involving novel about pirates and slaves, treason and treasures, madness and devotion, takes place on a tiny island battered by storms and cut off from the world. Inspired by two forgotten moments in history, it begins in 1813, when Theodosia Burr, en route to New York by ship to meet her father, Aaron Burr, disappears off the coast of North Carolina. It ends a hundred and fifty years later, when the last three inhabitants of a remote island—two elderly white women and the black man who takes care of them—are forced to leave their beloved spot of land. Parker tells an enduring story about what we’ll sacrifice for love, and what we won’t.

An Island Garden

An Island Garden PDF

Author: Celia Thaxter

Publisher: Applewood Books

Published: 2008-11

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1429014296

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Celia Laighton Thaxter (1835-1894) was born in Portsmouth, NH. When she was four, her father became the lighthouse keeper on White Island in the Isles of Shoals. After resigning his post eight years later, he built a resort hotel on Appledore Island in Maine. The first of its kind on the New England coast, the hotel became a gathering place for writers and artists during the latter half of the 19th century. In her last year of life, Celia published this work, in which she lovingly describes her Appledore garden and its flowers. The flowers she grew in her cutting garden filled her own rooms and those of the hotel, and this work became famous for its descriptions of the old-fashioned flowers she grew there. Her island garden, a plot that measured 15 feet square, has been re-created and is open to visitors.

Psycho USA

Psycho USA PDF

Author: Harold Schechter

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2012-08-07

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0345524489

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AMERICA’S MOST COLD-BLOODED! In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who’s gotten ink for spilling blood, there’s a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of U.S. history. The law gave them their just desserts, but now the hugely acclaimed author of The Serial Killer Files and The Whole Death Catalog gives them their dark due in this absolutely riveting true-crime treasury. Among America’s most cold-blooded you’ll meet • Robert Irwin, “The Mad Sculptor”: He longed to use his carving skills on the woman he loved—but had to settle for making short work of her mother and sister instead. • Peter Robinson, “The Tell-Tale Heart Killer”: It took two days and four tries for him to finish off his victim, but no time at all for keen-eyed cops to spot the fatal flaw in his floor plan. • Anton Probst, “The Monster in the Shape of a Man”: The ax-murdering immigrant’s systematic slaughter of all eight members of a Pennsylvania farm family matched the savagery of the Manson murders a century later. • Edward H. Ruloff, “The Man of Two Lives”: A genuine Jekyll and Hyde, his brilliant scholarship disguised his bloodthirsty brutality, and his oversized brain gave new meaning to “mastermind.” Spurred by profit, passion, paranoia, or perverse pleasure, these killers—the Witch of Staten Island, the Smutty Nose Butcher, the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell, and many others—span three centuries and a host of harrowing murder methods. Dramatized in the pages of penny dreadfuls, sensationalized in tabloid headlines, and immortalized in “murder ballads” and classic fiction by Edgar Allan Poe and Theodore Dreiser, the demonic denizens of Psycho USA may be long gone to the gallows—but this insidiously irresistible slice of gothic Americana will ensure that they’ll no longer be forgotten.

Music Hall: How a City Built a Theater and a Theater Shaped a City

Music Hall: How a City Built a Theater and a Theater Shaped a City PDF

Author: J. Dennis Robinson

Publisher: Great Life Press

Published: 2019-10-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781938394348

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Portsmouth's historic Music Hall has welcomed the best from Victorian superstars Buffalo Bill, Tom Thumb, and Mark Twain to today's top musicians, comics, authors, and performers. Built in 1878, expanded by Frank Jones in 1901, the theater's spacious stage and phenomenal acoustics have made it one of the finest venues in New England. Within these brick walls generations have seen America evolve from minstrel shows and silent films to jaw-dropping musicals and Hollywood blockbusters, from animal acts to symphony orchestras, and from vaudeville slapstick to provocative Ted talks. Behind the scenes, the Music Hall story is a wild ride from thriving to barely surviving and back. Fully researched, artfully written, and richly illustrated, this volume is a must-read for anyone who cherishes the performing arts.Shuttered and decaying during World War II, New Hampshire's vintage venue went on the auction block in 1945. Recast as the Civic, it served as a movie house for the next four decades. Following two failed revivals in the 1980s, the century-old structure came close to being turned into condominiums. Saved from demolition by a grassroots team of volunteers, the nonprofit Friends of the Music Hall launched an unprecedented $13.5 million capital campaign. Signature programs like the "Telluride by the Sea" film festival and "Writers on a New England Stage" have put New Hampshire's historic theater on the national map. Today the restored Music Hall delivers hundreds of diverse cultural events annually, both in the historic 900-seat hall and in its modern new Loft stage nearby. Digging even deeper, this book traces the development of the performing arts in Portsmouth from the arrival of its first settlers. We glimpse the city's colonial gentry partying at the Assembly House, hear the shrill sounds of early church singers, and wander the "lewd amusements" of a post-Revolutionary seaport. We watch as an acre of forest land is transformed from an almshouse and prison to a church, a temperance hall, a public lyceum and a theater. And we discover how that beloved theater--called "the beating heart of cultural Portsmouth"-has shaped the city that built and preserved it.