Showing results by narrator "Lee Ann Howlett" in All Categories

The Colonial Parkway Murders - the name given eight murders that took place in the Tidewater region in the late 1980s, two of which were on the historic Colonial Parkway, the nation’s narrowest National Park. Young people in the prime of their lives were the targets. But the pattern that stitched this special kind of evil together was more like a spider web of theory, intrigue, and mathematics. Then, mysteriously, the killing spree stopped. Now, father-daughter true crime authors Blaine Pardoe and Victoria Hester blow the dust off of these cases.

American Spiritualism—a movement that at its peak claimed more than a million followers—was born out of the basic human longing for contact with a loved one lost to death. But Spiritualism's true spark came in 1848 from something no more or less powerful than a bored teenage girl. This is the first authoritative biography of Maggie Fox, the world-famous medium and cofounder of the Spiritualism movement that swept America in the mid-1800s. What started as a prank soon transformed into a movement.

One of the most notorious murders in US history, the 1892 killing of Andrew and Abby Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, officially remains an unsolved case. Although Lizzie Borden was charged with the axe murders of her father and stepmother, the jury found her not guilty. No one else was ever charged. Edwin H. Porter was a young police reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe who covered the crime. Beginning with the discovery of the bodies, all the way through the investigation, trial, and final verdict, Porter gives a detailed account with first-hand access to the crime scene.

The story of one of racing's earliest dynasties, the historic Belair Stud, began with William Woodward's childhood memories of grand days at the racetrack, inspiring dreams of breeding a champion or two of his own. Woodward turned those dreams into reality, building Belair Stud on his family's Maryland estate, launching what would become the preeminent thoroughbred breeding and racing empire in America and chasing racing's biggest prizes in both the United States and England.

This collection arguably contains some of the most charming lyrics ever written in English. Blake’s poems can be enjoyed, not only for their historical importance in an age which was fiercely proud of its genius and its traditions, but also for their simple and beautiful expression of “two contrary states of the human soul.” Songs of Innocence was originally a complete collection of twenty-three poems, first printed in 1789. In 1794, a composite collection entitled Songs of Innocence and of Experience, containing forty-seven poems, was published.

The Amelia Butterworth Mysteries is a series of three novels featuring Amelia Butterworth teaming up with Ebenezer Gryce. Miss Butterworth is a nosy high-society lady whose wealth and lack of family give her plenty of free time in which to solve several Victorian-era crimes.

Euripides (c. 480-406 B.C.E.) is the author of eighteen extant plays and many more only surviving in fragments. He is the youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Hippolytus, bastard son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta, has sworn chaste allegiance to the goddess Artemis, thus severely offending the goddess Aphrodite by failing to revere her. Aphrodite swears revenge and promises that he will die before the day is done, taking with him Queen Phaedra, wife of Theseus.

Terrifying things are happening to Kay Weden, a 40-something single mom and high school teacher in Salisbury, North Carolina. Despite having no known enemies, Kay's home, car, and peace of mind are under attack throughout 1993. Most chilling of all are the senseless attacks on her only son and the shot fired in the night through a wall of her house, which narrowly misses his head as he sleeps.

Inspiring and exciting, Adams's memoir recounts the personal path leading to her historic achievements: a tomboy childhood in the Oregon high desert, an early marriage and painful divorce, and a second marriage that ended when her husband died of cancer. In the wake of his death and almost by accident, Adams discovered sailing. Six weeks after her first sailing lesson, she bought a boat, and within eight months, she set out to achieve her first world record.

First published in 1869, Little Women is the story of four sisters growing up against the background of the American Civil War. Alcott wrote the book at the urging of the publisher, Thomas Niles, who was seeking a story about girls that would have popular appeal. Although it was commenced essentially as a children's book, it developed into something of a bildungsroman, which touches on more serious issues such as the difficulties faced by single-parent families, the death of a sibling, and fractured relationships.

During the first half of the 20th century, the Peoria State Hospital was the premiere mental health facility of its day. Dr. George Zeller instituted the eight-hour workday for his staff, removed patient restraints, and made the asylum into a model for the care of the mentally ill. Today, there are only a few buildings of the hospital left. Some of them are still in use, others are inhabited only by ghosts. Our guide to these ghosts - and the history they represent - is Sylvia Shults.

Emily Dickinson was one of the most reclusive of all poets. She spent much of her life in seclusion in her father’s house in Amherst, and only a handful of her 1800 poems were published in her lifetime. Credit for the posthumous publication of her work must be given to her editor and friend Thomas W. Higginson, who reported that, in spite of the voluminous correspondence which passed between himself and Dickinson, he only met her twice in person.

Edmund Lester Pearson was a journalist, court reporter, and librarian. He’s considered by many to be the first real true crime author in the U.S. Here he writes about the Lizzie Borden murders, axe murders that happened at sea, the murder of a wealthy New York businessman, and two others. Several of these crimes remain unsolved. Although he meticulously researched these crimes and interviewed many witnesses, his accounts are entertaining and, at times, even humorous.

Investigators and Central Florida residents were horrified when 16-year-old vampire cult leader Rod Ferrell was arrested and charged with bludgeoning a cult member's parents. When they realized the slain couple's 15-year-old daughter was missing, they feared she was a victim, too. Detectives and journalists swarming over three states soon uncovered a web of blood-drinking occult rituals, illicit sex, wildly dysfunctional families, and spiritual warfare.

In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding - once a paradigm of economic rationality - came to be defined as a mental illness. Hoarding is unique among the disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 because its diagnosis requires the existence of a material entity: the hoard. Possessed therefore considers the hoard as an aesthetic object produced by clashing perspectives about the meaning or value of objects.

Guarding the Secrets recounts the terror-stricken life and murder of 16-year-old Tina Isa, who was condemned by her other family members for becoming Americanized, before her father, an accused Palestinian terrorist, murdered her in November 1989. The killing was recorded by accident due to the FBI having bugged the house in an attempt to prove the father's ties to terrorism. The events leading up to the murder are expertly told by author Ellen Harris, including Tina's older sisters urging their father to kill their younger sister.

Fearful and frightened, Lacey Harper must learn to save herself. When her father plans to marry her off to enrich himself, she answers an advert for a Mail Order Bride. She boards a train to Colorado Territory to marry a man named Neil Thompson.

The only psychic ever to lecture at the FBI Academy, Noreen Renier has assisted law-enforcement officials all over the world, working on more than 400 criminal cases. From the discovery and development of her unique talents to becoming a respected figure in the police community, this is the true account of Noreen Renier's remarkable life and career.

Miami's vice cops, move over. There's a new sheriff in town, rather a feisty Florida Highway Patrol Trooper named Floy Turner, who juggles motherhood with fighting crime. With refreshing authenticity and transparency, Turner doesn't hold back as she tells her stranger-than-fiction, true-to-life anecdotes of what goes on behind the badge in drug-ridden 1980s Miami when cocaine was king and her town housed one of the major drug hubs in the country.

Dying to Get Married is a modern day morality tale of the perversion of an American dream. Julie Miller was a successful executive, who, through a newspaper ad, met who she thought was "Mr. Right". Little did she know that he had a violent past and a predisposition for bizarre sexual rituals.