Classical Memoirs

The English Governess at the Siamese Court, written in 1870, vividly recounts the experiences of one Anna Harriette Leonowens as governess for the sixty-plus children of King Mongkut of Siam, and translator and scribe for the King himself. Bright, young, and energetic, Leonowens was well-suited to her role and her writings convey a heartfelt interest in the lives, legends, and languages of Siam's rich and poor.

Mr. Washington was born a slave. His family, freed after the Civil War, struggled for a livelihood under terrible conditions. Mr. Washington, however, was determined to be educated, and he took advantage of every opportunity to learn available to him. He rose from poverty and ignorance to help found Tuskegee University. This audiobook should be an inspiration to all who listen.

A boy with a rifle walks into a middle school, intent on carrying out Western-style vigilante justice. A wife and mother of four kisses her twelve-year-old student and forever changes our definition of student-teacher conferences. The world's most famous serial killers put Washington on the map. A bathtub, a handgun, a meat grinder, and a burn barrel play a role in the murder of the captain of a freighter.

When he was arrested in July 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer had a severed head in the refrigerator, two more in the freezer, two skulls and a skeleton in a filing cabinet. But if anything could be more disturbing than the brute horror of this scene, it was the evidence that Dahmer had been using these human remains not only for sexual gratification but as part of a dark ritual of his own devising - to furnish a shrine to himself.

As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats - White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole."

There are many legends about the great Davy Crockett. In the movies people claim he could ride lightning, leap over rivers and fight wildcats with his bare hands. In the 2004 movie The Alamo, it is suggested that he was more cowardly than the legends, and if it was his choice, he would “slip over the wall” and escape. They also suggest that he only wore his famous coon skin caps because the actor who portrayed him did. Other stories claim he was an absolutely fearless warrior who loved a good fight.

'This could be heaven or this could be hell...' So sings Don Henley on their biggest hit, 'Hotel California', yet for The Eagles their story was one where the dividing line between ultimate Hollywood highs and subterranean LA lows was blurred beyond recognition, blinded by white-powdered double-visions and buried beneath greenback mountains.

New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen and true crime journalist Kevin M. Sullivan travel down a bizarre trail of murder into notorious Pennsylvania. A seemingly normal husband father of two decides to kill young girls after storming an Amish schoolhouse, and sex many have been the prime motivator. A young high school student has a secret desire for murder, and decides a middle of the night visit to his best friend’s house will do nicely to satiate his hunger to kill.

Do you love cars? Do you love interesting stories about startups? Do you love crazy stories about founders and their ups and downs? This book, and the books in this series, are for you.

A federal prosecutor in Mississippi for over 30 years, John Hailman routinely worked with federal agents, lawyers, judges, and criminals of every type imaginable. Encouraged by the acclaim for his earlier book, From Midnight to Guntown, he has opened even more of the astonishing cases within the over 35 boxes full of trial stories he carried into retirement. Hailman gathers colorful exploits of eccentric modern criminals from William Faulkner’s Mississippi, where savvy victims often outwit their criminal perpetrators.

In this exclusive ebook, investigative journalist M. William Phelps asks: Did Son of Sam have an intimate, homosexual relationship with a fellow (serial killer) inmate while in prison? Was Sam's real name Richard Falco? Has Son of Sam-who claimed in 2011 that he does not want to seek parole because he has been “freed” by Jesus Christ-been perpetrating a fraud with his supposed “salvation”?

Johannes Wirix-Speetjens realiseerde zich dat de kunstgeschiedenis vol queer iconen zit - van Leonard Bernstein tot Freddie Mercury. Deze ontdekkingen inspireerden hem eerst tot een serie podcasts voor de Vlaamse radiozender Klara, maar al snel groeide het idee: dit onderwerp verdient een boek. Met 'Classical Queers' brengt Johannes levens en passies samen in een kleurrijk portret van de kunstgeschiedenis die we dachten te kennen. De geschiedenis wordt vaak verteld vanuit een beperkt, mannelijk en heteroseksueel perspectief. Maar het verleden is zoveel kleurrijker dan dat!

Published in 1894 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 11 different stories that center on the beloved character of Sherlock Holmes. The first of these stories is entitled "Silver Blaze", and chronicles Sherlock Holmes' attempts to not only track down a race horse who has disappeared, but to find out who has murdered the horse's trainer.

William Shakespeare had nothing to do with the actor and moneylender William Shaksper from Stratford-upon-Avon. The man behind the nom de plume "William Shakespeare" was, in fact, a very well-educated aristocrat who often frequented the court of Elizabeth and whose real name was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The dramas of Shakespeare were not written for the Globe Theatre but for the Queen's court.

A feminist landmark, The Golden Notebook tells the story of writer Anna Wulf and the crises she faces in her personal, political, and professional life. Confounded by writer's block, the ferociously independent Wulf explores her situation in four notebooks, one for each of the strands in her life. The Golden Notebook is the one in which, struggling to retain her sanity, she brings these strands together.

Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his 20s, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain.

There's honest graft and dishonest graft, according to George Washington Plunkitt. Listen to this candid discourse from a 19th-century politician and decide for yourself if things have changed.

The chilling true story of Oregon's most shocking killer! Jimmy Rode was serving a sentence for burglary in a Florida prison when he met serial killer Ted Bundy. It was Bundy who gave him a Seattle newspaper containing personal ads - an easy means for meeting vulnerable female victims - that launched Rode on a coast-to-coast killing spree under the alias of Cesar Barone. Now, in detail, Lasseter unleashes the story of Jimmy Rode.

It is something of a cliché to say that an actor’s life was like a movie he or she might have starred in, but in the case of Myrna Loy, the cliché is true. It is easy to picture her as a little girl, riding the range with her rancher father, sitting around the table and participating charmingly in family discussions of current events.

Very similar in style to Walden, and in fact written while he stayed at Walden Pond, this account chronicles Throeau's 1830 boat trip. In it, he weaves together travel writing, essays on religion, history, and lyrical poetry, as well as his own unique philosophy.