Tell-Tale Texas - Investigations in Infamous History

E.R. Bills

Summary

Uncover the suppressed testimony of the Lone Star State's uncomfortable past.Tinseltown almost always gets Texas wrong. The "Searchers" never did that much searching, the "Giants" were hardly ever big in terms of character and The Last Picture Show was just the beginning of a disturbing reveal. As acclaimed writer Stephen Harrigan suggests, the Lone Star State was not exactly a Big, Wonderful Thing, and for too many Texans, nothing was ever "Awright, Awright, Awright." A Black civil rights champion was assassinated in 1976, and the incident was buried. A "Cowtown Catcher in the Rye" was published in 1940, and the country club set made it disappear. And the war machines of Hitler and Mussolini were perfected with Texas oil during the Spanish Civil War. Author E.R. Bills challenges his proud neighbors, earnestly asking them to take a hard look at their past and examine their own historical amnesia, cultural fragility and fierce denial.

Available since: 08/07/2023.

Print length: 178 pages.

Other books that might interest you

No Place Like Murder - True...

Janis Thornton

“This engrossing collection of historical Midwest murders reads like a thriller. True crime at its best. I couldn’t put it down.” —Susan Furlong, author of the Bone Gap Travellers novels

A modern retelling of 20 sensational true crimes, No Place Like Murder reveals the inside details behind nefarious acts that shocked the Midwest between 1869 and 1950. The stories chronicle the misdeeds, examining the perpetrators’ mindsets, motives, lives, apprehensions, and trials, as well as what became of them long after.

True crime author Janis Thornton profiles notorious murderers such as Frankie Miller, who was fed up when her fiancé stood her up for another woman. As fans of the song “Frankie and Johnny” already know, Frankie met her former lover at the door with a shotgun.

Thornton’s tales reveal the darker side of life in the Midwest, including the account of Isabelle Messmer, a plucky young woman who dreamed of escaping her quiet farm-town life. After she nearly took down two tough Pittsburgh policemen in 1933, she was dubbed “Gun Girl” and went on to make headlines from coast to coast. In 1942, however, after a murder conviction in Texas, she vowed to do her time and go straight. Full of intrigue and revelations, No Place Like Murder also features such folks as Chirka and Rasico, the first two Hoosier men to die in the electric chair after they brutally murdered their wives in 1913. The two didn’t meet until their fateful last night.

An enthralling and chilling collection, No Place Like Murder is sure to thrill true crime lovers.

“Thornton wittily describes heretofore unheralded true crime stories from Indiana’s small towns.” —Keven McQueen, author of Horror in the Heartland

Show book

Murder & Mayhem in Mendon and...

Diane Ham, Lynne Menz

The notorious history of two nineteenth-century hamlets in western New York, famous for an era of bustling commerce—and criminality.   The Town of Mendon and the Village of Honeoye Falls are today quiet western New York suburbs, but they weren't always so idyllic. In years past, the village was a center of commerce, manufacturing and railroads, and by the mid-nineteenth century, this prosperity brought with it an element of mayhem. Horse stealing was commonplace. Saloons and taverns were abundant. Street scuffles and barroom brawls were regular, especially on Saturday nights, after the laborers were paid. By Sunday morning, numerous drunks—like Manley Locke, who would eventually go on to kill another man in a fight—were confined to the lockup in the village hall. It was at this time that the Village of Honeoye Falls earned the name “Murderville.” As the town and village turn two hundred, join local historians Diane Ham and Lynne Menz as they explore the peaceful region’s vicious history.   Includes photos!

Show book

More Foul Deeds & Suspicious...

Kate Taylor

A historic account of the Northern England city’s crimes, including misdeeds that shed light on past ways of life—from death by neglect to police killings.   How the body of a Wakefield murder victim was exhibited for a fee in 1853, the odd story of a Normanton miner attacked by a prosperous Crofton gentleman in 1875, the tragic death of a twenty-one-year old woman on what should have been her wedding day in 1909, and the case of the Sandal dental lecturer who killed his adopted daughter in 1966 are among the many foul deeds recounted in More Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield.   In a companion volume to Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield (2001), Kate Taylor has assembled more than fifty further accounts of horrific deaths in or near Wakefield. Some killings reflect the tensions and resentment of domestic life but there are mysteries too like the case of a man found dead in 1860 in a shallow beck with no marks of violence on him. In an incident in Horbury involving the death of a baby in 1849 it was the assistant constable pursuing the inquiries who died. The book shows something of the cultural context that can promote murder—the stigma of illegitimacy in the past and the more recent risks of glue sniffing and the appalling bullying of immigrants. Take a journey into the darker and unknown side of your area as you read More Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Wakefield.

Show book

Not So Merry Wakefield

Kate Taylor

The life and times of a Wakefield woman in the late twentieth century with substantial local historical information. The book aims to echo Henry Clarkson's memories of Merry Wakefield (1887) but with more sombre overtones reflecting experiences of single parenthood, time in the local mental hospital and the trauma of a fatal car accident, but with good times too.

Show book

Agatha Christie: The Collection...

Agatha Christie, Pocket Classic

This ebook collection contains the following works of Agatha Christie:

The Mysterious Affair At Styles
The Secret Adversary
The Murder On The Links
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan
The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
The Adventure of the "Western Star"
The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
The Adventure of the Cheap Flat
The Mystery of the Hunter's Lodge
The Kidnapped Prime Minister
The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb
The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman
The Case of the Missing Will
The Chocolate Box
The Veiled Lady
The Lost Mine
The Affair at the Victory Ball
The Adventure of the Clapham Cook
The Cornish Mystery
The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly
The Double Clue
The King of Clubs
The Lemesurier Inheritance
The Plymouth Express
The Submarine Plans
The Market Basing Mystery

Show book

A Shimmering Light

Tomaso Nigris

A Shimmering Light is an Italian mystery novel. The story follows a path that is a little unusual in that the same episode is told by several main characters from different perspectives, illustrating how reality and truth may take on tonalities and colors, according to the different points of view. Someone dies; an American Commissioner is on vacation in a sunlit village in Puglia. With fresh and colorful brushstrokes the author gives a close up of the traditions, beliefs, and the ways of thinking that are characteristic and unique to a village, similar to many in Italy.
An ending with an unexpected plot twist, engaging, surprising.

Show book