Tragic Biographies

Having spent 10 years as Jayne Mansfield's press secretary, Raymond Strait knows intimately both the public image and the private person that was Jayne Mansfield. Sitting through hundreds of hours of interviews and private conversations - not only with Jayne but also with her husbands, her lovers, and her children - gave Ray the opportunity to present a revealing portrait of the woman. He records her drive for fame and success and her overpowering need to be loved and to love.

The world-famous Fastnet Race takes yachts from the Isle of Wight to the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and back. The 1979 race began in perfect conditions, but was soon engulfed by the deadliest storm in the history of modern sailing. By the time it passed, the havoc caused was immeasurable, and fifteen sailors had lost their lives.

Early on a May morning in 1988, Laurie Dann, a 30-year-old, profoundly unhappy product of the wealthy North Shore suburb of Chicago, loaded her father's car with a cache of handguns, incendiary chemicals, and arsenic-laced food. Driven by fear and hate, she was going to make something terrible happen. Before the end of the day, Dann had blazed a murderous trail of poison, fire, and bullets through the unsuspecting town of Winnetka, Illinois, and other North Shore suburbs.

The Real Custer takes a good hard look at the life and storied military career of George Armstrong Custer - from cutting his teeth at Bull Run in the Civil War, to his famous and untimely death at Little Bighorn in the Indian Wars. Author James Robbins demonstrates that Custer, having graduated last in his class at West Point, went on to prove himself again and again as an extremely skilled cavalry leader.

Raised in 1970s Spanish Harlem, Hector Camacho lived a life as fast as his fists flew in the ring. Handsome, flamboyant, and outspoken, Camacho electrified the boxing scene of the 1980s and, shouting his mantra "Macho Time!", beat some of the greatest fighters of his generation. His fast-lane life caught up with him eventually - and tragically - when he was shot dead outside a nightclub in Puerto Rico at the age of 50.

In June 1593, a ghostly ship drifted into an Irish harbour. Only 16 crewmen remained alive, and the deck was littered with the dead. This was the melancholy homecoming of the ship Desire, one of a fleet of five that had left England two years before, fuelled by dreams of Spanish gold and the glory of exploring the globe. Cavendish had returned triumphant from circumnavigating the world in record time, having taken a Manila galleon and secured the largest haul of treasure ever to fall into English hands.

Charles Finger’s book efficiently covers Oscar Wilde’s background, his early years and education, and his beginnings as an author, poet, and critic for several magazines. The author then turns to the activities of Wilde that drew the attention of others, culminating in the Marquess of Queensbury calling Wilde out as a homosexual. Wilde sued for slander, but the Marquess was acquitted and materials brought forth during the trial resulted in Wilde being arrested and tried for homosexuality. He was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor, from which he never really recovered.

In March of 2004, Kathleen Savio, the third wife of Police Sergeant Drew Peterson, was found dead in her bathtub. Three years later, in October 2007, twenty-three-year-old Stacy Peterson vanished from the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, leaving behind Peterson and their children. Drew Peterson, thirty years Stacy's senior, steadfastly asserted his innocence. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Stacy's friends and family and even Drew himself, Chicago-area reporter Joseph Hosey presents the most researched account of the Stacy Peterson case.

The four-year-old Brandon Sims had not been seen since July 3, 1992, when he attended a birthday party with his 20-year-old mother, Michelle Jones. For years, Jones lied to her friends about Brandon, telling some that he was living with his father and others that he was staying with his grandmother in another state. When Brandon’s father, who had been in jail, came looking for Brandon, Michelle’s shocked friends confronted her. She confessed that Brandon was dead. She repeated her story of how Brandon died to a detective. The detective didn’t believe her story.

In the heart of Victorian France, a name once whispered with admiration and envy was Blanche Monnier. Known far and wide for her breathtaking beauty, Blanche was a vision of grace and charm, the epitome of a desirable young woman. However, beneath the glittering façade of her life lay a chilling secret, a dark tale of betrayal and unimaginable cruelty that would forever stain the annals of history.

After a bucolic childhood in Kovno, Lithuania, Sol was just eleven when the Nazis invaded and he and his family were forced to move into the Kovno Ghetto. The Kovno Ghetto was one of the only ghettos to later become a concentration camp, and Sol was among just a few Jewish survivors from Kovno...

Tragic Whispers by Deana Elaine takes you on a deeply personal journey through the life of a Palestinian American woman navigating love, loss, and cultural divides. Deana’s story unfolds with raw honesty as she shares her struggles with family drama, addiction, and trauma—and her fight to reclaim her life.

In May of 2013, Max and Joyce Eliason entrusted their estate valued in excess of $250 million to the LDS law firm of Kirton McConkie located in Salt Lake City, Utah. They did so with the belief that their estate rich in oil properties was just as safe as the millions of dollars they had paid in tithes and offerings over the 59 years they were married. What has followed is the most criminal and heinous display of corruption which has led to Kirton McConkie and the leaders of the LDS Church unable to account for $1.00.

Tragic Victory: Learning to Navigate Life In Tough Times is an intimate and transparent memoir of how one mother discovered her own inner strength while enduring the heartbreaking fight for her children's lives. Author Diane Davis documents the tragedy of addiction, depression, and the downward spiral of those closest to her. Although tragic, she discovers victory, love; and an unexpected, joyful new beginning.

M. William Phelps reveals an unfathomable pattern surrounding repeating arms inventor Samuel Colt - from the death of all his children, including Sam's sea captain son's mysterious demise aboard his yacht, to the eccentric life of his widow.

Lost in history, this story – filled with aspirations, the desire to prove oneself, and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds – brings the life of Louis-Napoleon, the great-nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and the son of Emperor Napoleon III, back into the limelight.

At first glance, the 1932 Easter morning murder of Salvatore "Sam" Antonio had all the trademarks of a gang-related murder. But when William H. Flubacher of the New York State Police began questioning the victim’s wife, Anna Antonio, the vague details she offered, coupled with her utter lack of shock or grief upon hearing of her husband’s brutal murder, convinced Flubacher that something was amiss. Soon, as James M. Greiner tells us in this absorbing audiobook, Anna was accused of hiring two drug dealers, Vincent Saetta and Sam Feraci, to kill her husband.

In this absorbing tale of a sports legend, infidelity, jealousy, money, and murder, former NFL and college star quarterback Steve McNair and his attractive young lover Sahel Kazemi embark on a dangerous affair in Nashville that leaves both dead.

"Mas. Gill Jamieson, poor innocent lad, has departed for the unknown, a forlorn "walking shadow" in the great beyond, where we all go to when the time comes”. Those words, printed in a handwritten letter delivered to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on the morning of September 20, 1928, told the city of Honolulu that 10-year-old Gill Jamieson, the only son of Hawaiian Trust Company vice president Frederick Jamieson, was dead. What had begun as the search for a kidnap victim quickly turned into a search for Gill’s body and for his killer.

La pasión, bien sea amorosa, ideológica o simplemente vital, ha tenido consecuencias desdichadas para el sexo femenino. La consagración de una vida al arte, al amor, o a una causa política o religiosa muchas veces ha resultado en un trágico final para muchas mujeres a lo largo de todas las épocas y en todas las latitudes. Juana de Arco, Inés de Castro, Ana Bolena, María Estuardo, Mata Hari, Diana de Gales, Grace Kelly o Diane Fossey murieron víctimas de la intolerancia de quienes las rodeaban o por haber cometido el delito de amar apasionadamente. En Castellano.